What facilitate the spread of consumerism are many. From colonization and trades in the past to new technologies and new developments of the media in the modern society. The media, marketing and advertising are the apparatus of consumerism and are accounted for influencing the societies to consume. Grogan (1999) believes that women magazines have a lot of influence on women and their views of themselves and thus consumption. On the other hand, Danziger (2004) believes that the availability of consumer products from various retails and stores create more consumer choices and thus intensifies consumerism. Youths are the target of consumerism due to their high disposable income and high purchasing power as well as their interests in novelties. Also, they are more easily influenced by the media. Young people are more interested in fashion and the way they dress and women are more likely to be more fashion conscious and spend a lot of money on shopping and buying new clothes. Hence, consumerism, young women and fashion are closely interconnected and this research reveals how young women in Bangkok spend their money and react to the media in terms of fashion consciousness and fashion consumption in the modern society by applying the concepts of consumerism in the
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new globalized society and its impact on youth and consumption with the case study of fashion.
1.4 Research Methods
The methods to be used for the thesis include interviews and observations, where the interviews are semi-structured with a series of closed and open-ended questions. The interview was chosen as the primary means of collecting data for this research is because interviews can obtain information of the life experiences and opinions of the interviewee through personal interaction. This is a qualitative research aiming to explain and describe a certain phenomenon so it is better to interact with the respondents in order to obtain the maximum explanation and description of their life experiences, in this case, how they respond to fashion consumption in the new consumer society. The qualitative research interviews are theme oriented and aim at obtaining descriptions and explanations from different qualitative aspects of the interviewee’s experiences of the world. This research works with words and not numbers, hence qualitative interviews are used as they seek to understand the world and the subjects’ relation to it from their own perspectives.
1.5 Data Collection
The respondents include four shop-owners and designers in fashion areas such as Siam Centre, and fifteen female students from Assumption University randomly selected from the classes and also through the help of a university instructor in providing certain students for interviews outside the campus. Shop owners and designers are the supply side. They are the ones providing the consumer goods, in this case, fashion clothes and accessories, to the public and hence, it is useful to gain an insight on what they think about university students today in terms of their sense of fashion, lifestyle, dressing style and most important, how they spend their money on clothes. Assumption University female students are the focus groups because most of the students here are from middle class upward and most of them are from business families, which indicate that they are well to do in terms of finance. Also, the female students at the university have the reputation of being highly fashionable, international and modern. They tend to spend a lot of money on clothes and making themselves look good. In general, when people in Bangkok hear the name
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Assumption University, they think of rich kids. And the interviews have verified such claims as well as their spending behavior in this consumer society.
The interviews take place at the stores or offices in the cases of fashion designers and shop owners and at Siam Center, one of Bangkok’s famous shopping complexes in the city center, for the university students. Most of the interviews with students also take place at Assumption University, where more students can be located and this also gives an opportunity to take a good observation of the environment in general.
Although the interviews include fashion designers and boutique owners, the analysis of this research is primarily based on university students. As the sample was randomly selected from one single university, which is Assumption University where most of the students are from well-to-do families, the results may only apply to the students from this university and not to the students of other universities, who may come from less well-to-do families and receive lower monthly income than Assumption University students and therefore the limitation of this study as findings are applied to only one specific group of people. Also, the research is conducted in the urban city of Bangkok, hence the findings do not generalize the whole population of the country.
With all primary and empirical data collected through interviews and analysis of the media, secondary sources are also collected and these include books and articles from previous researchers on fashion, consumerism, youth and other social and economic aspects of Thailand.
1.6 Structure of the Thesis
The rest of the paper is divided into four parts. The first part is based on previous research on consumerism. This section explores consumerism in the West, where the origin and development of consumerism will be looked at along with how globalization facilitates and intensifies modern consumerism. Youths in relations to fashion consumption will be explored along with the consumerism apparatus, which are the media and advertisements, and how they affect youth and further facilitate consumerism. Consumerism in Thailand will also be looked at with the focus on the historical perspective of Thai economy and fashion before modern consumerism hit the country.
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The second part includes the analysis of the fieldwork data of the case study of female university students in Bangkok. Based on the interviews with shop owners, designers and female students from Assumption University, this part reveals young women in Bangkok today and how they spend their money and their views of lifestyle, consumption and the media in the new consumer society. The third section reveals the summary of the research findings of the case study.
The last part concludes the whole idea of this research. Consumerism exacerbates and intensifies female university students to become more fashion conscious and preoccupied with spending their money to catch up with the latest fashion trends as they are more exposed to the various media and advertisements, which bombard their senses everyday. This resembles a vicious circle, consumerism creates the never- ending desires to consumerists through the media and these desires encourage the ever new creations, variety and availability of the consumer products, in this case fashion apparels.
Chapter 2: Research on Consumerism
In our modern society today, we have enjoyed many things that were once not available to us in the past, let’s say, a century ago. These may be in terms of the Internet access, computers and other electronic devices that make our lives easier and more pleasant, fashionable clothing and accessories, and a vast selection of other consumer commodities that seems to expand everyday, where technology and developments have greatly contributed to make this possible.
As the world develops and modernizes, we gain more access to these commodities or we can say that these commodities were made more available to us. We begin to consume more and thus created a consumer society, where we just keep spending on unnecessary things perhaps for the sake of pleasure, conforming with the society, signifying modernity, displaying wealth through acquiring materials or consuming for other purposes. We have become more involved in consumerism than were once in the past, perhaps through globalization that intensifies and accelerates the phenomenon.
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Among the consumer commodities, clothes are also considered the most evident form of consumerism. Clothes are external material and they signify the person, their taste, lifestyle and most important, who they are. It may take years of savings to buy a house or a holiday abroad but clothes can be bought cheaply and practically anywhere. Clothes today come in a huge variety of designs and styles according to the latest trends and fashion and being fashionable is equivalent to being modern and up-to-date. Thus, people, especially women, go about shopping new clothes to express themselves and be fashionable. Fashion is believed to be a Western phenomenon that is now a global one and this is also no exception in Thailand. Bangkok, its capital, is filled with numerous shopping centers, not to mention countless of open markets and stalls that scattered throughout the city. The young female urbanites adorn themselves with clothes and accessories of the latest fashion. Have these young urbanites become consumerist fashion victims? Such shopping spree among the young women in Bangkok as the result of consumerism is thus the focus of this study.
In understanding consumerism, it is wise to look at its origin. In this chapter, consumerism in the West will be explored along with its elements and factors that help to spread the phenomenon worldwide. This section will also look at the concepts of youth and fashion consumption in relations to consumerism in the new globalized and informative consumer society. Lastly, consumerism in Thailand will be explored from a historical perspective, where the Thai economy, young urbanites and their fashion consumption will be briefly discussed.
2.1 Consumerism in the West
Consumerism is believed to be brought by the process of globalization or rather intensified by globalization. Many scholars and academic writings argue that consumerism and globalization have originated in the West and