Brand name clothing, shoes, watches and jewelry, cigarettes, cosmetics, and automobiles now flood the island, and there is no evidence of a slackening demand by residents for more quantity and variety. After decades of saving large percentages of their income, Taiwan residents have in the past three years become aggressive consumers.
One of the largest target groups for businessmen and advertisers is Taiwan's youth, literally a billion dollar market. Imported goods are grabbing a handsome share of this market through sophisticated—and expensive—advertising. A recent issue of the popular China Times Weekly magazine, which has a circulation of approximately 180,000, illustrates this fact: of 40 full-page color ads on especially heavy paper, 33 were for foreign brand-name products.
The phenomenal change in buying patterns, and the very willingness to spend in the first place, have created a new commercial and social environment, one that challenges traditional values.
Today's youth consider themselves lucky indeed to grow up during the 1980s in Taiwan. Hallowed traditions, common to agricultural societies, placed high value on amassing personal savings. The island's industrialization over the past three decades did little to change that orientation. But consumerism has finally arrived, and the island's teenagers and college age youth have embraced the trend no less heartily than their peers in other NICs (newly-industrialized countries).
Personal consumption patterns have been significantly influenced by macroeconomic developments. Taiwan's US$76 billion-foreign reserves brought internal and external pressures to either spend or invest excess funds. Until recently, both activities were restricted; the marketplace had a limited selection of products, and there were insufficient incentives to invest funds locally.
Government policy-makers have begun addressing these issues, and already changes in the economic environment are visible. The government now encourages local industrialists to invest overseas, especially with trade surplus partners, and has passed laws and modified regulations in an attempt to make such investment easier to accomplish. In addition, the domestic marketplace has been gradually opened to foreign products over the past four or five years. This has brought healthy competition and wider choices for consumers who are now awash with cash, thanks in part to a steadily rising GNP and the appreciation of Taiwan's currency.
Living standards started to rise markedly in the 1970s, and residents began the painful process of adjustment from agricultural to industrial social patterns. Rural household wealth, better nutrition, and expanded health care encouraged larger families. Many of these family members have since moved to the city in search of jobs or educational opportunity.
This generation of youth, now 15 to 19 years old, was born in the newly affluent 1970s; they today make up close to 32 percent of the island's total population. But the impact of these youth on society extends well beyond their numbers, for they have grown up in an environment radically different from their parents.
True, parents were once young themselves, and attended school, enjoyed parties, participated in sports, and faced peer group competition. But even those who are only 30 years old find that the generation gap between themselves and teenagers is in fact a yawning chasm. What is a 30-year-old to make of Madonna mania in smoky discos pierced by laser beams; or breakdancers drawing crowds away from Kentucky Fried Chicken patrons in the Ding Hao Market; or spike-haired motorcyclists racing through traffic on new Suzukis? It is a new world, and there is no Chinese tradition to draw upon to help make sense of it all.
Today's youth have a new priority vocabulary as well, one laced with foreign brand names. They talk of the advantages of (and preferences for) cosmetics by Shiseido, YSL, and Christian Dior; clothing by Hang Ten, Scoop, Esprit, Benetton, and G2000; Polo sport wear, and shoes by Adidas, Converse, and Reebok. Here, buy a walkman. There, buy a Pioneer stereo system. Shop, shop, shop. Buy, buy, buy. No wonder elders are astonished and dismayed.
But in fact adults have also joined the rush to consume. Youth are just one segment of a buying populace eager to test the quality of foreign merchandise, as well as brag about how much they paid for it.
The cultural configuration and content of youth culture, and the value conflicts that arise from them, not only interest sociologists. Marketing researchers and businessmen are paying close attention to youth subcultures in an effort to stimulate and take advantage of their interests and consumption patterns. They focus on such topics as the amount of pocket money or disposable income kids have, their priority buying patterns, and the impact of peers and advertising.
According to July 1988 research findings published in Management Magazine and Breakthrough Magazine, the consumption power of local youth between 13 and 19 years of age accounts for over U$$7.5 billion in annual sales. The marketing survey reported that the most popular priorities for pocket money spending include music cassettes, fast-foods, clothing, stationery and cards, and admission to movies and MTV centers. Other surveys have reinforced these findings, showing that youth are more likely than adults to purchase swimsuits and other sportswear, high cost commodities such as a motorbike, PC, or a walkman, and even chewing gum.
New entertainment patterns have created some social difficulties. Even though the Youth Welfare Act expressly forbids youth under the age of 18 to enter establishments offering entertainment such as video gambling games, Pachinko parlors, and Karaoke restaurants, the law is widely violated, often with parental consent.
Pachinko is a relatively new phenomenon from Japan. An electric, coin-operated gambling machine, it resembles an upright pinball machine. Karaoke (a phonetic translation from Japanese) restaurants or pubs feature stage shows by patrons who sing along with a juke boxlike machine, often with video attached, that allows them to choose favorite songs and sing along with the music. Oftentimes the machine has a grading system that rates each singer's performance. Usually the singing is robust and amplified both by speaker systems and ample alcoholic intake.
Parents have been particularly distressed about the invasion of video game and Pachinko parlors into residential and campus areas. Those found in the vicinity of high schools, colleges, and universities have proved to be nursery beds for delinquent behavior and gathering places for unsavory characters.
Earlier this year, even students took part in protesting against this invasion. Students at Chung-yuan Christian University demonstrated successfully, and kicked parlors of this sort out of the campus area. The peaceful demonstration was motivated by incidents earlier in the year, when several students were awakened and robbed in their dormitory rooms and a graduate student was beaten to death on the campus. But such countermoves remain isolated. A police spokesman says the law concerning youth entry into these parlors will remain ineffective until parents give more support to it.
"Children who love music won't become bad children," says Wang Ching-chieh, the northern district manager of the Kung Nan Company, a bookstore and stationery shop with 14 branch outlets. "Youth are our target consumers," Wang says. "At first we tried to make books the key selling items, supplemented with gifts, musical records, and tapes. But the results were quite unexpected. The best sellers are pop musical tapes. The daily turnover of the newest album of a hit singer can be more than 1,000, not counting other top songs on the charts. Our customers are primarily young people, and they seldom hesitate to pick up any products that arouse their interest. They are quite generous in spending money."
Advertising stimulates consumer desires no less in Taiwan than elsewhere, and businessmen are pouring money into the medium. The advertising industry's market swelled from US$42.31 million in 1967 to US$303.85 million last year. Although advertising might be blamed for bringing about changes in traditional values, it still draws upon these long-appreciated values to sell products. For instance, a strong emphasis on family and social ties appears in many Chinese ads, with less attention given to individual achievement or uniqueness.
But to Sam Jeng and his colleagues at the three-year-old Ideology Advertising Agency, new trends in advertising are the mark of the future. As illustration, Sam refers to his company's line of successful ads for Stimorol brand chewing gum, which are pitted again the popular Wrigley's chewing gum that dominates Taiwan's market.
"The chewing gum company offers customers four different flavors, which come in green, yellow, red, and orange," Sam says. "Our commercials appeal to different target customers with reference to their age and sex. Three of the four target groups are young people; the other focuses on white collar customers." In order to encourage certain groups to buy different flavors of chewing gum, Sam says that they "consider those powerful forces that shape consumers' motivations, life-styles, and product choices."
S.Y. Sheu, the creative director at Ideology, claims that ads should be informative and stimulating. "I try to leave ample room for audiences to imagine and associate by introducing some critical ideas, controversial topics, or even touch on some social taboos," she says. One successful commercial, for example, features an undergraduate expelled for offending school authorities.
Sheu complains that government advertising regulations and practices sometimes constrain her creativity, but the only thing she can do is try to push her ads to the margin of "stated" moral standards. In many ways, the young company is on the side of the younger generation by being unique and more individualistic and critical than older generations.
Advertising orientations such as this indicate that Taiwan youth are being cultivated by the media in altogether new ways. Chinese culture, and youth subcultures, are changing as a result. In the past, formal education followed by examinations was the main route when climbing up the Chinese social ladder. Young people used to focus their energies on higher education in order to land positions in the government. They also based their sense of values on being able to serve the people and their country while achieving personal status. Today, government officials are no longer considered the most elite class or as having the more prestigious profession. In recent years, the number of applications to take the civil service exams has declined appreciably, a clear indication of changes in values.
There are now many roads to prestige and a high standard of living, and other forms of employment can offer much higher salaries. As youth develop more materialistic habits of consumption, especially when compared with older generations, their decisions about careers are likely to be based more on salary considerations than traditional ideas of status. In fact, the very concept of status also appears to be in a period of flux, much as other industrialized nations have experienced.
The trend need not be seen as negative. As young people become more interested in business or technical fields, their expertise assists the process of modernization and post-industrial development. As they prepare themselves to enter service industries and other fields relatively new to Taiwan, they will ensure a continuing development of the domestic economy.
Youth will at the same time no doubt remain eager consumers, as will their own children. "Doing business with young people will never be out-of-date," as Wang Ching-chieh says. While older generations may complain that youth are too hedonistic in their endless quest for novel ways of consuming, in fact they are only witnessing an international trend taking root in Taiwan soil. At least for today's youth, it is a new and exciting page in the lengthy history of Chinese culture.