skee's daily happenings: this is the season...

4/06/2005 12:07:00 PM

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

this is the season...

friends who are down in love rit now, dun despair. skee will always love you guys ok? be strong! skee hotline is open 24 hours 7 days a week.

hai.. yeah quite sad saw/heard lotsa cases this period very sad. hai... take care ppl. take a little more patience and tolerance... sunshine over the rain is coming.. *hugs

qing ming these days so keep raining. haha.. weird huh? haha.. settled on doing chinese funerals for my CB presentation. haha.. oopss. wanted to do weddings but well lecturer rejected me cos she's going to cover it. no choice. haha.. but well i'm taking it as a chance to know family business and chinese culture better too. haha... ooppss. hai.. got to interview papa already. yeah.. haha.. think would be interesting. thanx HH for the idea.

2 presentations next week. haha.. hope i dun screw up. haha at least it's both individual so i wun drag anybody down. haha.. services marketing quiz and case next week aarrgghh.. finally this week we covered complaints and service recovery. feels more like services at last man. interesting i like it and u can see that the whole class is a whole lot more interested loh. and tat stupid ABNN had to say "i dun wan to insult ur intelligence. u can go read urself." he seriously can't teach qualitative stuff loh. i think i got into his bad books anyway. he kept interupting the group presenting the case study this week and ask us to comment on their recommendations slide. then everybody kept quiet then i had to open my big trap to tell him that it's rather rude and disruptive and ask him to let the group proceed and finish up the slides then we can discuss all together. haha.. am i being hot-headed again? haha.. i still rem HH beside me saying "let it go lah. nvm..." then he aimed me lah after tat. hai.. can there ever be a "better" lecturer than this ABNN man? i mean so far in my 3 years in biz, i have never heard a lecturer interupt so many times when a group is presenting. does he even know etiquette? so wat if he's a full prof. he mus be drawing an obsence amt of money from our tuition fees man. so much for value-for-money. hai... slam him at student feedback also no use already lah. hai... haha.. sorry seems like my blog is "so dedicated to him" man. aargghh shall not waste energy on him. haha FAT hope. oops. i'm mean.

going to run later with loomie and zhuzhu. endorphins (hope i spelt it correctly) aka happy hormones here i come. haha.. learnt tat term from ash and loomie on monday. i'm still aching. help! the moment i woke up i was like why am i doing this to myself? haha.. okok.. enough complaints skee! haha.. *look at how skee is tending towards the sophie syndrome. oh no.. snap out of it!

haha okok got to go start on CB article review. haha.. talking abt materialism and money. haha..i'm the Experiencer!! look below to see which type u are. haha.. and do my slides!! woohoo!! happy wednesday!!

Value-Seeker - Tight with Money and Materialistic

Given the combination of high materialism and tight with money, we
might expect the Value Seeker to be especially unhappy – anxious about
money, other directed, dissatisfied, and in conflict between material
desires and reluctance to spend. Yet this combination of qualities is
fundamentally rational – the search for high quality at low price – and
the negative characteristics cannot be the whole picture. The successful
Value Seeker is above all a skilled shopper, knowledgeable about products,
prices, and retail outlets. Value Seekers enjoy price comparison
shopping, through which they derive knowledge and hedonic benefits
(Mamorstein et al., 1992). This is a “smart shopper” who can outwit
the retailer and thus save money by paying less than the going price
(Mano and Elliott, 1997).

Many traits of the Value Seeker can support well-being: this is
a competent consumer, who enjoys shopping, enjoys saving money,
and enjoys possessions. The Value Seeker has the wisdom to take
a rational approach to buying and the maturity to be able to delay
gratification.

Big Spender - Loose with Money and Materialistic

The Big Spender enjoys spending money and displaying high status
possessions. Compared to the Value Seeker, who feels successful with
frugal purchases, the price-seeking Big Spender feels successful with
conspicuously expensive purchases. The apotheosis of this type can
be seen in the following descriptions of the CEO consumer lifestyle:
“[I]t is about the sheer amusement of throwing money away”. “[They]
don’t enjoy the purchase unless they have spent a lot of money for it”.
“You’re supposed to walk in and be impressed and think, ‘Good grief.
What a way to spend your money’, but in the end it is supposed to
make you a little cowed” (Kuczynski, 2002, p. 8). Less exalted Big
Spenders can partake of these same characteristics, if on a lesser scale:
attraction to spending, the belief that expensive things are better, and
prestige-seeking, with its overtones of competitiveness.

The Big Spender can be seen as the willing victim of consumer
culture, playing the role of the ideal consumer who spends lavishly
and often. At the same time, the Big Spender illustrates what is wrong
with consumer culture: in the elusive quest for the “good life”, the
driven consumer overworks (Schor, 1992), overspends (Schor, 1998),
and goes into debt in order to own too many possessions (Dominguez
and Robin, 1992).

Non-Spender - Tight with Money and Not Materialistic (pei fu pei fu)

Unlike the Value Seeker who is in conflict between wanting to hold
on to money and wanting to buy things, the Non-Spender is in relative
harmony, being unmoved by the temptations of materialism. In terms
of money attitude scales (Medina et al., 1996), distrust/anxiety and
retention/time capture the mindset of the Non-Spender. There is anxiety
over parting with money and the fear over being cheated, and on the
other hand there is the enjoyment of holding money, tracking it, and
perhaps watching it grow.

There are several pathways that can lead one to becoming a Non-
Spender. Most obviously, not spending is an adaptation to being poor,
a strategy for survival in constrained circumstances. In less constrained
circumstances, such self-restraint can be a route to financial independence
and may even be the road to riches. The “millionaire next door”
(Stanley and Danko, 1996) lives modestly while amassing a fortune
through scrimping, saving and investing. A secretive quality to living
below one’s means can be seen in the occasional stories of humble
persons leave a fortune to charity when they die. An example (Frum,
1998) is of a couple who deprived themselves and those around them
of ordinary comforts (like heat in winter) and who, upon their death,
bequeathed a fortune to higher education. Those who have to live with
such master savers may come to despise them as misers, even as the
general public admires their legacy. Simmel (1924/1971) defines misers
as those who amass money as an end in itself, as an untouched but
potential source of power. This meaning may underlie the life plan of
those who live poor but die rich.

Financial independence for most people depends not so much on
getting rich than on learning to get by with less, less money and fewer
possessions (Dominguez and Robin, 1992). “Downshifters” are those
who have lowered their standard of living, sometimes voluntarily and
sometimes not (e.g., Schor, 1998). Often they came to the realization
that material values dominated their lives, displacing self-development
and close relationships. “Simple livers” have committed themselves
to an ascetic, anti-materialistic lifestyle. Such people are part of a
movement to opt out of consumer culture with its work-and-spend
“trap” (Schor, 1992) and its waste of natural resources. Non-Spenders
may be escapees from the competitive money-driven stresses of
modern life.

Experiencer - Loose with Money and Not Materialistic

Let us consider how the same consumer choice may be assessed in
the four money worlds. Given a choice between replacing old, shabby
furniture and going on vacation, theValue Seeker might shop around for
furniture sales or else refurbish the old furniture, the Big Spender might
upgrade and update the furniture in the latest style, the Non-Spender
might neither go on a vacation nor do anything about the furniture, and
the Experiencer is likely to opt for the vacation and make do with the
shabby furniture for a while longer. The Experiencer is someone who
is relaxed about spending money and lacks material motives, and so
likely to spend on the transitory intangibles that enhance life.

Spending for experience can take various forms. Activities is one
category. Examples include recreation, travel, self-improvement workshops,
entertainment. Another category is service, the willingness to
pay to have someone tend to one’s needs. Dining at good restaurants
and shopping at boutiques and specialty stores can provide the personal
attention and pleasant surroundings that are hard to come by in
serve-yourself supermarkets and in stark, impersonal discount stores.
Experiencers can be expected to have less resistance to giving than the
other types. Richins and Dawson (1992), in validating their materialism
scale, found that those lower in materialism were more willing to
give to charity. Materialists are reluctant to share, but to the extent that
they are prestige sensitive they will want to give obviously costly gifts,
and so will be in a state of conflict (Richins and Rudmin, 1994). The
Experiencer, on the other hand, may be simply generous and enjoy the
recipient’s satisfaction – “agapic” giving rather than social exchange
(Belk and Coon, 1993). When money is spent on material objects, the
value for the Experiencer lies more in using the possessions than in
showcasing them (Holt, 1995).

haha.. thanx for reading. sorry for the technical terms. and no the article is much longer. 31 pages!! haha. interesting though. hope u like it. =)

skee the great

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