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

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>2012
<mark>Journal</mark>Advances in Consumer Research
Volume39
Number of pages8
Pages (from-to)366-373
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

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.