The Research On Marriage Consumption Of J City Youth From The Symbolic Consumption Perspective

Marriage remains as one of the significant issue for human beings. Almosteveryone will necessarily experience this process. Marriage means a lot to people's lifeand society. Yet, as a result of the enhancement of price level, guidance of social cultureand increase of the marriage cost, marriage consumption has already become a burdento most of people. Consumption no more only focuses on the use value of the products,but also emphasizes the symbolic meaning demonstrated by the products. Various dailyconsumption activities including marriage consumption, to a large degree, are indeedthe consumption of symbols.This research firstly employed the survey and interview methods to collect dataregarding the marriage consumption of the young people in City J. An analysis on thequantitative data would be helpful in understanding the consumption over apartment,automobiles and house decoration in course of the marriage. The interview records willbe cited to analyze the concrete characteristics of these consumption activities in orderto facilitate the understanding on their symbolic connotations. Second, this researchemployed three perspectives, the consumption content, consumption psychology andconsumption concept, to describe the symbol consumption features during the marriageof young people. The purpose is to realize that the young people in City J were exactlypursuing quality and emphasizing the symbolic connotations. In addition, this group ofpeople also focused on features like brands, fashions and emotions. Third, this researchfocused on both the individual and social factors to analyze the reasons leading to theyoung people's symbol consumption activities during their marriage and to unveil thedecisive role of income, educational background and gender in the symbol consumption.This research is also devoted to making clear the influence exerted by family sponsors,reference group, mass media and “face” culture on the symbol consumption preferences.Furthermore, through reviewing the negative impacts brought by the excessive symbolconsumption activities, this research pointed out the function of the excessive symbolconsumption activities to mislead the formation of marriage consumption and thefollowing burdens on the family economy and the social resource waste. In the end, thisresearch offers certain solutions in order to guide the marriage consumption activities.