Living in a crowded city with a fast life rhythm, sometimes fostering an attitude of wanting to rush in everything. Including getting salary, goods, or popularity. Even more than that.

The phenomenon of materialism also spread to commercialism. That is, all things can become merchandise or commodities, as long as they can be promoted through an accurate and appropriate marketing database.

Materialism was discussed by Podoshen and Andrzejewski in 2012, that materialism is a value system that places things as something that can be had in one’s life and makes someone happy.

On the one hand, materialism is also important to measure how wasteful or consumptive the population in an area. The data is needed by marketers to acquire products to the right consumers.

ISpeaking of materialism and consumerism, we compiled the results of a survey of the most materialist areas in Indonesia. This data was collected in November 2019. Here’s the discussion.

a. City

In terms of cities, the cities of Medan and Jakarta have the highest levels of materialism in Indonesia. In contrast to Bandung, Surabaya, and Makassar which have lower levels of materialism.

The effect is that the cities of Medan and Jakarta are the center of attention for the highest shopping product transactions. This is agreed with the number of malls in the city. For example, for Medan, there are 10 popular malls that are listed as shopping centers on the Traveloka site.

b. Gender

Although women are often labeled material and a hobby of shopping, data from Deka Insight shows the opposite. Secretly, men display attitudes and materialistic traits like women. So, the stereotypical myths of material-based gender are broken.

c. Age

The result shows that the older a person is, the less the tendency to be materialistic. Unlike the young age and still includes the productive workforce.

For example, ages 18-24 become the highest age of materialistic tendencies with an index of 3.68. Followed by age 25-34 years with index 3.64. Meanwhile, ages 35-44 have an index of 3.54 and ages 45-54 indexed 3.18.

It is clear that ages that are still in contact with university level education and productive workforce are vulnerable to materialism. In fact, there is an assumption that these ages become the biggest product consumers when shopping online or non-online.

c. Social and economic class

In the social order, the division of society based on social and economic class (socio-economic class; SEC) is still valid. At least for data collection. we divides the social and economic classification of materialism with the ABCDE method.

The ABCDE method is a household socio-economic score. This method was proposed by Nielsen Admosphere since 2013. This method measures the highest level of household welfare with a score of A and lowest score of E. What is the result?

The results shows that class A (SEC A) people who have a high income and prosperity tend to be less materialist than those in class C (SEC C1, C2) who have an average income or below.

However, this also does not show significance because the middle class group or SEC B is more materialistic than SEC A and SEC C. The scores collected for SEC B are index 3.74, while SEC A is 3.56 and SEC C1 is 3.64 and SEC C2 3.64.

There is a trend of shifting consumption of middle and upper middle class people. Generally, these two classes tend to value themselves through material things, such as cars, watches, clothes, or bags

This trend has shifted to the consumption of cultural and knowledge products. For example investments in education, career development, health, and pensions that are far more expensive. This consumption is enriching knowledge and building cultural capital. So that the tendency of the nature of materialism is reduced.

However, it cannot be denied that the SEC B middle class also perpetuates materialism and consumerism. For example, in terms of investment, non-material life experiences such as traveling and backpacking require funds. Plus social media that records fancy trips, turns out to be an opportunity for tour operators to sell out the cheapest or cheapest costs depending on market demand and supply.

Apparently, these data are quite useful for market participants to determine target consumers. If you look at the data, how do you respond?.