User:Fang Xuan Skylar

Consumerism in Vietnam

1. Introduction

Consumerism is a cultural value that promotes endless acquisitions of commodities and the consumption is regarded as an access to achieving personal satisfaction no matter materially or spiritually and as an economic stimulation for the whole society. Generally, consumerism is often considered as the production of capitalism, which is believed to prevail mostly in developed countries with high spending power.

The definition of consumerism given by Thomas Byrne Edsall is a social and economic order that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts.

Currently, consumerism presents its intrinsic vividness in Vietnam, a developing county in Southeast Asia, so that a new term consumerism in Vietnam comes into public’s eyes. A revolution of consumerism is secretly happening in Vietnam. Vietnamese consumerism is different from the general conception “mass consumption” defined by the standard that is given by western capitalistic commodity economy, since it has its own particularity that happened to the specific class instead of the whole public and manifests as three different categories, sensibility consumption, conspicuous consumption and wasteful consumption, closely relating to some corresponding social phenomena such as uprising of urban middle class, globalization, social stratification, gender distinction in terms of consumerism in Vietnam. With the rapid economic development in Vietnam, a revolution of consumption is coming to Vietnamese, secretly changing their consumptive view and behaviors.