The perception of materialism in a global market

Abstract

This study addressed the question of materialism as represented by young consumers in the United States and China. An electronic survey was administered to a sample in each country. Respondents included 186 students at a large mid-western public University in the United States and 314 students at a large satellite university in Dalian, China. The results indicate that while there are many significant differences that exist between the two sample populations, most scores seem to be very close to a neutral response indicating that neither group report being particularly materialistic. In total, responses for 17 of the 22 questions asked were found to be significant at the .05 level.