The impact of age and family life experiences on Mexican visitor shopping expenditures - Book Report/Review Example

How does age and family life experiences affect shopping? How does age and family life experiences affect shopping? The 2007 financial crises affected all the industrialized nations, paralyzing most of their sectors in their economy. The tourism sector in USA was not spared and hence organization involved in marketing needs to understand the most vital segment of the sector which can generate good revenues. Estimates indicate that in 2004, Mexican visitor’s impact on the economy was $3 billion in South Texas Rio Grande Valley, $4.

5 billion in California and $1.6 billion in Arizona (Bojanic, 2011). CIA World Factbook also estimates that in 2006, 37.7% of the national income came from 10% of the richest Mexicans. Moreover, it is estimated that 2% of overall sales in Texas come from Mexican visitors. The paper will take a thorough analysis of the effects of age, marriage and having children on shopping expenditure of Mexican nationals in south central Texas.Literature ReviewLiterature takes three distinct stands on shopping expenditure.

First, market segmentation is done on the basis of the family life cycle. The family life cycle segments the market on the basis of different stages of family life. The stages include: early adulthood, bachelor, the newlywed couple, full nest, empty nest and solitary survivor. Research shows that bachelor, newlywed, empty nest and solitary survivors have the highest amount of discretionary income. The Family life cycle is a better predictor of leisure expenditure than age and social class. The literature indicates that there is a positive correlation between the percentage of income spent on trips and total household expenditure.

Secondly, cohorts and the life course approach can be used for family life cycle segmentation. Cohort refers to a group of people who have similar values due to shared life experiences. There are validity issues in the use of values for segmentation in consumer marketing. The life course approach is an extension to cohort segmentation and family life cycle. It includes social and cultural norms and life experiences that affect people’s behavior in different stages in life. The thirdly, shopping is a tourist attraction activity.

Female has been found to take more trips for shopping than they male counterpart. Methodology The sample for the analysis was taken from three shopping malls in south central Texas. And the target population was adults from Mexicans who were doing shopping in any of three malls. The interviews conducted from Mid November 2008 to early January 2009 and total 328 respondents were interviewed. The sampling technical was non-probabilistic and involved judgment sampling. The collected data was analyzed using SPSS and GLM was used.

A regression was done on the Level of shopping expenditure against age, marriage and having children. Chi-square statistics and ANOVA were used for analysis of categorical variables and continuous variable respectively. Result The analysis revealed that there is a negative correlation between shopping expenditures and age. Also, people who do not have children spend more but there is no significant difference in spending based on marital status. The GLM showed that only having children has a significant relationship with shopping expenditure with a p-value of 0.013. Age and marital status are not statistically significant, and there is no significant interaction effect between the three variables and shopping expenditures.

The two-step cluster analysis yielded eight segments for age, marital status and the presence of children. The segments include Bachelor I, Bachelor II, Full Nest I, Full Nest II, Full Nest III, Empty Nest I, Empty Nest II, and single parent. The discriminant analysis showed that 84.7% of the segments were correctly classified. The Empty Nest had the highest level of spending on all categories except shopping while Empty Nest II spent most per person per day. But single parents spent the least on each category per person per day.

Analysis of the expenditure behavior of the segment showed that there were no significant differences in the amount spent on lodging and transport. But overall spending, shopping, and restaurants spending were significant at 5% significance level.Conclusion and RecommendationIn conclusion, the research showed that age and marital status are not significant factors in determining levels of shopping expenditure but having children affect Mexican visitors spending. Mexican visitors with children spent less than their counterpart without children.

Cluster analysis resulted in eight stages of family life cycle. The research recommends that marketing organization should target the Empty Nest and bachelor segments to earn the highest revenues.References.Bojanic, D. C. (2011). The impact of age and family life experiences on Mexican visitorshopping expenditures. Tourism Management, 32(2), 406–414.CIA World Factbook. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/mx.html