The Acquisition of Consumer Skills and Materialism in Adolescents : A Cross - cultural Comparison

Two theoretical approaches--the social learning approach and tile family communication pattern approach--were used and integrated in examining the acquisition of consumer skills and materialism in both the American youths and the Chinese youths. Two cross sectional surveys were conducted in which 443 American adolescents in a midwest state of the United States and 712 Chinese adolescents from the largest metropolitan city in Taiwan were studied. The LISREL covariance analysis was used to achieve the two objectives: (1) to examine the cross-cultural measurement comparability, and (2) to compare the cross-cultural differences and similarities in the structural relationships between latent variables in the proposed models. Results from the study suggested that there were more differences than similarties in the process of consumer socialization. In addition, the two communication-related theoretical models did work jointly in accounting for the socialization outcomes. fF~Ifi]~ : Cheng Kuo( :$~ ~ ), Ph.D, University of Michingan Ann Arbor; Associate Professor, Refartment of advertising, National Chengchi University.