Study On The Impact Of Popular Culture On Customer Behavior

China's first only-child generation who was born in the 1980s has grown up now. Their Consumption capability is enormous for at least two reasons: First, most of them will soon begin their first job or already have gotten one. Thus made them able to purchase things they like. Actually, they are beginning their consumptive fastigium now. Second, benefit from the quick and steady growth of the society after the initiation of the Reform and Opening-up policy, they are more optimistic than former generations. They believe a bright future is in prospect, which endows them with strong consumption confidence.The first only-child generation is a generation born up in a total new surroundings. Being the only child of their families, they became the focus of the families in the nature of things. Their parents and grandparents pay great attention to them and want to satisfy their needs to the best of the whole family's ability. Compared to former generations, they are more independent and strong-minded. It's a generation who like to purchase according to their own desire and personality; It is a generation who born up with the development of China's pop culture and witness the quick economic growth and social change. The influence of pop culture on their process of socialization is deep and thorough. Therefore, we believe their customer behavior must have some new characteristics because of the influence. This paper aims to analyze the difference and the reasons.This study is based on three theories: the socialization theory, the generation theory and the customer behavior theory. After detail analyze of pop culture's influence on customer behavior of the first only-child generation, a model which explain the mechanism of pop culture's influence on customer behavior was built. It was found that pop culture plays its effect upon customer behavior mainly through two ways: mass media and reference group. The model was then used to explain how the influence of mass media and reference group take place among China's first-child generation and result in those representative characteristics of the their customer behavior.The main contains of this thesis can be introduced briefly as follows:Preface focuses on the meaning and the research theme of this paper.Chapter I introduces relevant concepts or theories as below: pop culture concept, socialization theory and generation theory. Finally the development of teenager'scustomer behavior research (in and out of China) was also included in this section.Chapter II analyzes the influence of pop culture on customer behavior of China's first only-child generation. First a brief review of pop culture's phylogeny in modern China; then the characteristics of first-child generation's character and customer behavior was analyzed; Finally the pop culture- customer behavior model was built.Chapter III concerns itself with the application of the model. The mechanism of pop culture's influence on customer behavior among China's first only-child generation was explained according to the model.Conclusions: The end part ends this dissertation with summary of main conclusions of this research. Also the innovation and limitation of the paper are given.