Major influence factors in children's consumer socialization

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to first provide an overview of children's spending power, media exposure, and identification with brand names in the usa along with an updated overview of the major findings in the consumer socialization literature, and to then provide an empirical explanation of how the consumer socialization process works with today's children. Design/methodology/approach: Based on a survey administered to 663 children, a factor analysis was performed on items designed to measure young people's attitudes toward, and interaction with, the various consumer socialization agents and marketplace factors, including shopping and media usage behavior. Findings: Five major consumer socialization influence factors emerged: irrational social influence, importance of television, familial influence, shopping importance, and brand importance; and were used as dependent variables in subsequent analyses looking at the effects of a number of independent variables. Results indicate that the relative impacts of the various consumer socialization influence factors do vary according to the child's gender, age, amount of spending money available, amount of television viewing, and how he/she spends time after school. Originality/value: These results are important to practitioners because they show that the traditional consumer socialization models may apply differently to children with different demographics and lifestyle characteristics.