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Children play an important role in family purchase decisions. Children as a single group comprises of a major target segment for the marketers and retailers. They are not only influencing the products and services specifically meant for them but also in household purchases. As per the report of National Retail Federation 2019, it is concluded that in total 87% of children are influencing the family purchase decisions, out of which 48% of purchases are specially meant for them and 36% on household purchases (National Retail Federation, 2019).Children play different types of roles in family purchase decision making .They act as initiators, influencers, deciders, etc. for their parents but the major role played by them in researching for products and services before purchase (National Retail Federation, 2019).
The confluence of social, cultural and technological changes leads to a massive change in the young consumers buying behaviour. The pandemic of Covid19 has also resulted in the deeper impact on buying patterns of families (Zwanka & Buff, 2020). It has changed the way families communicate, interact and shop. There are also more reasons for this change such as greater affluence of family, changing family dynamics from joint families to nuclear, dual and single parent families, more exposure to purchase related information on digital devices, etc. (Rao, 2020). Parenting style is varying and parents now encourage their children to participate in purchase related matters concerning the family. According to NRF 2019, parents perceive that involvement of their child in purchase related matters is because they think child opinion matters to them, the product is of child usage and to cultivate decision making skills.
Socio structural variables play an important role in socializing children as consumers. Various factors such as child demographics, parent demographics, family communication, Culture etc. has significant influence on children’s purchase influence in family purchase decisions (Carlson and Grossbart, 1988; Peracchio & Tybout, 1992, Chaudhary and Gupta (2014) (Aggarwal & Shefali, 2018)
The age of child also plays an essential role in consumer development of children, which enables children to develop consumerism knowledge and decision making skills. Cognitive and social development skills facilitate them to discover and engage in purchase -related matters Children as consumers, can evaluate a product, search its alternatives, and purchase the chosen item from the store (John, 1999). Therefore, parents seek different opinions from different age groups of children. For eg child of 5 -7 yrs help in deciding entertainment option for the family whereas child of 8-12yrs assists their parents in the choice of holidays (Rao, 2020).
Family plays an important role in socializing their children as consumers in the marketplace. Family members especially parents have a considerable influence on a child’s acquisition and development of consumer knowledge, attitude and skills. Families as an entire unit are known to use five different practices (in broad terms), to inculcate purchase -related understanding in children, namely: by putting a ceiling on few activities, telling about consumption of products/services, discussing consumption decisions, sharing experiences, and encouraging children to learn through observation and experience (Dursen, 1993). Therefore, the type of communication prevalent in the family affects the purchasing decision of families
Family communication thereby refers to the way verbal and non-verbal information is exchanged between family members (Epstein et al., 1993). Family communication patterns thus are the means to measure interaction levels between parents and children, and their consumption patterns respectively.