Course:VANT149/2020/Capstone/Arts/Team31

Biographies and Photos

Group Number: Group #31

Group Members: Chunli Jin, Chris Fang，Rachel Sun

Research Topic: the consumption behavior of gender difference in the face of commodity discount

Research Questions: “Are there any gender differences in VANT 149 students related to their behaviors and attitudes around purchasing items on sale?”

Chunli Jin:

I’m Chunli Jin. I believe Consumer behaviour is a vital topic in economic sustainability. Besides, consumers nowadays are getting younger and younger, not only in Canada but also worldwide. Therefore, We'd like to choose young adults as our target group to study economic sustainability and shopping festivals. Personally speaking, I enjoy shopping online with discounts. When I realize something is on sale, I will be more likely to buy this product even though I may not need it. However, this might harm the environment and economy sustainability. Therefore, I will produce more garbage which damages economic sustainability.

identification photo from Chunli Jin

Chris Fang:

I am Chris Fang. Personally speaking,  shopping has no great appeal to me either in terms of discounts or ordinary prices. In this case, I would define myself as a "low shopper" (people who purchase less than others), because I only buy what I need especially , but it would be better if these items could be sold at a discount in the shopping festival. I am happy to contribute to the economic sustainability of society. I will continue to improve my shopping habits and try to get better.

identification photo from Chris

Rachel Sun:

I’m Rachel Sun. For my, the shopping festivals are really attractive because there are lots of discounts and I can buy what I want at a much lower price than usual. However, I later realized that many of those things I bought during the discounts are actually useless for me. Thus, a shopping festival that seems to save me money actually makes me spend more than I need to, which are also harmful to sustainable consumption. As a result, I want to explore how many people have the same situation as me, especially people who have similar identities to me.

identification photo from Rachel

Abstract:

Our research discusses “Are there any gender differences in VANT 149 students related to their behaviors and attitudes around purchasing items on sale?” Previously, Yang, Li and Zhang found that discounts drive impulse purchases. Nearly a third were unable to change their spending behavior while worrying about the environment (Young & Hwang & McDonald & Oates, 2009). We decide to interview 6 participants. The selected participants in VANT 149 need to provide information about their opinions on discounting and sustainability. We will use “zoom” to record what we said during the interview. After that, we will transcript the audio into transcripts and analyze them. We will use thematic analysis to code their attitude and environmental issues, such as “overuse plastic”, “over packaging”, “fast fashion” etc. and find patterns that are related to discounts and genders. By analyzing our data, we found that there are indeed gender diversities when people facing discounts. Our data shows that the times of females’ impulse consumption are much more recent than males. More specifically, all 3 females’ impulse purchases happened within one year and two of them are within one month, while two of the males’ impulse purchases happened within one year and the other happened even three years ago! When we came to the questions about the environmental effects caused by over-shopping, they all realized the negative dimension and their responsibilities for that. To sum up, we come to the conclusion that there are indeed gender differences about their attitudes toward discounts.