Consumption, Secondhand Trade, and the Sharing Economy

Impulse Buying and Careful Spending

Impulse buying refers to spending that is driven by a momentary feeling, an advertisement, or a discount phrase, without need or plan. Because seeing a discounted price tends to make people feel they are buying cheaply, they end up putting items in their cart that they had no intention of buying originally. This is the representative route through which impulse buying occurs. The most basic way to prevent impulse buying is to consider whether the item is truly necessary for you before purchasing it. Thinking that a cheap item is automatically a benefit is a mistake. An item that is not used is money wasted even if its price is low, so consumption should start from need rather than price. Discount coupons and reward points also act as incentives that increase consumption. You can check your consumption level by totaling your spending over a set period to see whether your actual expenditure has grown larger than the amount you saved with coupons. Installment payment makes spending difficult to feel, so it becomes a factor that makes it easier to increase consumption. If you do not decide on a purchase right away but leave a certain period of time, the momentary impulse subsides and you can judge more accurately whether the item is necessary. The habit of waiting about a week is a representative example of this method. Checking whether you already have a similar item at home is also a way to prevent duplicate purchases. Items bought without this check tend to leave regret later. Choosing an item only because it is cheap can lead to buying easily broken products several times, which ends up costing more money. A careful consumer weighs quality and durability along with price. When someone is drawn in by a discount price and buys several unnecessary items, most of them tend to remain unused, which easily leads to regret. The author's attitude is revealed through the feelings and resolutions felt while looking back on personal experience. An attitude of feeling bitter while reflecting on impulse spending is clearly different from an attitude of actively taking advantage of discount events. A text that resolves to cut spending is read as an attitude that looks back on one's past spending habits and encourages saving. In problems that fill in the blank, choose the connective expression that matches the relationship of the context before and after the blank. Frequently appearing expressions are as follows.

• -기 십상이다 — It means it is easy for that to happen. Ex) 밤늦게 간식을 먹으면 다음 날 집중이 흐려지기 십상이다.
• -는 대신에 — It means one does not perform the preceding action and chooses the following action instead. Ex) 차를 타는 대신에 자전거로 출근하기로 했다.
• -ㄹ 뿐만 아니라 — It means that in addition to the preceding content, there is other content as well. Ex) 이 제품은 값이 싼 뿐만 아니라 품질도 좋다.
• -은 채로 — It means that a certain state is maintained as it is. Ex) 신발을 신은 채로 방에 들어갔다.

Ethical Consumption

Ethical consumption is the practice of choosing products based on the process by which they were made. Checking whether environmentally harmful materials were avoided and whether workers were paid fair wages is a representative example. The foundation of ethical consumption is the belief that individual choices can change society. Consumption can be seen as having gone beyond the act of spending money to become a way of expressing one's own convictions. Thinking that choosing the cheapest product is rational consumption is a mistake. Rational consumption means considering not only price but also the effect that one's choice has on the world. Companies also find it difficult to survive through price competition alone, so efforts to communicate the meaning that their products carry become necessary. Some companies display detailed information about the production process on product packaging. Ethical consumers look at such information and choose products that consider the environment and the human rights of workers. However, many products lack information about their production processes, so there are cases in which consumers find it difficult to judge for themselves. The terms related to ethical consumption are as follows.

• 가치 소비 (value consumption) — Consumption that chooses products based on the meaning and value they carry rather than their price. Ex) 같은 값이면 생산 과정이 투명한 제품을 고르는 것이 가치 소비이다.

Product Rental Sharing Services

Product rental sharing services are services in which people do not buy items but instead pay a certain fee to borrow and use them when needed. Cars, tools, clothing, and home appliances are representative examples. This method is economical for people who do not use items often. It also has the effect of reducing resource waste by decreasing the amount of unused items that are thrown away. However, if the rental period becomes long, the total of the fees may exceed the cost of buying the item. Therefore, one should use such services after examining how frequently one actually uses the item. Renting consumption appears together with a trend that values using goods over owning them. On sharing platforms, trust among users and safety management remain challenges. For sharing consumption to benefit society, an operating system in which users and platforms fulfill their responsibilities together is necessary.

Subscription Services

A subscription service is a method in which people pay a fixed fee on a regular basis and continue to use a product or service. Paying a monthly fixed amount to use a water purifier or a car is a representative example. Subscription services have the advantage that one does not have to pay a large sum of money at once and can use them immediately when needed. As consumption that pays a fixed amount for use has increased in this way, a tendency to value use more than ownership has emerged. Recently, companies have been steadily increasing the number of services offered in subscription form. However, fees for services that are not used are often automatically charged every month, which can become a burden for consumers. When using a subscription service, it is necessary to regularly check the automatic payment records and whether the service is actually being used. In problems that arrange the order of a text, first find the sentence that presents the topic and the sentence that raises the problem with '그러나(however)'. Next, connect the sentence that explains the concept with the sentence that gives a concrete example.

Spread of Second-Hand Trading Platforms

A second-hand trading platform is an app or website where people buy and sell used items. As second-hand trading apps have become widespread, it has become easy to buy and sell used items such as home appliances and clothes. The growth of second-hand trading is commonly attributed to the economic recession and a change in attitudes toward using things for a long time. The spread of second-hand trading means that more people look for used goods instead of new ones. Second-hand trading helps people buy goods at lower prices, save resources, and reduce waste. However, because it is difficult to check the condition of a product directly, fraud can occur, so you must carefully examine the condition and the trading method before a transaction.