Understanding the Factors Affecting the Influence of Children on Their Parents Total Purchases - Dissertation Example

Marketing researchers in the United States have shown that children have a critical influence on their parents’ purchases in various product types such as apparel, food and beverages, and playthings (Lieback, 1994). Researchers during the early 90s have already focused on marketing on children and in particular their influence on the total purchases of the family (Caruana & Vassallo, 2003). This prompted marketers to recommend retail strategies designed to target children. Such child-focused strategies included providing colorful child-friendly amenities, playful displays, and toy credit cards (Beatty & Talpade, 1994).

The importance of children in purchase decision-making has grown over the years mainly because children not only make purchasing decisions for their own personal consumption but also because they influence family purchase decisions (Kaur & Singh, 2006). According to Kaur and Singh (2006), demographic variables such as ages and genders of children were shown as influential in parents’ purchasing decisions. The monetary amount of children’s contributions to spending in family purchase decisions has risen since 1965 (Shoham & Dalakas, 2005).

In one study commissioned by a group of cable television network executives in the United States, the findings showed that 43% of total purchases in the family were influenced by children in the families (Caruana & Vassallo, 2003); thus, children’s roles in the decision making of their parents and of their families had become a focus for research on total family purchase decisions. Early research on these interactions included Berey and Pollay’s (1968) study on children’s roles in marketing based on the researchers’ claim that children constituted an important and separate segment for marketers.

Children not only have influenced family purchase decisions for the entire family’s consumption products, but children also have insisted that their parents purchase the products they want as individuals (Kaur & Singh, 2006).Similar to the seminal research of Kaur and Singh (2006), predominant parental communication styles were likely to affect the perceived influence that children believed they had on their parents (Levy & Lee, 2004). In another similar study, Atkin (1978) found that children played dominant roles in food selection (e.g., in cereals, milk) in the supermarket, either by asking for a brand or choosing one upon parental invitation.

Researchers (Anglin, 1997; Caruana & Vassallo, 2003; Kaur & Singh, 2004a) focused on parents’ perceptions of their children's influence found that influence to be a result of the communication patterns between the parents and the children. These findings came from multiple samples consisting of parents and their children. Unlike Berey and Pollay’s (1968) study of subjects in their natural setting, Kaur and Singh’s study (2004a) was administered privately with an on-site questionnaire so that younger children could participate and ensure that responses were spontaneous and without parental intervention.

The main purpose of studies from Kaur and Singh (2004a) and Hughner and Maher (2006) was to investigate whether parental communication style had an effect on children’s perceived influence on purchases.