Big Data - The Key to Uncovering the Patterns of American Residents' Consumption

In the eyes of most Chinese, the United States is a country with a high income and high consumption. There seem to be very few poor people in the United States. What is the truth? The Financial Times published an article titled "Big Data Reveals US Consumer Spending Patterns" on May 21, stating that micro-information on payroll and benefit distribution cycles in various regions of the United States hinders the current recovery in the United States "In the economic pain of the economy, the situation of the under-shadow vulnerable groups is the most unsightly. The main content is compiled as follows:

A few weeks ago, I was inspired by my thoughts on the data flow when I was chatting with one of the top food and beverage companies in the United States.

Like most consumer groups, the company is also investing heavily in big data technology to monitor consumer behavior.

The company not only looks at what customers buy and does not buy. More recently, the company has been examining more and more microscopic information about payroll and benefits distribution cycles in various parts of the United States.

Why? The executive said by 2007, most U.S. cities had fairly stable consumption of food and beverages in a single month.

However, consumption patterns have become extremely irregular since 2007. Consumers who barely make ends meet seem to be getting more and more, and they only buy when wages, food stamps, or benefits are in their hands. Moreover, this change has taken place not only in the poorest regions but also in similar changes in the middle class. Therefore, it is necessary to study the distribution cycle of wages and benefits in all regions.

The executive explained: "We see a clear difference between people's current shopping habits and the recession. Consumers are squeezing in on a tight salary, and 50 million people live on food stamps, food stamps There are also disbursement cycles. "

"So, for our company, it's very important to have this kind of payroll (and benefits) distribution cycle."

Unfortunately, outsiders (or journalists) seem unlikely to have access to these figures throughout the economy. The big companies are tight-lipped about their big data projects (the maker of many popular snacks across the United States, without revealing the company's name). At the same time, while economists monitor macro trends in retail spending, they often do not analyze micro-consumption volatility.

However, this is not the only company to do so. For example, Wal-Mart executives recently pointed out that the "pay-for-pay cycle" has become increasingly influential; another retailer, Kroger, also noted that the percentage of customers using food stamps has more than doubled, Means that consumption patterns have more changes. And, as more and more of these messages, at least two reasons make them worthy of attention. The first and most obvious reason is that these messages should alert us to the existence of an undefinable and shadowy vulnerable population that stands in the way of the economic pain that is impeding the current "recovery" in the United States. Most noteworthy is the high joblessness and shrinking real incomes and household wealth in recent years, which seem to have seriously aggravated the economic constraints of the poor in the United States. (For example, an informative survey recently released shows that the wealth of Hispanic and black families has shrunk by 44% and 31% respectively between 2007 and 2010.)

Economic constraints are as difficult to assess as changes in micro-consumption habits, as economists generally do not follow the issue. However, it is currently estimated that one in seven Americans (about 50 million people) live below the poverty line and the same percentage live in "food insecure" families. At the same time, 6 million people use food banks and 47 million rely on food stamps. In addition, the United States Brookings Institution tried a few years ago to study the problem of economic constraints and analyzed how many families could immediately come up with $ 2,000. The conclusion reached at the time was that a quarter of households did not stock contingency funds ready to use. "Now, despite the more financial constraints on low-income families, a large part of Americans who appear to belong to the middle class are not optimistic."

The second reason why I think the above trend should be noted (if not unfortunate) is that it reveals our attitude toward time. For most of the last century, one of the hallmarks of modern "progress" seems to be that the time span for planning for the entire society has been extended. Before entering the modern society, neither the peasants nor the shepherds can measure the passage of time nor accurately calculate the risks in the future. After entering the twentieth century, people seem to have a great deal of control over the environment, so that it is possible (and beneficial) to look at the issue in the long run. People no longer rush to stress, but learned to plan ahead and manage their time. Instead of busy looking for food every day, people can proactively plan ahead and go to the supermarket every once in a while, a powerful symbol of the more macro-level changes in human society and cognition.

However, as the experience of the past five years shows, history will not move along a straight line or at a constant pace. If you let the rich in the United States predict the future, they may describe the future as a well-calibrated path that you are looking forward to. But if you allow the poor Americans, who rely on wages to survive, to predict the future, they are more likely to imagine the future as a myriad of chaotic short cycles. In other words, economic differentiation leads to different cognitive maps and, of course, subtle changes in consumption patterns Big data experts in consumer products companies now want to track these changes.

I hope in the not too distant future, historians, sociologists and psychologists will have access to the big data bank. This treasure house may reveal a lot of information, but may also show the bitter side.