Research on Consumption and Consumer Behavior in the Forming Process of China's Mass Consumption Society

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This paper aims to clarify the forming process of mass consumption society in China through conducting the survey on consumer's life and actions in urban areas where the economic levels are different, regarding this questions, such as, during the market-oriented economic development process, how the society and economy move, how the mass consumption society forms.This survey was conducted through questionnaire investigations of 1800 households sampled randomly in the economic development level from various cities picked at random. These cities range from big cities, regional cities to small cities, altogether 9 cities/ regions. (Tianjin Municipality, the biggest coastal city which is nearest to Beijing, Fuxin City, an old colliery city of Laoning Province, Northeast of China, Chengde City, a small one of Hebei Province and its peripheral rural small towns, Luanping County Taiyuan City and a new colliery city, Shuozhou City in Shanxi Province, Kaili City, a small one where is the ethnic … More minority residential area in Southwest Guizhou Province, Kunming City, capital city of Southwest Yunnan Province, Shenzhen City, where the market-oriented economy developed most rapidly in Guangdong Province). 200 households were randomly sampled in each city or town. While this survey was being conducted, the qualitative survey and research were also completed. The recapture rates of these two kinds of survey were 99%, and high quality of survey results in broad spectrum were obtained. The collected data were brought back to Japan, and analyzed. From the views of time comparison between the period 1990s and the period from 2004 to 2005, the comparison among cities, international comparison, and the analysis is conducted.The forming process of China's mass consumption society was different with Europe, America and Japan. The gaps between cities and income were larger than 1990s, but the "middle-income brackets" increased rapidly. It was characterized that consumers were in hot pursuit of higher satisfaction of desire. Since 2004, the gaps between cities and income layers are becoming smaller, the consumer need in regional city, small city, same as big city, is transferring importance of disbursement from essential products to luxury articles, from goods to services, and from quantity to quality. Less