The Family as a Consumer Base Unit - Literature review Example

Children’s influence on their parent's buying patterns varied with each subdivision stage. Children that were considered to be the initiators exerted greater influence on their parents in decisions on buying household products than their non-initiator counterparts. Older children exerted greater influence on their parents; a child’s gender was not a significant factor that influenced their parents’ buying decisions. Based on the literature, marketers must note the growing influence of children’s roles within the arena of a family’s decision-making process.(Lackman & Lanasa, 1993)

The Family as a Consumer Base Unit

Researchers have suggested that the “family as a consuming and decision-making unit is a central phenomenon in marketing and consumer behavior” (Commuri& Gentry, 2000, p. 1). For many decades, marketing managers have identified the central role of the family in decision-making and consumption of products (Assael, 1998); family units have been at the center of interest of marketers and academics in the line of marketing (Moore, Wilkie, & Lutz, 2002; Shoham & Dalakas, 2005). Joint decisions by the consumer and family members work toward influencing or modifying the desire and disposition of the other family member toward a certain consumer good (Foxall, 1977).  A family unit had an intermediating function, and also was the point of integration of an individual within the precincts of a larger society. The family unit that was a major influence in the consumer behavior process also was the source of training from early childhood about various available products in the market and their categories, thus setting the basic consumption unit for that particular family.

Being the primary consumption unit, the family was also the primary target for all the available products and their categories (Schiffman & Kanuk, 1983). The family unit might be defined as a group of people residing together who might be related by marriage, blood, or adoption (Loudon & Della Bitta, 1993).  A nuclear type of family would consist of a husband, a wife, and their children. An extended family included the nuclear family members and other relatives.