Studies On Chinese Urban Adolescents' Conformity, Non-Conformiy & Counter-Conformity Behavior

Adolescents market is a 3 in 1 market-a current market spending its own money for its own needs and wants,an influence market determining a substantial amount of parents spending,and a future market that eventually will constitute all the customers for a firm's offering.More and more enterprises can't ignore its existence and come to realize that fostering loyal customers should begin when they are young.Therefore researching adolescents' behavior becomes a burgeoning and advanced topic.Adolescents are in especial consumer socialization phase and their need to be assimilated and need to be different is very strong,therefore,conformity,non-conformity and counter-conformity are adolescents' typical behaviors which are different from other ages.However,the past studies in the field of social psychology and consumer behavior not only over emphasized conformity and ignored the non-conformity and counter-conformity behavior,but also laking of researching how consumers trade off between the conflicting needs.Thus the author asks three questions as follows:(1)which factors influence adolescents' non-conformity and counter-conformity when they are in face of peer groups' conformity pressure? How do functional attributes and hedonic attributes affect adolescents' conformity,non-conformity and counter-conformity behavior?(2)How do adolescents trade off between the need to be assimilated and the need to be different? What are the law,mechanism and individual differences of tradeoff?(3)Is the adults' behavior the same as adolescents'? How do adult trade off these two conflicting needs?This paper aims to give answers to the above questions.Firstly,the author absorbs the fruits of social psychology and introduces a new moderating variableself-congruity into the study.By analyzing the moderating effect of the interaction of 'peers' feedback' and 'self-congruity' in the process of adolescents' attitude changing,this study not only interpret adolescents' non-conformity and counter-conformity behavior,but also provide a new perspective of understanding conformity behavior.By eliminating the exogenous variables-self-monitoring and need of uniquess which may contaminate the conclusion,this paper confirmed the robustness of the interacting effect.In addition,this paper compares the similarities and differences of the behavior when adolescents choosing functional products and hedonic products.The results show that adolescents are more likely to non-coformity or counter-conformity when the self-congruity is high compared with when the self-congruity is low,and when they choose hedonic products compared with when they choos functional products.When choosing functional products,adults are less likely to conformity than adolescents.The adults' conformity behavior is more rational because they conform to others only when peer groups' opinions are consistent with their own.When peer groups' opinions are not agree with their own,the adults will pursue non-conformity even counter-conformity behavior.Secondly,this paper incorporate Uniqueness Theory,Cognitive Dissonance Theory,Self-affirmation Theory and Self-consistency Theory to exhume the law,mechanism and individual differences of trading off between the need to be assimilated and the need to be different when consumers confronting the situations that are too similar or different to others.The results show that high/low self-esteem adolescents will feel cognitive dissonance when they are very slight/high similar to others.But the way of dissonance reduction of high/low self-esteem adolescents is different,and the pursuant theory is also different. Except the need to be different are dominant in the situations when high self-esteem adolescents perceived very dissimilar to others,while the need to be assimilated is dominant when the high self-esteem adolescents in very simlar situation and the low self-esteemor in very similar/dissimilar situations.As to adults,they will fell dissonance in very similar/dissimilar situations;the way of dissonance reduction is also different for high and low self-esteemors.The need to be different is dominant for adults with high self-esteem wherever in very similar/dissimilar situations.For low self-esteem adults,the need to be assimilate is activated when they are very slight similar to others,while the need to be different is activated when they are very high similar to others.Self-affirmation theory can explain most of Chinese consumers' tradeoff law,the exceptions,that is, low self-esteem adolescents and high self-esteem adults in very similar situation can be explained by Self-standard Model.The the genrality of the tradeoff law is also proved.The academic contributions of this study denoted as follows:(1)Enriching and consummating the famous conformity influence model by incorporating the joint effect of product factors and individual factors,as well as the products' functional and hedonic attributes.(2)Reinforcing Snyder's Uniqueness Theory by introducing Cognitive Dissonance Theory in order to interpret the emotional and behavioral reaction in very similar/dissimilar situations.(3)By proving Chinese consumers also have the need to be different and the need to be assimilated;this study enlarges the Optimal Distinctiveness Theory's applying scope.(4)There existed drastic debate about the Self-affirmation Theory and Self-consistency Theory in the field of Social Psychology for their assumptions are contrary to each other.The author tries to eliminate and mitigate the debate by using Self-standard Model.In addition,this study provides overseas and domestic enterprises some valuable guides to catch adolescents' dominant needs,to apperceive their vital consumption behavior and exploit adolescents market successfully.