Editorial

Citation

Young, B.M. (2013), "Editorial", Young Consumers, Vol. 14 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/yc.2013.32114aaa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Young Consumers, Volume 14, Issue 1

Welcome to the first issue of 2014 and let me take this opportunity of wishing you “peace and prosperity” for the New Year. It’s difficult enough to project what January will bring from the vantage point of November 2012 when this Editorial goes off to the publishers but I guess the wish will have a certain urgency for many of us.

This month we have a predominance of papers, five altogether, from the US and an increasing interest from that country in publishing in our journal is very welcome. Two more, from France and New Zealand, complete this month’s selection of academic papers. I have tried to organise them thematically and the lead article is a paper by Valérie Hemar-Nicolas and her colleagues from France who have looked at the question of food and dietary habits in children. Using qualitative techniques they have conducted a systemic analysis of the different sources of influence on children and provide us with useful insights, such as the role of grandparents, as well as a solid theoretical justification for their procedures. Dana-Nicoleta Lascu and her colleagues in the USA have explored the regulatory environment for on-line food marketing to children in France, Spain and the USA. This comprehensive and systematic review of regulation and compliance in these three countries together with a critical look at food company web site information is invaluable for readers who are involved in this area and also provides a resource for the serious student.

Two papers next, on the new digital media. Social media are hugely popular across the world with young consumers. Huan Chen and Audrey Deterding looked at college students in the USA and how they perceived product placement on Facebook. Using qualitative analysis with a phenomenological approach they confirm an interesting paradox – that consumers tend to remember prominently placed brands but evaluate them less favourably while they have a more positive attitude toward subtle brands but are less likely recall them. Robert Davis and Bodo Lang from New Zealand examined game playing, an engaging on-line activity for youth, in the context of self-congruity theory – does this activity fit in with how I see myself? They found that, as expected, there is some relationship that affects usage or purchase and they give us a particularly interesting discussion surrounding violent games which would inform the debate about whether such violence in game playing has an effect of young people.

Ji Young Lee and her colleagues from the USA have chosen fashion items as their topic for research and they have focussed on disposal of these items when they are no longer wanted. I was impressed with this as consumption does encompass not just shopping but also the whole cycle of consumer-related activity and young women often consume fashion items as fast-moving consumer goods. There is valuable research here as well as an extremely comprehensive and helpful review of the literature.

Danielle Way and Yuvay Jeanine Meyers’s research investigated the factors influencing perceived risk during the very specific consumer scenario of an adopting parent in the US making purchase decisions for their new child. Using phenomenological qualitative methods they perceptively illustrate the uncertainty that these consumers face in preparing for adoption.

Srdan Zdravkovic from the US looked at Generation Y consumers in the USA and the country of origin (COO) effect. To what extent does the country a product is from add (or subtract) value from that product? The interesting turn of this research is measures were taken of the consumers’ attitudes toward other countries, including measures of how cosmopolitan and ethnocentric they were. Although results were mixed, this research could be developed cross-culturally looking at different consumer attitudes toward products marketed internationally to young consumers.

And finally we have our regular paper looking at regulatory aspects of advertising to children on a country by country basis. This quarter we look at Mexico with a paper by Marina Hurtado and Arochi Marroquin. As usual these are coordinated by GALA, the Global Advertising Lawyer’s Alliance and I am grateful to Stacy Bess from their New York office for all the help and assistance she provides with each issue.

I hope you enjoy these papers and many thanks to all our reviewers and contributors without whom these regular issues would not be possible.

Brian M. YoungEditor