Socialization Influence Children

Children’s Influences on In-store Purchases in Malaysia: A study from the Consumer Socialization Perspective

Introduction

Children have always had an immense impact on the lives of their parents. On a particular note of interest to marketers would be the influence that children have to their parents as consumers (Wilson and Wood, 2004). Many previous researchers (Ahuja, Capella and Taylor, 1998; Foxman, Tansuhaj and Ekstrom, 1989; Lee and Collins, 2000; Thomson, Laing and McKee, 2007) have found that children play an important role in the family’s decision making.

An American study in 2002, found children between ages four- to twelve-year-olds alone have spent $30 billion (Schor, 2004) and in 2003, 33 million U.S. teens aged twelve to nineteen

In preschool and kindergarten years, the egocentric stage (age 3 to 6), children are unaware of any perspective other than their own. As they enter the next stage, the social informational role taking (age 6 to 8), children become more aware that others may have different opinion or motives, but believe that this is due to having different information rather than a different perspective on the situation, therefore children in this stage do not exhibit to actually think from another person’s perspective. In the self-reflective stage (age 8 to 10) children not only can understand that others have different opinions or motives, then even have the same information and can actually consider another person’s viewpoint. During the next stage of mutual role taking (age 10 to 12) children will be able to simultaneously consider another person’s view and one’s own. This is one of the most important juncture as much social interaction, such as persuasion and negotiation, requires dual consideration of both parties’ perspectives. The final stage, social and conventional system role taking (age 12 to 15 and older) features an additional development the ability to understand another person’s perspective as it relates to the social group to which he (other person) belongs or the social system in which he (other person) operates.

With consumer socialization theories building upon the cognitive development and social development models have often been viewed as taking place on a series of stages where children mature throughout their childhood. (John, 1999) have proposed that consumer socialization to come up with three different stages which are named as the “perceptual stage”, “the analytical stage” and the “reflective stage