How Does Planned Obsolescence Affect Consumer Behavior

In modern society, no matter in real life or in the online world, advertisements are ubiquitous and incessantly remind people of their social status as consumers. Among the advertisements, some of them try to convince people of donation to charity, some of them aim to win votes for political groups while most of them attempt to promote the sale of products. With the advertising influences, people are caught up in the vicious circle of constantly consuming goods, even goods they do not really need or they may already have. In most instances, people abandon their old ones when they get the new ones, which is a kind of waste and burden for society. Planned obsolescence and perceived obsolescence mainly lead to the behavior in that producers of goods intentionally lure people to consume new goods while people also subjectively perceive they need replacements. In the United States, electronic products are typically affected by planned obsolescence and perceived obsolescence, and this not only happens in the United States but China as well. Planned obsolescence means merchandisers intentionally …show more content…
In China, electronic products also are under rapid elimination. Chinese consumers are pushed to consume new merchandise in order to have a better performance to keep up with an updated system as Americans do. Also, to have better functions and styles of their phones, lots of Chinese replace their phones annually. Pitching tents while queuing day and night in front of an Apple store for a new iPhone is not the patent for Americans but for Chinese as well. These are some common characters in consumption of electronic product shared by both Chinese consumers and American. For their old phones, most of them are given to relatives or just lie on certain corners of their