Globalisation and consumption patterns in Ghana

Story: Stephen Sah

AS I walked the street in Accra the other day, a cousin of mine whom I least expected to meet in town patted me from behind. He had slung a huge bag around his neck and was sweating. I did not know the bag’s content but before I could ask him what had brought him to the national capital, Yaw, frustrated as he was, told me that he had come to the Russian Embassy.
His mission? He had received a sound system from his friend who was domiciled in Russia. After fidgeting with the machine in order to operate it, he realised it would not work. He had to rush down to Accra to send the brochure which was written in Russian for interpretation.
He was told that the machine could no longer work and he either had to throw it away before going back to Sefwi or just send it back as a decorative piece in his room to sort of show off.
That was the story of my cousin. And as I continued my journey, I asked myself whether that was where globalisation had taken us? Instantly, I decided to do a piece on this globalisation thing and the new consumption patterns, especially taking into consideration the fact that globalisation has turned the world into a small village and yet making the developing countries be at the receiving end; they have virtually become dumping grounds for all manner of products.
In shops and on the streets all kinds of products are being offered for sale. There have been many occasions that people have bought products and have not been able to use them, especially electronic gadgets . Undoubtedly, this normally happens to those who purchase on impulse.
The fact that globalisation has turned the world into a small a place cannot be underestimated. Anyone without even an e-mail, which will one day give way for other innovations, may be described as being old fashioned.
So one has to be caught in this trendy thing and the niceties that go with globalisation. Now there isn’t anything much a secret, not even with personal e-mails and the like, because people in other countries can make orders for goods from abroad through the Internet and pay for them to be shipped to them without stepping a foot forward.
Similarly, others, through the same means, embark on fraudulent activities and steal credit card numbers of others to transact similar businesses. This can go on for long until the theft is detected by the victims.
A village the world has become indeed. What an instant communication with a relative or friend in a far away country via telephone, the Internet or video can do cannot be described; in fact, serious problems can be solved with that and make things happen in people’s lives. That is globalisation for you.
However, at the flip side of this trend is the gloomy picture of how businesses and individuals are being taken for granted through fraudulent cyber activities, unreliable and malfunctioning 'robot' systems, as in the case of my cousin, the production and supply of shoddy goods and you mention the rest.
The above notwithstanding, globalisation and modernity have come with them very sophisticated and improved ways of doing things, particularly in industry, marketing, medicine, music, and consumption, among others, bringing into sharp focus the rationality of bureaucracy, at least, in the advanced economies. In those economies the new consumption patterns are very efficient, predictable and convenient.
In the light of the impact that globalisation and modernity had on the world, this article is looking at their impact on our national economy and how Ghanaians, in our modest way, are faring , particularly in the areas of marketing and new consumption patterns.
These are clearly manifested in the emergence of highly improved advertising strategies and products in the country. In the banking sector, for instance, the introduction of electronic and or online banking have become buoyant with the use of debit and credit cards, and Automated Teller Machines (ATM) providing banking (or is it cash?) out of ‘town’.
There is also the sprouting of wayside fast food joints, popularly called ‘check check’ in Ghana, competing alongside conventional restaurants and supermarkets or malls (referred to as one-stop shops). Unlike in the past when there were departmental shops in the cities and bigger towns where only very few people, especially the affluent or those on monthly salaries, could go for shopping, now all sorts of products, albeit shoddy, are being offered for sale everywhere, including the streets, and even pharmacies and fuel pump stations have become good sources of one- stop shopping.
These malls provide all kinds of products and services, including salons or barbering shops and even in some designated pharmacy shops one can get anything from toiletries and cosmetics to food and drinks. But can the attributes of the new consumption patterns in the advanced communities, namely efficiency, predictability and convenience, be found in Ghana?
Somehow, these attributes could be said to be making strides but not very firmly rooted on the ground. What accounts for the non-existence of such attributes stems from the fact that the system of accounting in this country is completely at variance with what pertains in the advanced economies where transactions heavily subsists on non-money payments.
The credit cards, cheques and the like do the business with very little money changing hands. So one hardly finds someone with plenty of cash.
Consumption patterns over there are predictable because in one breath one can easily predict what one wanted to buy and get them within the shortest possible time, with security on even the car parks assured. The opposite is what prevails here in Ghana. The unavailability of parking lots with a not-always-assured security for customers in most cases makes shopping unsafe in some of the so-called malls or marts?
Besides, while there is very minimal use of credit cards and the like, the manual counting of plenty of cash makes shopping stressful and where they are used transaction is delayed by the number of people that have to queue.
The idea by the various banks to provide various banking outlets in ‘town’ to avoid customers being left to the mercies of ATM machines, is laudable as some customers experience difficulties understanding the language of these machines. The machines simply won’t work when their services are direly needed. They easily break down and will not dispense with cash. For weekends, it is better one does not attempt. Those days are virtual holidays for the ATM machines. These are the vicissitudes or the irrationalities of rationality.
Strong measures are needed in the accounting system of the economy for it to measure up to the demands of modernity and globalisation. There is the need to have an accounting system to take care of these sophisticated banking products like the credit and debit cards so that individuals will not have to even carry with them large sums of money. This way even armed robbers and confidence tricksters or their like could be damned.
The ‘check check’, no doubt, have brought easy food to the working city dweller, although what is always provided has become one way. Their side effects are a different thing altogether, since it is a fact that cooking for a large number of people normally affects the quality. No one knows where the food is prepared before being brought to the market where it is heated.
Ghanaian consumers do not have much say in determining what bothers them, since there isn’t any strong consumer association in the country that can fight for consumers’ welfare. In the absence of any such association, it is incumbent that producers, manufacturers and importers critically make sure that while they safeguard their interests, the interest of consumers is equally protected to ensure a win-win situation for all.
More innovative ways to encourage the use and acceptance of credit or debit cards and cheques are needed so that the current trend of subsisting heavily on hard cash would be discouraged. It is silly on our part to demand cash for the purchase of such things as cars, or even houses. We need not have to present cash when we purchase things worth more than even ¢1 million, considering the units of our money.