How Children Effect the Buying Habits of Their Parents - Annotated Bibliography Example

Annotated Bibliography Ying Fan, Yixuan Li, "Childrens buying behaviour in China: A study of their information sources", Marketing Intelligence &Planning, (2010) Vol. 28 Iss: 2, pp.170 – 187 The paper is written by Chinese re-searchers. The purpose of this paper is to present an empirical study on children’s buying behavior in China. The article has a special focus on their information sources. The study does a comprehensive literature review on consumer socialization of children. Primary data collection method is used. In this method, 155 children were sampled using questionnaire survey. The children were in the age bracket of 10-13 years. Data analysis was done using various statistical methods such as Pearson correlation The study unveiled that Chinese Children consider television commercials as an important and critical information source for their new products. However they take a lot of interest in interpersonal information sources as well. In this way, parents hold a lot of importance to them as they consider their parents to be the holders of most credible information. The paper has been extremely helpful in contributing to the literature on Chinese children as consumers. The findings will help companies get a better grip of Chinese children’s buying behavior. 2) Jason J. Turner, James Kelly, Kirsty McKenna, "Food for thought: parents perspectives of child influence", British Food Journal, (2006) Vol. 108 Iss: 3, pp.181 – 191 The purpose of this journal is to investigate the parent perception of the influence of children when it comes to their food purchasing decision. It discusses why parents do not always buy healthy food products for their children. In this study, quanitative analysis was done .301 questionnaires were distributed through a local primary school in Dundee. Of the 301 questionnaires, 143 were returned back. The study found that most children do affect their parents in their purchasing decision. Around 86% of the respondents admitted that they would give in to their children’s demands. Parents were well-informed of health related issues and claimed that they would regularly purchase healthy food products for their children. However, on their children’s insistence, they would also buy them unhealthy food at times. The study was an exploratory study. It carries the limitation of generalisability as it was restricted solely to Dundee. More research needs to be conducted to get a perspective of other UK studies. The practical implications of the study are very important to understand. It suggests that parents tend to give in to their children’s demands. This means that it is very important to convey the importance of eating healthy to children. The paper provides insight into various other factors that influence and play a pivotal role in shaping buying behavior of parents through children, The study is very important to both who are already practicing in this field and for academics in the field of healthy eating among children. 3) Ike-Elechi Ogba, Rebecca Johnson, "How packaging affects the product preferences of children and the buyer behaviour of their parents in the food industry", Young Consumers: Insight and Ideas for Responsible Marketers, (2010) Vol. 11 Iss: 1, pp.77 – 89 Health has become a very important issue in UK and Europe. There is a lot of emphasis being placed on the importance of health eating. This is because of growing concern in UK about childhood obesity. Various measures have been taken since then including the ban of advertising unhealthy and rich foods to children in UK in April 2007. However, even though legislation has already been applied on the advertising of unhealthy food products, no restrictions have been made on the packaging of food items, even though packaging also affects consumer buyer decisions. This paper aims to study the impact of packaging on children’s product preferences and how it influences buyers’ decision in-store. The study adopted a quantitative approach for data collection. A 28 item Likert scaled questionnaire was made and given to 150 parents. The response rate was 95%. The study explored the parent’s perspective instead of the children’s perspective. The study unveiled that packaging has an important impact on product preferences of children. It also re-substantiated the fact that children are more interested in purchasing un-healthy foods. However parents within the study claimed that they did not give into to their children’s request for purchasing unhealthy food. This finding contradicts the findings from previous research in this area. Thus, it is important that more research is conducted in this area. The findings of this study have implications in the retail and service marketing sector. It provides them with the information related to children’s influence on parent’s buyer behavior in stores. Outcomes of this study are very important where the future of children’s food marketing and tackling issues such as obesity are concerned. The paper shows that the relationship between packaging and children product preferences and through that the parent’s buyer decision in-store is a very critical factor that marketers need to understand. The research will be very useful for academics and for practitioners in this field. 4) Maria Kümpel Nørgaard, Karen Bruns, Pia Haudrup Christensen, Miguel Romero Mikkelsen, "Childrens influence on and participation in the family decision process during food buying", Young Consumers: Insight and Ideas for Responsible Marketers, (2007) Vol. 8 Iss: 3, pp.197 – 216 The paper is a study on the family decision making process during food buying. It proposes a theoretical framework for future studies in this genre and highlites the importance of including children and their influence in specific stages in parent’s decision making process. The study develops a conceptual framework using the past theoretical work done in this are as its foundation. The framework was further defined after testing 451 Danish families who children in the age bracket of 10-13 years. The study found out that marketing is a joint activity and children’s active participation does influence the parent’s buying decision. The study will have major practical implications for marketers, when they’d be coming up with ways to promote food products to adults and children. The mixed-method approach adopted by the study produced new interesting results in the study – the most important one being, the impact of children in food decision making. 5) Jayantha S. Wimalasiri, "A cross-national study on childrens purchasing behavior and parental response", Journal of Consumer Marketing, (2004) Vol. 21 Iss: 4, pp.274 – 284 Children can be very influential and therefore, have a major impact on parents and their decision making process. Parents’ responses vary greatly from complete rejection to total acceptance. In this study 255 parents were sampled from the Fiji Islands, Tonga Islands and Cook Islands. The pre-liminary investigation unveils that the Children in the Pacific Islands are very parent centered. They have not been influenced by the modern, Western child-centered family environment. In the second part, the influence tactics used by children in island nations were investigated. It was found that children in these nations are less demanding and tend to be more persuasive while seeking parent approval. Statistical analysis and other details are given in the study. 6) Wiman, A. Parental Influence and Children’s Response to Television’s Advertising. Journal of Advertising, (1983). 12(1), 12-18. Retrieved from Business Source Premier Database. The author, who is the Associate Professor of Marketing and Chairman of the Marketing Department at Rider College, sought to explore the parental influence on cognitive and behavioral responses of third and fourth grade children to TV advertisements through a set of structured questions. Hypothesis was proven, whereby strict parental control critical of advertising was found to correlate with child’s better understanding of its nature and mature attitude toward it with the ensuing response being lesser purchase request. High socioeconomic level and parents’ good education played a role in it. On the other hand, unconstrained parent-child interactions were followed by more purchase requests and attitudes contrary to those of their parents, which may called a result of independent thinking. The environment preset by the parents in the initial stage of TV watching later influences how advertisements are responded to by the children, and the extent to which children would affect their parents’ buying habits. 7) Wells, W. D. Children as Consumers, in Newman, Joseph W., (ed.). On Knowing the Consumer. New York: John Wiley and Sons. (1966) The researcher, also the author to Communication with Children, sought to examine children’s role as consumers in behavioral and cognitive aspects in light of ethical concerns that such studies are backed by profit motive that benefit business more than children, and the difficulty in conducting the study due to children’s low comprehension and difficulty in organization. It establishes that children enter the consumer world around the age of five, and ascertain themselves as logical consumers by the age of nine. Lack of information on consumer behavior of children due to absence of extensive nationwide studies is hence a limitation. This seminal study shows that despite the low level of comprehension that children have, they are an increasingly essential part of consumer population, which is directly influenced by advertisements on television, as describe in the previous reference. As they enter market at as early as five years of age, they will tend to affect their parents’ buying patterns. 8) Tamara F. Mangleburg ,Children’s Influence in Purchase Decisions, Advances in Consumer Research, (1990), 17, 813-825. The purpose of this paper was to look at factors involved in children’s influence in buying decisions of families, which include the type of product and relevance to the family in general. Previously, the influence of spouse in purchase decision was considered in studies. Surveys were used to collect the data, which were complemented with observational studies due to its weakness for subjectivity bias if children are unable to comprehend it. The paper does not describe as to why the variations in influence occur with factors like child’s age and family characteristics. The research therefore needs both theoretical and methodological revisions. Relevant to the topic of children influencing their parents’ buying habits, the review concludes that parents may decide to buy things that are relevant to their children only like toys; in contrast to products associated with whole family that usually involve financial risks, when decision entirely lies with parents. 9) Darian, Jean C"Parent-child decision making in children’s clothing stores", International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, (1998) Vol. 26 Iss: 11, pp.421 – 428 The research assesses the parent-children behavior in the stores during shopping for children’s clothes. Data collection method involved observing and recording the subjects’ behavior discreetly in retail stores. Results show that participants were more likely to purchase clothes when items were chosen collaboratively by parents and children, there was mutual interaction; parents evaluated positively their prices, quality, style and usefulness, children had positive appraisals on the price style and color, while needs of both the parties were effectively addressed by the salesperson. It is recommended that strategies of the retailers for merchandise selection,  training the sales staff and in-store promotions, take the needs of both parent and child into consideration.   10) Elisabeth Götze, Christiane Prange, Iveta Uhrovska, "Childrens impact on innovation decision making: A diary study", European Journal of Marketing, (2009) Vol. 43 Iss: 1/2, pp.264 – 295 The paper aims to analyse childrens impact on innovation, practical decision making. It is a diary study in which fourteen parents describe their experiences with regard to the topic of interest over a two weeks period. Findings reveal that influence of children is stronger in earlier stages of the innovation buying process when they apply different communication strategies on their parents, which results in varying effects on the latter’s purchasing behaviour. This paper may help marketers in shaping appropriate marketing and innovation strategies as it pays special attention to the domestic dynamics in the innovation decision-making process. Inter-family conflicts fuelled by the childrens requests may be avoided in this manner. This is one of the first attempts to test Rogers innovation-decision process, which gives it an edge in originality. However, despite its many advantages, the diary method has rarely been applied in the context of domestic purchase decision making. An important contribution of this research is that it examines childrens influence on family decision making in cultures different from the USA. For example, Israel is less individualistic, aims to play safe, and is less power-distant than the USA. Read More