Research On Opinion Leaders In Household Consumption Of Undeveloped Regions

As a basic consumptive form of social organization, household consumption has been researched by sociology, economics, marketing, etc. All these faculties researched this theme from their own professional perspective; a lot of scientific achievements had been gained. At present, there are few researches about household consumption under the perspective of communication.So, this paper will begin with the "Two-Step-Flow of Communication" theory, trying to make a research on the "Opinion Leaders" and their characteristic in the process of household consumption. Compared with the traditional way to confirm an opinion leader, this research will start with the audiences, from whom the opinion leaders in special consumption areas will be found by using the methods of questionnaire, interviewing and participating, and then their characteristic will be sum up.The research discovers that opinion leaders exist in the process of household consumption; family females always show their characteristic of opinion leaders in the process of daily necessities'consumption. Males always show their advantages on dutiable goods. Based on which, using the method of interviewing inspects the opinion leaders of the outer family mainly on four perspectives which are closely related with family lives, such as food, clothes, house and high class household appliances. From which, the opinion leaders and their characteristic are confirmed. And the research discovered that as the promotion of the products' value, the probability of the opinion leader' exist is going down. The higher the products' value is the stricter those consumers want the opinion leaders have.Three conclusions were gained by summarized the whole paper, which are opinion leaders of consumption exist in and out of families; in different consumptive area the characteristic of the opinion leaders shows differently.