Affect of Illiteracy on

Consumer Behavior

Submitted By:
Wajahat Ahmad Khan
Muhammad Furqan Zeb
Omer Bari
Uzair Bin Zafar
Contents
Literacy and Illiteracy:.....................................................................................................................3

Importance of Literacy:...................................................................................................................3

Effects of Illiteracy in a Society:.....................................................................................................4

Illiteracy Pakistan’s major problem:................................................................................................5

Illiteracy and Consumer Behavior:..................................................................................................7

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Literacy and Illiteracy:
Functional illiteracy is imprecisely defined, with different criteria from nation to nation, and
study to study. However, a useful distinction can be made between pure illiteracy and functional
illiteracy. Illiterate persons cannot read or write in any capacity, for all practical purposes. In
contrast, functionally illiterate persons can read and possibly write simple sentences with a
limited vocabulary, but cannot read or write well enough to deal with the everyday requirements
of life in their own society.

For example, an illiterate person may not understand the written words cat or dog, may not
recognize the letters of the alphabet, and may be unable to write their own name. In contrast, a
functionally illiterate person may well understand these words and more, but cannot read well
enough to understand the things they must read in order to get by in their daily life. A
functionally illiterate person might be incapable of reading and comprehending job
advertisements, past-due notices, newspaper articles, banking paperwork, complex signs and
posters, and so on.

While pure illiteracy has approximately the same characteristics worldwide, the characteristics of
functional illiteracy vary from one culture to another, as some cultures require better reading and
writing skills than others. A reading level that might be sufficient to make a farmer functionally
literate in a rural area of a developing country might qualify as functional illiteracy in an urban
area of a technologically advanced country. Additionally, this kind of functional illiteracy is
limited to languages with logographic or highly irregular writing systems. In languages with
regular spelling, functional illiteracy is usually defined simply as reading too slow for practical
use, inability to effectively use dictionaries and written manuals, etc.

Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read and write. It is a concept claimed

and defined by a range of different theoretical fields.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) define literacy
as the "ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, compute and use printed
and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of
learning in enabling individuals to achieve their goals, to develop their knowledge and potential,
and to participate fully in their community and wider society."

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Importance of Literacy:
It is very well said that an army can't march on empty stomach in the same way a country can't
be called developed with a huge illiterate population.

Literacy is very important for the development of the individual and for the nation as well. A
literate or educated person has a high self esteem, he or she is fairly independent and is aware of
his/her rights and duties and so he or she can't be exploited.

"UNESCO has drafted a definition of literacy as the ability to identify, understand, interpret,
communicate, compute and use printed and written materials associated with varying context.
Literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to achieve their goals, to
develop their knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in their community and wider
society."

Moreover, a literate or educated person has to develop the country, by using its resources, which
an illiterate or uneducated person can't. Literacy is the biggest power one can have. A literate
person is most important asset of a country whereas illiterate person is just a liability on the
society. Due to illiteracy our national income is not increasing and also a huge amount of natural
resources are left unused.

Not only at the national level, at personal level also, literacy is very important, An illiterate
person is generally poor and also the most exploited one, since he is not able to take the
advantage of the several national developmental programmes.

International literacy day is celebrated each year on 8th September with the aim to highlight the
importance of literacy to individual, communities and societies.

Effects of Illiteracy in a Society:

In a recent study, conducted by the WSI (World Statistics Institute) shows that there is an
increasing number of illiterates globally. 27% of the world is illiterate and that 27% has had a
strong and terrible impact on our society. There are many effects of illiteracy and not a day goes
by that we don't see it and regret it, the more knowledge we can obtain is helpful so we can learn
to advance as a society.

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The most important effect illiteracy has on our society is that it is holding us back; the more
illiterate people that make up a country the more, undeveloped it is. For example in a country
well developed like United States, the illiteracy rate is below 5%, while in countries undeveloped
such as Turkey its illiteracy rate is 61%. And as a result not only is the society affected but so are
the people residing in Turkey, more illiterate people means less doctors and healthcare, lawyers
and laws, and most importantly less schools and education.

It's bad enough as it is to have illiterate people affecting our society, now just think about how
our children's society's going to be affected. See, an illiterate person is born and resides illiterate
their whole life and during their lifetime their education choice affects their children's education
choice. Most parents discourage the thought of having their kids grow up illiterate, but when
children look at their parents (role models) they see how their parents have turned out illiterate
and live to adopt the idea of being illiterate, viewing it as not such a bad idea. The rate of
illiteracy has ascended to 32%, imagine if this rate proceeds from now on to your children's time
then society won't be as advanced in the future, we'll have to experience situations in the near
future that we probably would not be able to solve due to the fact that everyone around us will be
illiterate. Illiteracy has not only affected our time, but it will have affected our children and our
grandchildren's lives.

Illiterate people have seemed to harm our society, their children's society and now themselves. In
a world were we've gone from using horses, to carriages, to boats, to automobiles, to airplanes,
we develop and advance little by little. During the 19th century, the idea of robots, computers,
cell phones and other electronics would have been unheard of, the jobs our ancestors had back
ago would have been extinct by now. Like take for example factories and cotton picking, instead
of using human labor for these kinds of jobs we now depend on machines and robots. So what if,
the human race proceeds to advance and more opportunities and options are found for our
society. Like fro example what if there was some type of technology scientist devolved to have a
mess cleaned up on its own, made on its own, then we wouldn't need busboys, maids, or butlers.
So that percentage of maids and butlers who lack education must need something to fall back on
now that their career is over and since their illiterate what other options do they have. It's
important to have an education to fall back on because you never know what your life outcome

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might be. You may work for a construction company, but get injured and quit work, but have no
education to fall back on so you're unable to provide for your family.

There are many possible outcomes illiterate people may have to face in life, but having an
education is having some type of security to fall back on or to depend on, when life hits you
hard. The reader can observe that the illiteracy rate in undeveloped countries is very high and the
speed at which it ascends is even higher, having an education is more important than anything
else in the world, once you are literate, than you are secure. The many solutions we can provide
for illiteracy is introducing better, motivated, and qualified teachers, lower pupil-teacher ratio,
more parents involvement in their child's education, and less examination-orientated syllabus
giving children an advantage to keep up at their own pace. In cases were illiteracy is high in
undeveloped countries, there is always something we are able to do. We are able to stop child
labor and let children get an education and not only children Government of undeveloped
countries should encourage old people as well to take interest in an education.

Illiteracy Pakistan’s major problem:

Pakistan cannot survive unless the problems of illiteracy and overpopulation are solved.
Illiteracy can be overcome only by making education compulsory for everyone, and preferably
making it mandatory for all children to be taught in English, as is the practice in India.

It has been realized that for the development of 3rd world countries, there is the need to aware
the inhabitants of those countries about changing social and political as well as economic factors.
The majority of those countries have remained illiterate just because of poverty and rigidity to
the cultural values, which is the major hindrance in the way of development of those countries or
nations. By realizing this fact, a number of 3rd world countries have launched certain projects
and programs in order to achieve development fruits. In Pakistan, for example, National
Commission for Human Development (NCHD) is a major organization which is striving to
convert the illiterate adults, especially female adults, of Pakistan to literate ones. Before the
enrollment of adults to the formal learning process, it is vital for the community developer /
activist to understand about the nature of adults regarding learning. In this regard, four matters -
adults have accumulative knowledge, adults are goal oriented, adults are self directed and they

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can apply knowledge in the practical field - should be the primary focus of the community
developer / activist because adults have different learning psyche than that of younger ones.

In this era of economic deficiency, adult literacy is not so simple task. To convert the illiterate
adults to literate ones, it is fundamental to urge them for learning - we have to motivate them to
join the learning practices. To motivate the adult learners, we can motivate them by quoting
multiple attractions such as the enhancement of social relationships, engagement in social
welfare, advancement of personal attributes, and achievement of certain spiritual and mental
satisfactions. In the traditional societies which are almost include in 3rd world countries, religion
oriented motivation is most effective.

Besides, a number of so effective tools and techniques of adult literacy, there are a number of
such barriers which remain hindering the way to make a society 'literate'. These affect upon the
achievement of predefined goals and objectives of the implemented projects and programs about
literacy. As the literacy program's success depends upon the maximum participation or
involvement of learners, they have a number of obstacles in the way to participate in the learning
process such as the lack of time, lack of confidence, lack of information about learning
opportunities, traditional theoretical approaches, feelings to be ashamed, and scheduling
programs.

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Illiteracy and Consumer Behavior:
Literacy is “the ability to exhibit all of the behaviors a person needs in order to respond properly
to all possible reading tasks Functional literacy refers to the ability to function adequately as an
adult Thus, functional literacy links literacy and adequate functioning in day to-day life, which
has significant implications for consumers. Research on functionally low-literate consumers
Vulnerable consumers, such as low-income consumers have been examined in research,
however, research on functionally low-literate consumers has been very recent (e.g., Adkins &
Ozanne, 2005). Viswanathan et al. (2005) report on the cognitive predilections of functionally
low-literate consumers based on a qualitative study of adult education students. A striking
characteristic is the difficulty in engaging in abstract thinking. Functionally low-literate
consumers are able to perceive one piece of information, such as product size, but are often
unable to relate that information to another piece of information, such as price. This processing
of single pieces of information, without higher-level abstractions, is described as concrete
thinking. This is a tendency to concretize information into perceptible pieces for decision
making. For example, instead of a size/price trade-off, an abstraction, functionally low-literate
consumers may focus exclusively on price. Past research has also shown that low-literate people
can perform concrete operations on specific units (e.g., time) and engage in concrete, context-
sensitive thinking based on practical necessity, but have difficulty with trade-offs that require
abstraction.

Illiteracy affects the consumer behavior in many ways. The illiterate people have little or no
knowledge about different products and brands. Because they are unable to read, or may be able
to read but unable to understand. So that is why they can’t interpret the exact meaning what the
advertiser wants to covey to them. Illiterate people get into confusion very quickly because they
do not have much knowledge whether the specific product can help them in solving their
problem or not. Buying is not a simple task; many steps are included in the buying process.
These steps can only effectively be achieved by a literate person because his abilities of reading,
writing & understanding the things quickly send him to the right place where he can buy a
product to solve the problem identified.

On the other hand illiterate people get into difficulty in this buying process. Most of the times
they can’t identify their problem exactly and that is why they can’t recognize the actual solutions

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for their products. Illiterate people have little knowledge so they face some difficulty in buying
but it’s not in every case. The social status and buying power contradicts it. We see many cases
that some people are illiterate but because of their living standards they know well how to buy
things and they have knowledge of the product.