Written by丨Zhang Mingyang
It is said that young people are not interested in shopping anymore.
In the previous paragraph, there was a topic of "young people only go to the B1 and B2 floors when they go to the mall" on social **, and more and more young people advocate "only shopping and not buying", so that the upstairs of the mall is sparsely populated, and B1B2 is full of people.
Figure Worm Creative.
Young people also learned to save money. They invented the "special forces-style deposit", and in order to obtain a higher deposit rate, they did not hesitate to transfer deposits from one city to another, some people trekked thousands of kilometers in one day, and some people stayed up all night to grab large certificates of depositThey are obsessed with "saving gold beans", and they will buy a gold bean when their salary is received, which is said to control their impulsive consumption.
Created on October 23, 2020, Douban "Don't buy |Consumerism retrograde", has gathered more than 300,000 followers, slogan is very enthusiastic - "Let's do: do not blindly follow the trend, do not be coerced by consumerism, and be a retrograde in the consumerist market!".”
It seems,Chinese young people are moving away from consumerism and uncontrolled consumption of "buy, buy, buy", and are more faithful to their inner feelings, and are no longer so easily confused by external marketing and PUA.
Young people are gradually discovering that in the world of consumption addiction, happiness does not come as promised. Consumerism, which is composed of impulsiveness, irrationality, anxiety, and comparison, is not worth nostalgia.
But are young people really not consuming and not shopping?
Not reallyThey simply refuse to consume in the kidnapping of consumerism.
The economic data is not as bleak as we thought. In the first three quarters of this year, China's total retail sales of consumer goods 342107 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 68%, of which catering revenue was 3,710.5 billion yuan, an increase of 187%。
Young people are shaping the consumption concept of their generation: they reject the routines of merchants, refuse the IQ tax, refuse to be cut leeks, and they are more advocating affordability and experience.
Young people are moving away from consumerism, but there are also fundamental differences from the older generation's view of consumption. They are eager to decorate their lives with shopping and meet the real needs of their hearts, and they are not blindly "low consumption", there is a popular saying that is very good: if you are not afraid to buy expensive, you are afraid to buy expensive.
It is said that there is a kind of post on many social apps, called "Explosive Rental House Literature". And the word mentioned the most in it is Pinduoduo.
The house is rented, but every wandering soul needs a sense of home, even if it is only a momentary brilliance.
Zhou Zhou, a post-00s girl from a single-parent family in Deyang, Sichuan, although her monthly salary is only more than 5,000 yuan, she still took out half of the money after thinking about it and rented a rental house that "is stuffed into a wardrobe, a bed and a desk, and there is little space left to move".
This small house is not only a shelter for Zhou Zhou's North Drift, but also a place of spiritual healing, no matter how many social beatings she suffers outside, she can at least hide back in the hut and lick her wounds.
The "home" built by Zhou Zhou (picture network).
Zhou Zhou's income made it impossible for her to add large items happily, so she started from the details on Pinduoduo. The 10 yuan cloth curtain was hung on the door, and the cold, closed door seemed to have a little more temperature in the homeA few yuan stickers and posters can not only cover the stains and mildew spots on the wall, but also have a girlish feeling, so life is fresh and bright;There are also dozens of yuan of star lights, which are lit up by stars, illuminating her future and warming the girl's heart with a little light.
From internship to work, every time I change cities, I need to rent a house, and after slowly forming a habit, every time I change my residence, I will buy a "new home" online every week.
This is not consumerism, this is the warmest consumption in the world.
Compared with Zhou Zhou, who is looking for a little luck in the struggling, 30-year-old Xia Xia is a standard middle class. After returning from studying in Australia, Xia Xia runs a ** store and also does other side jobs. In the past 5 years, although she has millions of deposits, she still has anxiety about making money.
Because his family had an illness, "using money to resist risks" became Xia Xia's obsession. But in Shanghai, saving money is not easy, Xia Xia can only be driven by the anxiety of making money desperately roll herself, "life seems to be the only thing left to make money", until one day, Xia Xia bought a few yuan hair ring on Pinduoduo, the quality is much better than expected, as if she found a treasure, she began to change from "love to save money" to "will spend money".
Figure Worm Creative.
In terms of Xia Xia's asset situation, the money saved by Pinduoduo for her is nothing, but the wonderful thing about life is that Xia Xia no longer feels too anxious about making money after that, she has learned to enjoy life, and her spare time will be used to learn and improve herself"Money is a tool for life, but not an end".
Consumption is subordinate to life, not life to consumption. It's true that good consumption can change a person and make them happy and confident.
In the past two years, there has been a popular word: consumption downgrade.
This is certainly true for some young people who are temporarily struggling. But for most young people, it's more like self-deprecation and ridicule.
In the various self-proclaimed consumption downgrading groups on Douban, if you look closely, you will see more joy, the sharing of shopping experience and cost-effective goods, and the tireless pursuit of a better life.
For less money, you can buy goods of the same quality and the same consumer experience as before;Or spend the same amount of money to buy goods with better quality and better consumer experience than before.
Is this a consumption downgrade?This is obviously a consumption upgrade.
You spend more money, but you get a worse consumption experience, which is called ** upgrade, also called consumption downgrade.
What's the point of consumption if it can't really improve the quality of life and make life more shining, but instead falls into the wave of consumerism.
Figure Worm Creative.
For consumption upgrading, young people have their own understanding: consumption upgrading is not synonymous with drunken gold fans, and consumption upgrading is not a business requiring consumers to pay for their own upgrades, but consumers pay for better demand satisfaction.
To put it bluntly, the consumption upgrade does not reject the first, but rejects the simple first-class upgrade, and pursues the upgrade of the quality-price ratio. Because, this generation of young people refuses to be leeks of consumerism.
There is a kind of consumption upgrade, called "the first time in life".
In this regard, Hu Tao, a teenager from the mountainous areas of Guizhou, may have the most right to speak. Hu Tao's dream started with a pair of sneakers. 120 yuan, 6 weeks' pocket money, he took it to the town commissary and exchanged it into money in electronic payment. Then placed an order on Pinduoduo, reluctantly canceled, paid, refunded, and paid again, repeated for three or four rounds, Hu Tao gritted his teeth and placed an order, in exchange for a pair of black and red Anta sneakers.
This is Hu Tao's first pair of basketball shoes in his life, and on the basketball court in the mountains, he can't stop turning, jumping, and shooting. I seemed to see the ballet boy named Billy Elliot in "Jumping Out of My World", and Hu Tao wanted to jump out of the mountain in these sneakers.
Jump out of my world (picture Douban).
On Pinduoduo, Hu Tao helped her grandmother complete her first online shopping in more than 60 years of her life and bought a black shirt. The brand of this black shirt is not famous, and it may seem to many people in the city to be a "consumption downgrade", but her grandmother regarded it as a treasure and accompanied her for several summers.
The first pair of sneakers in my life, the first online shopping, upgraded Xinjiang to the "free shipping area" ......The greatest consumption upgrade in the world is to start from scratch, that is, to shine light into the cracks of life.
There is also a kind of consumption upgrade, called far away.
Su Hailun once worked as a reporter for a newspaper in Guangzhou for 5 years, and in 2022, he saved enough 300,000 yuan in savings and quit to open a studio.
Like most young people, Helen loves to travel and try new ways of life. When he has no time to travel, he is used to placing orders for specialties from all over the world on Pinduoduo and trying new things.
Guizhou pickled fish is too salty and spicy for Cantonese people, Yunnan's raw cut potato chips are crispier than all the potato chips I've ever eaten, and the three-steamed steamed steamed pork rice flour in Hubei is glutinous and glutinous, and the meat is satisfying. There are also snow lotus pepper shreds from Xinjiang, lake salt from Chaka, and sand crab juice from the Beihai Sea of Guangxi ......”
Su Hailun received the order for the novelty goods (picture network).
Just like Shen Congwen said: Through a long period of time, through a distant space, people who live in another time and place can flow into each other's lives without barriers.
Consumption upgrading, the final definition is in their own hands, such as fish drinking water, cold and warm self-knowing.
You have bought the most suitable things for yourself, lived a more desired life, and had a fuller heart, then, not only your consumption has been upgraded, but also your life has been upgraded.
In the past, we always liked to label different classes and different generations.
For example, the rich always like to spend a lot of money, the middle class always loves vanity, and the ordinary people are calculating.
But in the past two years, we seem to have begun to understand: whether it is young or middle-aged or elderly, whether it is rich, middle-class or ordinary, people of all ages, generations, all classes, and all knowledge backgrounds have a common need for consumption: affordability.
Even the same person, at this moment, in this situation, she only looks at quality and not money, but in another situation, she may care more about cost performance. What's so strange about this, we as humans are so complex and elusive.
There are a lot of stereotypes about consumption that should be broken. In the past two years, Sam has been on fire among the middle class and above in the big cities, which seems to illustrate the fact that these seemingly wealthy classes prefer to tolerate the loss of diversity and selectivity in the pursuit of profit.
Figure Worm Creative.
Recently, I often hear a plausible voice: consumers are talking about affordability, they are saving money, how to restart consumption?
What a fallacy this is.
Shouldn't consumption be about long-termism?Wouldn't it be more sustainable for consumers to return to rationality in their shopping behavior?Is it commendable that the so-called "consumption boom" based on consumers being cut leeks and being charged IQ taxes is commendable?
The public can buy better quality goods and enjoy a better experience with the same money, and they can not use the money they save to buy more goodsWhen consumers no longer have to worry about cutting leeks and IQ taxes, and are no longer afraid of consumption, won't consumption be restarted?
Is there anything wrong with letting consumption return to what it should be, and letting consumers consume for the life they really want?
How to restart consumption, not only from the perspective of merchants, not only from the perspective of macroeconomics, but from the perspective of consumers like Pinduoduo, fully tap their consumption needs, and fully understand their inner experience, so that there will be consumption, growth, all things competing, and a lifetime.
Second, two lives. Three, three begets and all things.
What young people want, what consumers want, 900 million people have already made a choice.