Ankit Verma
Aditya Srivastava
Rohit Sharma
Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology, Allahabad
Abstract
How the consumers consume and for what purposes, drives the producers as to how they extract resources and create products. The consumers are classified on the basis of consumption patterns which are ascertained by observing their actual behaviour in a market in various purchase situations. These patterns are explained by multiple factors like tastes and preferences of people, price of product etc. But the most crucial factor is the income of consumers.
During the last two decades, the norms and institutions all over the world have changed in ways that has either encouraged or permitted higher inequality in incomes. Under the conventional view, rising inequality is a side effect of economic progress as the growth rate is different in different countries. The other reasons for differences in incomes are level of education, priorities of people i.e. they prefer job profile with more money or status, politics and policies of a country, say, different labor laws in different countries etc.
Apart from differences in incomes, another important factor influencing consumption patterns is tastes and preferences of consumer. Though the taste is becoming international, consumer’s choices and preferences still vary from place to place and hence the consumption patterns. An example would be McDonalds being a global brand does not serve beef and pork products in India. Introduction
Geert Hofstede said, “There is no such thing as universal rationality… what is rational or irrational to a person depends on that person 's value systems, which in turn is part of the culture that person has acquired in her or his lifetime. What people around the world value vary enormously?”
The consumers can be classified on the basis of their consumption patterns. Today’s consumption is undermining the environmental
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