Image source @ Visual China
Text | Empty-seeking
This year I finally replaced the iPhone 7P, which I had used for nearly 5 years, with the iPhone 13 (if the phone microphone hadn't broken, maybe Another year would have been able to fight). I don't have anything new about the iPhone 13, after importing the data of the old phone, I use it as a daily tool, in my opinion, the iPhone 13 and the iPhone 7 are not fundamentally different.
I define myself as a typical low-desire consumer portrait, not interested in brand new, trendy goods, and do not want to use goods as a symbol of their attitude, a mobile phone can be used for 4, 5 years.
There is a friend in my circle of friends, who often shows himself to buy a certain Nike shoe, the price is thousands or even tens of thousands is a common thing, there is a photo showing his shoe cabinet, where there are a variety of shoes, I as a layman said "I don't understand, but I was shocked." ”
The above are two consumption concepts, the former I call low-desire consumption, the latter called love-price ratio consumption, as the world's largest consumer market, now these two consumption methods are widely present in China, they are like two parallel worlds, in their own world do not disturb each other, forming a dual consumption structure.
01 Consumption Classification: Inspiration for Japanese Consumer Society
The essential reason for the existence of the duality of low desire and the ratio of love-price to consumption is that the development of society at a turning point is uneven, which is a great inspiration for the current situation of Japan's consumer society.
According to miura's "Fourth Consumption Era", the third consumption era is from 1975 to 2004, and the consumption characteristics of this era are as follows:
1. The propensity to consume from the family to the individual. During this period, the Japanese owned cars from one to one person, and the "personal food" produced to adapt to eating alone began to be sold in large quantities, and small cars, small computers, and portable radios began to sell well.
2. From quantity to quality, consumers began to pursue famous brands. At that time, many college students were wearing brand-name clothing, and the sales of high-end imported cars were rising year by year.
3. From rationality and convenience to sensibility and personalization. Consumption is to reflect their own personality. "In the past, we used to see what our neighbors bought, and everyone bought what they bought, but now it's just the opposite." Everyone buys, but they don't buy it, and they hate what is popular. ”
The corresponding consumption mode in this period is the price-to-situation ratio of consumption.
The fourth consumption era is 2005-2034, and the consumption characteristics of this era are as follows:
1. From privatism to shared consciousness. Japan itself has a trend of "breaking away", that is, abandoning unnecessary things and letting go of the possession of things. Sharing can save money.
2. From the pursuit of famous brands to the pursuit of simplicity and leisure. Japanese people began to stop "conspicuous consumption", and the hot sales of basic clothes without LOGO became a manifestation of this.
3. Local consumer culture prevails. In this era, Japan began to change from the worship of European and American lifestyles to the exploration of Japan's indigenous consciousness, and the attention of local, local, and common People's Japanese culture was constantly expanding.
4. Consumption input learning. "When consumers realize that whether it's a premium brand or something else, they can't be unique enough, they think they can only change themselves." Among them, the tendency to learn is an important embodiment.
The corresponding consumption mode in this period is low-desire consumption.
Although the consumption characteristics of the two consumption eras are more obviously distinguished, until today you cannot say that Japan has completely got rid of the third consumption era and entered the fourth consumption era.
More often, Japan is also the status quo of the coexistence of the three and four consumption eras, but the characteristics of the fourth consumption era are more obvious than those in China.
When I first went to Japan five years ago, there were two scenes that impressed me, one of which was that the Japanese walking on the street seemed to be very keen on black and white dress, which was their low-desire consumption that made them less focused on the personalization of clothing and liked to pursue simple dressing.
The second is in front of a store with a Line Bear standing in front of the door, there is a very long queue, and a large number of young people are waiting to go in to shop, and this group of young people obviously pays more attention to the price-to-price ratio of consumption.
This is the embodiment of consumption classification.
02 China's price-to-price ratio to consumption status quo
In some aspects, Japan's past is China's future, compared with the third consumption era of the industrialization period, China's industrialization has not yet fully reached the level of Japan, so the characteristics of the pursuit of the price-to-price ratio of the third consumption era will be more obvious at present.
The core of the price-to-situation ratio is that everyone wants to be unique to themselves, and how to determine their unique identity is a problem that the current consumer population is very concerned about.
Today, the answer to this question is obvious: the affirmation of one's own identity through consumption.
According to Sigismund Baumann, "In the industrial stage of modernity, there is no doubt about the fact that everyone must first be a producer before he can have other identities. In the second stage of modernity, the age of the consumer, this indisputable fact becomes that man must first become a consumer before he can have other special identities. ”
This sentence means that the main purpose of our work is to earn money, and then use the money to consume, to establish ourselves and other people's differences.
In the early years, Ford on the assembly line made everyone able to drive the kind of car with four wheels that looked exactly the same, at that time the people who drove the car were equal, and now everyone can spend money to buy their favorite car brand to establish their own uniqueness.
For consumers who value the price-to-price ratio, the uniqueness of consumption includes the following elements.
brand:
The price-to-price ratio is to the brand, and the brand represents a symbol, a symbol that completely distinguishes you from others. As Baudrillard said: "The difference in consumption is not in the difference in the use value of the product, but in the difference in the symbol of the product... People never consume the product itself (use value), but always think of the product (in a broad sense) as a symbol that can highlight you, or to get you into the ideal group, or as a higher status group, to get rid of the lower status group. ”
Experience, Service, and Value:
For the emotional price than consumers, the use of goods can not meet their needs, the additional experience and service of goods is more important, good experience and service can make the goods exceed the expectations of consumers, so as to meet the needs of consumers outside the use value.
Yang Bing, who has obtained things, said: "Users pay a premium for this, and those products that affect their actions are more those products that I think can represent themselves whether from aesthetics, from design, from concept, from story, from value orientation, this is the trend we think we see." “
sentiment:
Emotion is an intangible value of goods, it can stimulate consumers dopamine, it prompts people to consume, get excitement, happiness, novelty, tide, cool and other emotions.
When a consumer buys a blind box, in the moment of opening the blind box, the consumer's excitement and happiness reach the highest peak, and the secretion of dopamine also reaches the highest. But when the blind box is opened and the consumer puts the contents of the blind box in his hand, his excitement quickly disappears.
However, this momentary happiness is the whole process of the consumer from expectation to purchase to opening, a process that may last for days or weeks, although the results of the blind box make the happiness quickly disappear, but also drive his next time.
Consumers who pursue the ratio of price to price often want this emotion, and he drives consumers to "stop" consumption.
Social Context:
One of the values of the sentiment-priced consumer population is to enter a unique circle, and the second half of Baudrillard's sentence above still applies, "to allow you to join the ideal group, or as a higher status group, to get rid of the lower status group." In other words, if you want to enter a certain circle, you have to keep up with the consumption of this circle.
A friend who was in the store told me an example, in the early years of the shoe circle, in fact, a group of younger high school students. High school students can only wear school uniforms during school, so they can not highlight their uniqueness, in terms of dress, they can only reflect this with shoes, the more personalized the shoes, the more they can reflect their uniqueness.
In this way, the student group is actually divided into at least two, those who wear fashion shoes and those who wear ordinary shoes.
Consumer loans are very popular on campus today, not because students love to spend money, but because they want to buy products that can make them enter a certain circle first, and they don't want to be excluded from those students who represent the frontier and trend.
The price-to-situation ratio of consumption allows consumers to enter a unique circle and realize social networking that ordinary people do not have.
Price-to-price consumption is the way to spend a lot of Chinese consumption above the middle class today, and these consumer groups will feel that they have gained the social and respectful value of Maslow's needs.
03 Low desire consumption is the next stage of the price-to-emotion ratio
The reason why I think that low-desire consumption is the next stage of the price-to-situation ratio of consumption is because at this time, consumers no longer need to reflect their uniqueness with materialized goods.
Typical characteristics of consumption in this period are that consumers' demand for materials is reduced, and their demand for spirit increases.
Note that the mere reduction in material demand is not typical of low-desire consumption, otherwise the evolution of consumer society in the case of the Three Harmonies God is obviously unjustifiable.
The core of low-desire consumption lies in the increase in the proportion of spiritual consumption, whether it is reading, studying or freehand rock climbing, outdoor camping, these consumption is no longer based on the uniqueness of daily appearance as a factor, they are more concerned about what they like in their hearts, whether they can achieve the highest level of Maslow's theory of needs - self-realization value.
This is different from the traditional sense that people with low desire are not motivated, and people with low desire are more just "not seeking progress" for materials, but "high desire" for spirit, so this way of consumption can also be called "love-price ratio".
Mark Zuckerberg had sunbathing his wardrobe, there were no colorful clothes, all the same gray T-shirts and hoodies, and it was obvious that in his identity there was no longer any need to show his uniqueness from the dress.
A middle-aged man, may usually look rustic, but he is by no means soft on collecting the authentic works of artists, and in the eyes of powerful middle-aged people, the objects may be rare records, works of art, and autographs of well-known writers.
Sigismund Baumann said: "The rich are universally loved because they choose the magical abilities of their own lives (where to live, partners to live together) and to change them as they please and effortlessly. They seem to be always at ease, repeating the cycle, with no end in sight, and the future is always more exciting and alluring than the past. ”
The real arrival of a low-desire consumer society is premised on the great improvement of social productivity and extreme material abundance, at that time, most people do not have much interest in materials, and their greater interest lies in the pursuit of their own inner value, but also in exploring an exciting future. And this pursuit and exploration is arbitrary, and there is no need to worry and worry about material life.
Today's people who practice low-desire consumption are only ideologically close to the future consumption trend in advance.
epilogue:
After decades of rapid economic development, the mainland is now in an era of coexistence between love-price ratio consumption and low-desire consumption, that is, the dualization of consumption.
The dualistic side reduces material consumption, takes enough as a consumption attitude, and uses more energy to pursue what they really like, while the other side pursues the consumption of personalized substances to bring pleasure to themselves.
This dualization will exist for a long time in the short term.
Resources:
- Sigismund Baumann, Work, Consumerism, and the New Poor
- Baudrillard,Consumer Society