The male of the species on full show
Time was when Chinese men could survive for a few days without looking at themselves in the mirror. In the selfie generation that has all changed, Zhang Lei reports.
Tang is among millions of Chinese working men in cities giving increasing attention to their professional image, thus forming a bloc that has gained considerable spending power.
"The influence of economic development and consumer culture have made men in general more accepting than their fathers of the idea of spending money and dressing themselves," says Guo Xin, a marketing professor at Beijing Technology and Business University.
According to a consumer report published by Boston Consulting Group and Alibaba, the rise of the Chinese male consumer group stems from the accumulation of social wealth. Social progress has led to an increasingly diverse individual identity, and a richer social life has pushed consumer demand by men to record levels, making it the driving force behind the rapid rise of male consumption in China.
The professional business intelligence services provider QuestMobile says there were 590 million male mobile internet users in China in 2018 and that there were more single men than single women. The QuestMobile survey showed that spending by males in all kinds of categories rose in 2018, and men spent 10,025 yuan over the year on online shopping, more than women.
To get a very good handle on the male consumption you can do no better than observe computer programmers, whose working environment is relatively simple and who spend a lot of time in front of computers.
