An empirical study on Chinese adolescents' fashion involvement

Chinese adolescents are growing up with China's rapid economic growth and they represent the up and coming group of China's fashionistas. The aim of this study is to assess the effectiveness of consumer socialization on Chinese adolescents' fashion involvement. Using the data collected from 169 Chinese adolescents, the research provides empirical results about the impacts of different consumer socialization agents on Chinese adolescents' fashion involvement. The study results reveal the positive and significant impacts of fashion magazines, fashion websites and peers on Chinese adolescents' fashion involvement, but a negative and significant impact of Internet on adolescents' fashion involvement. In addition, parents and TV were found to have no significant impact on Chinese adolescents' fashion involvement. Such empirical research not only deepens our understanding of the nature and strength of the relationships between the consumer socialization agents and Chinese adolescents' fashion consumer behaviour, but also makes a meaningful contribution to improving the consumer socialization framework. We believe these findings will be useful to update current consumer socialization frameworks and make it more relevant and useful for studying the new generation of consumers in the emerging market context.     

College students’ consumer competence: a qualitative exploration

The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate college people's perception of the competence necessary to play the consumer role and of the different socialization agents and processes involved in their consumer learning. Perception of the meaning of consumer competence seems mostly based on characteristics associated to preventive behaviours. If, on the whole, the subjects think they are competent consumers, their perception of other consumers is much less favourable. The mother appears to remain the most influential socialization agent but the father seems to play an increasing role. Young people's consumer socialization process is mainly achieved through communication, observation, and by learning through trial and error. Some of them find that consumer education in high school was useful but boring, and some others didn’t remember having received this education. The need to study further the competence of young adults and to provide consumer education is discussed.     

An analysis of child consumers in Turkey

This research was conducted on 402 children going to kindergarten and primary schools with the purpose of analysing the children's interests, responsibilities, economic resources, purchasing activities, and socialization agents and purchase influences as consumers. Data were collected using a questionnaire, which was prepared by considering some previous research. The questionnaire was applied to subjects through face‐to‐face individual interview. The data were analysed by using explanatory variables, including age, gender, socio‐economic status and family type. Findings indicated that consumer socialization of children was connected to selected demographic characteristics, especially age, and they were surprisingly independent and influential consumers. The results of this study are important for those involved in children's and adults’ markets, and for consumer educators.     

Intergenerational influence on sustainable consumer attitudes and behaviors: Roles of family communication and peer influence in environmental consumer socialization

Intergenerational research on sustainable consumption remains scarce, particularly in relation to which factors may affect the level of intergenerational similarity and the direction of intergenerational transmission. The present study addresses these gaps and adds to the growing body of literature in environmental consumer socialization by examining intergenerational influence on sustainable consumer attitudes and behaviors in a sample of 146 dyads comprised of mothers and college-age daughters. In the domain of intergenerational influence, we study two potential moderating factors suggested in past consumer research: communication effectiveness and peer conformity. Using the co-orientational model and nominal dyad method, we reveal the existence of intergenerational similarity in dyads' sustainable consumer attitudes and behaviors—after accounting for nominal effects— and show that stronger parent–child communication between mother–daughter pairs leads to greater intergenerational similarity, whereas stronger peer influence on daughters reduces intergenerational agreement. Our analysis further suggests the presence of reverse environmental socialization, in which intergenerational influence predominantly occurs from daughter to mother. Dyads' subjective knowledge regarding sustainable consumption provides empirical insights for this co-orientational model finding on reverse intergenerational transfer. Overall, outcomes of this study encourage marketing managers to leverage young-adult offspring in the process of communicating sustainable marketing strategies.     

Consumer socialization,social structural factors and decision‐making styles: a case study of adolescents in Malaysia

The purpose of this study is to investigate how the process of consumer socialization will determine adolescents’ decision‐making styles. Eight decision‐making styles were conceptualized as outcomes of the socialization process, which is acquired via interaction with socialization agents, namely parents, peers, printed media, television commercials and in‐school education. The study also proposed five social structural variables (social class, gender, ethnicity, residence and religion) as being associated with the socialization agents and decision‐making styles. The study sample consisted of 934 adolescents between the ages of 16 and 19 years. The data were collected using a self‐administered questionnaire and analysed with the SPSS computer program. As a result of regression analyses, significant relationships were found between social structural factors and socialization processes, suggesting that the influence of socialization agents on adolescents may vary according to certain demographic characteristics. Significant relationships were also found between social structural factors and socialization processes. Peers appeared to be the most important agents of consumer socialization, contributing to a variety of desirable as well as undesirable consumer decision styles. Printed media and television commercials were also found to be significant sources of the acquisition of both desirable and undesirable decision‐making styles. Parents and in‐school education, however, were insignificant in the acquisition of any decision‐making styles among adolescents. Information obtained from this study could be useful to government agencies and consumer educators. The most revealing finding of this study is that parents did not contribute to the formulation of decision‐making orientation for adolescents. This points to the need for consumer educators to take steps in designing programmes that will involve parents as primary socialization agents at home; this may be facilitated via printed materials. Apart from this, the information can also be helpful in enabling marketers to be more effective in targeting various adolescent markets by formulating marketing strategies according to demographic factors, socialization process and decision‐making styles.     

Socialization into consumer culture: hunters learning to be men

This ethnography examines the primary socialization of masculinity within the hunting subculture. Young men are mentored by family and friends through the use of shared stories, rituals, and core values for up to two decades. Vygotsky's socio-cultural theory is used to explain this maturation process. The authors explore this consumer socialization process as youths move across the stages of pre-hunter, neophyte, and apprentice, until they finally become competent hunters. While this youthful practice of masculinity tends to rely on traditional notions of masculinity, during this competency stage, the men negotiate diverse constructions of masculinity within consumer culture.     

Balancing health,harmony and hegemony: Parents' goals and strategies in children's food related consumer socialization

Parents play a pivotal role in socializing their children for healthy eating. The objectives of the present study were (1) to identify food socialization outcomes valued by parents, and (2) to study how parents socialize their children for (healthy) eating at home and during food shopping. Including both parents' perceptions of valued food socialization outcomes and associated processes addresses a significant gap in the food socialization literature. The study used semi‐structured, in‐depth interviews with parents of young children. Data were subsequently analysed by interpretive, thematic procedures. The sample consisted of middle‐ to high‐income families from two cities in Denmark. Findings reveal four main food socialization goals valued by parents: (1) Nutrition and Health, (2) Healthy Relationship with Food, (3) Food Assimilation and (4) Self‐Regulation and Autonomy. Parents prioritized children's acquisition of a healthy relationship with food which included preserving family relations and harmony, more than strictly attending a nutritious diet, contrasting the focus on the nutritional value of diet usually emphasised by public health authorities. The study therefore concludes that parents' notions of what constitutes healthy diets for their children is not completely aligned with common nutrition‐oriented recommendations. Also, fathers were found to play a very active role in their children's food‐related consumer socialization. The findings underline the importance of addressing the priorities and strategies of both mothers and fathers when marketers and policy makers target contemporary families regarding children's food socialization.     

Consumer Socialization and the Role of Branding in Hazardous Adolescent Drinking

This study examines the relationship between alcohol marketing and consumer socialization to alcohol brands (assessed here using aided and unaided brand recognition and brand saliency), and the associated relationship between consumer socialization and hazardous alcohol consumption among a cohort of adolescents surveyed in Scotland. The research addresses gaps in the consumer socialization literature, by examining how marketing influences brand consumer socialization, and how brand consumer socialization influences subsequent hazardous consumption behavior over time, using a robust longitudinal design that assesses causal relationships while controlling for a wide range of important confounding variables. The results demonstrate the contribution of marketing to adolescents’ brand socialization to alcohol and the impact of this socialization on subsequent drinking behaviors. Implications for marketing managers, parents, policymakers, and consumer researchers are discussed, together with suggestions for future consumer research.     

基于决策型态的青少年消费者社会化影响因素

伴随着媒体社会化程度的加深,企业间争夺顾客资源的竞争进一步加剧,青少年市场逐渐受到了学术界和企业界的重视。将决策型态作为青少年消费者社会化的结果,探索形成这一结果的影响因素,结果显示家庭、媒体、消费者教育和同辈群体等四大消费者社会化媒介,及自我概念分别与青少年决策型态显著相关。     

Child socialization practices: Implications for retailers in emerging markets

Considering the unprecedented growth in the active role of children in the modern market place the present paper attempts to understand the potential of kids as consumers in an emerging retail market. The exploratory study uses a quota sample of 136 urban Indian parents to assess their attitude towards parenting and child socialization along with their preferences for retail formats while buying across select children׳s product categories. The empirical evidences of the research established the active and positive role of the urban Indian parents in the child׳s consumer socialization process and acknowledge the growing status of a child as an influencer and independent buyer with respect to select product categories in the market. The study reiterates on the positive correlation between the child׳s age and the strength of his influence on family purchase decisions. The paper significantly contributes with its insights on contemporary consumers to aid retailers with relevant marketing knowledge pertaining to the market of children and their parents in emerging India.     

The concept of consumer vulnerability: Scale development and validation

Although studies of nonrational consumer behaviour in the fields of psychology and marketing are widespread, few scholars have discussed this issue from the integrated perspective of individual characteristics and consumer welfare. Extant research has introduced the concept of consumer vulnerability to deepen the study of nonrational behaviour. The present research defines consumer vulnerability as an individual characteristic, that is, a tendency to be influenced by an external stimulation or temptation that leads to decisions harmful to the person's own welfare. To operationalize this concept, this study develops a consumer vulnerability scale. Results from exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis reveal the following seven dimensions of consumer vulnerability: product knowledge, product promotion, marketing and emotional stress, social pressure, purchasing power, refunds policy and discrimination ability. After verifying the scale's reliability and validity, this study confirms that it can be applied to measure the degree to which consumer welfare has been harmed and predict nonrational decision‐making behaviour. Limitations and future research directions also are discussed.     

Talking Fashion in Female Friendship Groups: Negotiating the Necessary Marketplace Skills and Knowledge

This study revisits contexts of consumer socialization by focusing on fashion consumption among female teenagers. Focus groups and interviews have been utilized to collect data from 12- to 16-year-old female adolescents. The findings indicate that the adolescents cultivate both rational and symbolic skills within their friendship groups through friendship talk. The paper contributes to consumer socialization studies by examining the role of social relationships in and the accounts of the actual uses of fashion products. By doing so, it extends scholars’, policy makers’, schools’, and families’ understanding of the dynamics involved in the building of young people’s consumer identities and what type of issues they face as young consumers. Thus, the study provides policy makers with information regarding how consumer skills and knowledge are cultivated and the role of the friendship group in cultivating them, which can be used in formulating future policy aimed at consumer education, literacy programmes and social marketing aimed at adolescents.     

Exploring the Importance of Gay‐friendliness and its Socialization Influences

Gay men and lesbian consumers are increasingly representing a desired target audience for brands seeking to build brand loyalty in an under‐tapped market. The existing literature on marketing to gay men and lesbians suggests that brands targeting this market should position themselves as gay‐friendly. Nevertheless, little is known about consumer perceptions of gay‐friendliness, its antecedents or the socialization processes relevant to establishing a brand's gay‐friendly claim. This paper attempts to fill this void by reporting the results of a survey of gay men and lesbian consumers. The survey assessed the factors involved in perceptions of gay‐friendliness, socialization sources and the relationship between gay‐friendly brand claims and attitudes towards the brand.     

Emerging adults' financial capability: A financial socialization perspective

This exploratory qualitative research uses the United Kingdom as a case study to understand how past and present financial socialization agents have either enhanced or inhibited emerging adults' financial capability in order to highlight potential opportunities for future policy and practice interventions. Three primary socialization agents were identified. The family as trusted primary advisor continues well into adulthood, even where family financial capability may be low. Beyond this, emerging adults only reluctantly engage with their bank, rely on just‐in‐time experiential learning or self‐socialize via diving, often with false confidence, into the internet. Although there are many quantitative studies on financial socialization, this paper fills a gap by taking a deeply qualitative approach showing, for the first time, empirically highlighting the limited number of financial socialization agents through the voices of emerging adults. The findings contradict previous socialization research that suggests parental socialization reduces into adulthood.     

Adolescents’ brand sensitivity in apparel: influence of three socialization agents

Wearing clothes with prestigious brand names seems to be very important for adolescents. This phenomenon was studied in the context of consumer socialization by examining the influence of three socialization agents, namely parents, peers and TV, on the development of French Canadian adolescents’ brand sensitivity and their relative importance. Controlling for socio‐economic variables, multiple regression analyses were conducted separately for boys and for girls. For both genders, brand sensitivity is related to peer influence. Girls’ brand sensitivity is related to the importance fathers give to clothing brands. TV exposure is not related to adolescents’ brand sensitivity. For boys and girls, peers represent the most important predictor of this consumer socialization. The results are discussed in the light of social and economic pressures and family relationships.     

Purchase power: An examination of consumption as voting

Abstract

There has been a reported increase in political activity through the marketplace in the form of ‘consumer votes’. The use of marketplace votes by consumers to address their concerns about societal issues is a phenomenon that has growing relevance for firms, since they are often affected by such consumer citizenship. Therefore, this paper aims to enhance our conceptual understanding of the consumer voting phenomenon. It explores marketplace power relations and the constraints and enabling mechanisms they may pose to consumers seeking change through consumer voting. Consumer voting practices, consumer sovereignty discourses, and power tensions in marketplace encounters are examined in relation to Foucault's notions of power, technologies of the self, and governmentality. Foucault provides a critical lens to illuminate the potential for consumer resistance, an approach that so far has been somewhat neglected by the extant marketing and consumer research literature.     

A story to sell: The influence of storytelling on consumers' purchasing behavior

Storytelling can arouse consumers' emotions and affect purchasing behavior through desires and attitudes. While the marketing literature discusses storytelling, there is a lack of consensus because of the diverse conceptual and operational definitions used. To untangle the complexities and consolidate the fragmented knowledge about storytelling in marketing, this research examines how the marketing literature has addressed the influence of storytelling on consumers' purchasing behavior. The findings aid in understanding how the topic has been discussed from a marketing perspective in consumer behavior studies. Through a systematic literature review using a bibliometric analysis, we demonstrate that the marketing literature features four strands about the uses of storytelling to influence consumers' purchasing behavior. First, storytelling stimulates the consumer's identification with the brand. Second, storytelling allows consumers to experience emotional value. Third, storytelling supports engagement behaviors. Finally, storytelling has a downside in that it also propagates harmful speech. This study concludes with a roadmap for future research about how storytelling impacts consumers' purchasing behavior.     

Consumer rights of the elderly as vulnerable consumers in South Africa: some comparative aspects of the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008

Although consumer protection is not a new concept in South African law, the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 (CPA) now provides for a much more comprehensive and encompassing mechanism to protect consumers. Consumers are protected, not only in the provision of goods and services, the conclusion of contracts but also in the promotion and marketing thereof. The CPA further provides special protection to a particular type of consumer which is the vulnerable consumer and includes elderly consumers. Importantly, and for the first time in the history of South African law, the consumer is provided with eight core fundamental consumer rights. As this contribution is an attempt to provide an interdisciplinary analysis from a legal perspective, identification of what is considered to be an ‘elderly' consumer, needs to be assessed by referring to relevant empirical studies from both an international as well as South African perspective. The focus of this study is on the protection of the elderly as a category of vulnerable consumers in terms of the CPA. The investigation will attempt to show that the elderly is protected in terms of all eight of the fundamental consumer rights within the CPA. Special reference will be made to two fundamental rights of the consumer in terms of the CPA. First, the elderly consumer's right to equality in the consumer market (Part A of the CPA) which provides additional protection as the CPA also refers to the Constitutional right to equality. Second, the elderly consumer's the right to fair and responsible marketing (Part E of the CPA) which in terms of the research is compared with the EU Unfair Commercial Practices Directive. Certain problems regarding elderly consumers are identified and the importance of consumer rights as well as the implementation of the correct consumer policy is argued.     

Brand popularity as an advertising cue affecting consumer evaluation on sustainable brands: a comparison study of Korea,China, and Russia

This study examines how brand popularity in conjunction with consumers' varied styles of decision-making, as well as other consumer characteristics, can influence the overall evaluation of a sustainable brand. The results of our empirical analysis show that the effect of brand popularity varies widely according to which countries one considers. Here we examined Korea, China, and Russia, and found in each country that popularity significantly influenced consumers' evaluations of sustainable brands, yet in very different aspects. In Korea, when the brand popularity cue was presented, a significant positive influence on consumer evaluation resulted. However, China showed a significant negative influence, while Russia showed neutral, insignificant results. In addition, we found also that both a brand's fashion leadership and its connection with sustainable, conscientious causes can work as moderators. Finally, we found that consumer decision-making style varies not only according to fashion leadership and sustainability involvement, but that each country had a different opinion on sustainability in general. Thus, several important implications for international marketing are here presented.     

School and family environments promote adolescents' financial confidence: Indirect paths to financial literacy skills in Finnish PISA 2018

This study investigates the associations of adolescents' financial socialization factors—financial education in school and families—with financial confidence (i.e., confidence in using financial and digital financial services). In addition, we examine how financial socialization factors indirectly relate to financial literacy skills through financial confidence and the role of demographic factors (adolescent gender, grade level, parental education, family wealth) on financial socialization, financial confidence, and financial literacy scores. We used data on the 4328 Finnish 15-year-olds participating in the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). We measured financial literacy by cognitive test items and assessed financial socialization and financial confidence by adolescent questionnaires. First, the results showed that financial education in school positively predicted adolescents' confidence in using financial and digital financial services. Second, financial education at schools and in families indirectly predicted students' financial literacy through confidence in using digital financial services. Third, older adolescents were more exposed to financial education at school and in families, whereas adolescents from wealthier families and girls (vs. boys) were exposed to a more frequent discussion of financial matters with parents at home. Furthermore, the boys were more confident in using financial services than the girls, although the financial literacy score did not differ by gender; older adolescents were more confident in using financial services and achieved better financial literacy than younger ones. Finally, higher parental education in the family related to higher financial literacy but not to higher financial confidence, whereas family wealth was related to higher financial confidence but not financial literacy.