How best to get their own way:children's influence strategies within families

Kerrane, Ben and Hogg, Margaret (2012) How best to get their own way:children's influence strategies within families. Advances in Consumer Research, 39. pp. 366-373. ISSN 0915-5524

Abstract

How do children decide how best to try and get their own way? Despite extensive studies of children’s influence strategies there has been little research into understanding why children utilise given influence strategies i.e. “the underlying motivations of strategy usage” (Palan and Wilkes 1997, p.167). The motivations that drive the choice of different influence strategies result from a combination of personal goals and environmental factors. The family environment provides children with some of their most important experiences about how best to compete for limited resources (e.g. time, attention, money). Choices about the allocation of income across family members’ preferences are central to children’s consumer socialization. In order to throw more light on the motivations for children’s choice of particular strategies in their family environment (Cotte and Wood 2004), we investigate the family environments in which the influence strategies are played out; and how far the family environment has a moderating effect on the types of influence strategies that children use. Our contribution is thus twofold. Firstly we seek to better understand the family environments in which children reside; and secondly, to identify the implications that the different family environments may have in relation to each child’s choice of influence strategies within their family setting. Our study responds to Cotte and Wood’s (2004) and Flurry’s (2007) call for research that explores further the purchase influence of children in families, specifically by exploring how the family environment affects the influence strategies that children employ.