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Family consumption studies have been criticised for using an individualistic or dyadic approach to explore the types of influence strategies that children use to sway parental decisions. In this study, attention is refocused on the voices of South African families within twenty-first-century familial interactions. The purpose of this paper is to explore the prevalence of pester power in South Africa, and to understand the influence strategies used by children and the different categories of products that children attempt to influence the purchasing of. Parental responses to these strategies are also explored to determine their effectiveness.

An exploratory research design using quantitative, but mainly, qualitative data, was used to draw insights from 135 families to understand intra-familial negotiation tactics within the context of family consumption and everyday family life. Thematic content analysis was used to extract themes from the responses.

The findings suggest that children use everyday family interactions as a resource to select successful pester and negotiation tactics. These children have a relatively deep understanding of how to influence their parents by using different tactics, such as emotional appeals, product requests, purchase justifications and bad behaviour. Children were found to have an awareness regarding the circumstances during which these tactics are more effective.

The contribution offered by this paper is first to build on calls for perspectives in the African context, when marketing to children and second, to add deeper understanding of the categories that children from South Africa influence, and the negotiating tactics that they use. This also contributes to an understanding of the intra-familial interaction processes leading to the eventual emergence of influence strategies and concomitant consumption behaviour.

This study sets out to capture the consumer perspective regarding the purchase request relationship between parent and child.

This interpretive study enhances an understanding of these purchase request experiences as they are lived by respondents. The story of both parents, along with children, is thus considered paramount. Using a series of depth‐interviews and focus groups with parents and children, a key theme emerged through the interpretive process. “The game” permeates their experiences of this request relationship and is virtually unreported until now.

Contrary to extant research, this study positions the contemporary parent‐child purchase relationship as a positive experience where an understanding of “the game” permeates this natural familial interaction. Furthermore, a tacit understanding and awareness of the intricacies associated with “the game”, including each other's roles, tactics, outcomes, feelings and perspectives regarding “the game”, are considered playful and entertaining by all respondents.

First, adopting a consumer‐centric approach as the focus of this research instead of the much reported “vested interest” perspective added a new breadth and dimension to an understanding of the parent‐child purchase request relationship not previously captured. Second, the departure from extant positivistic research, to an interpretive approach proved very beneficial in uncovering “the game”: a novel departure from previous pester power research.

The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of chocolate packaging and brand on the purchasing decisions of a number of Iranian children and their parents. The paper also aims to investigate the role of pester power as a moderating variable in the relationship between children’s purchasing decision and that of their parents.

Data were collected using a 26-item Likert-scaled questionnaire administered in February 2013 to the parents of 600 children at two daycare centers and four elementary schools in the city of Qazvin in Iran. The returned and complete questionnaires were subjected to confirmatory factor analysis and path analysis within structural equation modeling using IBM® Amos and SPSS statistical packages.

The results show that packaging and brand have a positive effect on parents. However, children were only influenced by packaging, and not brand. Further, it was found that children influenced their parents during store visits. The study also confirms the moderating role of children’s pester power in the relationship between children’s purchasing decision and that of their parents.

A limitation of the study is that the issue of the effect of packaging and brand on children was explored through the opinions of parents. Also, due to budget constraints, images of chocolate products rather than real packages were used. Future research might study the effect of other factors such as peers, socio-cultural issues, and economic status. Another possibility would be to include other variables such as mental involvement and time constraint.

The findings of the study might be useful for all manufacturers and suppliers of goods. More specifically, managers and marketing agents in the chocolate industry are recommended to improve children’s brand awareness through advertising as a way of making them want to buy branded products.

The most important difference between this work and previous studies is its use of children’s pester power as a moderating factor in the relationship between the purchasing decision of children and that of their parents. Another good thing about this paper is that it gives the reader an insight into the Iranian context. The results give the manufacturers a better understanding of the factors children take into account when deciding to purchase something.

Explores the reasons behind parents’ food purchases for their children, relating this to the part that advertising is alleged to play in the purchase of unhealthy food, and in particular the issue of “pester power” or the nag factor. Reports a study of 1530 families in the UK sponsored by the Food Advertising Unit, which explored the questions of whether parents know enough about healthy diets, how they react to pestering, what they think about advertising to children, and the relation of income level to attitudes. Finds that parents do have reservations about advertising to children, with most of them feeling that advertisers manipulate children; but at the same time parents accept this as a fact of life in a consumer society and still feel that they have more influence on their children than do the advertisers.

Children are familiar with retail outlets (especially supermarkets) and the reality of shopping from an increasingly early age. In turn, retailers are actively engaging this young market, targeting them through various promotional strategies. One popular strategy adopted by grocery retailers is giveaway collectible set items. The purpose of this paper is to question the ethicality of such campaigns, within the framework of vulnerable consumers by examining children’s opinions of the campaigns and the supermarkets who run them, and the drivers of children’s involvement in the campaigns.

Qualitative focus groups were employed with 67 children aged five to ten years. Focus groups were made up of children in similar age groups to cluster responses by age and allow for comparisons. Thematic analysis was undertaken and responses were coded into themes.

Children were initially driven to collect through promotional advertising or because a third party offered them a collectible. The drivers for subsequent collecting differed between age groups, with younger children more focussed on themes around play and older children (seven and above) collecting through habit, because it was a craze amongst their peers and therefore the collections became items of social currency. Children’s perceptions of the supermarkets motivations also differed by age. Younger children thought supermarkets gave the collectibles away as “gifts” for altruistic reasons. The older children articulated a clear understanding of the economic motives of the organisation including: to attract children to their stores, to encourage pester power and to increase revenue by encouraging customers to buy more. The older children questioned the ethics of the collectible campaigns, referring to them as scams.

The findings extend the important discussion on the nature of children’s vulnerability to advertising by showing that the children’s vulnerability stretches beyond their ability to understand advertising intent. Despite older children in the present study being cognisant of retailers’ intentions they were still vulnerable to the scheme; the embeddedness of the scheme in the social lives of the children meant they lacked agency to opt out of it. Further, the finding that the scheme transcended boundaries in the children’s lives, for instance, being associated with social currency at school, highlights the potential negative impact such schemes can have on the well-being of children.

Until now, research has investigated the motivations that children have to collect, but previous studies have focussed on collections which have been determined by the children. This paper presents the opinions and perceptions of the children who are directly targeted by commercial organisations to collect and raises concerns around the ethicality of such schemes.

This article looks at the rise of the junior consumer, in particular the reasons behind their increased spending power. It then examines the ways in which children influence the spending of their parents by using ‘a combination of emotional blackmail, negotiation and pychological warfare’. Finally, the article explores the learned cynicism' with which children react towards marketing and suggests some strategies marketers can adopt to appeal to the junior consumer.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how children can be empowered in the research process, as active agents and key informants, in matters affecting their consumption.

Insights are drawn from a study that used multiple methods to explore children's everyday food consumption practices. The data set was gathered over a period of two years and included: 23 informant‐generated visual diaries; seven online depth interviews; 15 school‐based depth interviews; 42 days of school‐based mealtime observations; and home‐based mealtime observations with four families, each visited on five different occasions.

The paper uncovers how visual diaries can be used in combination with other methods to transform relationships between adults and children in the research encounter. The emergent transformations are organised around three core themes that include: children's authentic voices; multiplex reality; and power and control. It was also found that children were able to express their own interpretations and thoughts about their food consumption practices, rather than solely relying on the adult interpretations of their lives.

For scholars and practitioners, the paper offers an approach that provides an opportunity for children to participate in family food decision‐making processes. It offers a cautionary tale not just about getting children to talk, but to allow children's voices to be heard in food policy initiatives, as well as in qualitative research and marketing. This poses a challenge to social researchers to think of different ways of engaging children in research.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate parents' attitudes toward advertising to children, and advertised foods in particular, as well as parental concern regarding children's nutrition habits and the degree to which these perceptions influence television monitoring by parents.

A questionnaire assessing attitudes was distributed among parents of Belgian primary and secondary school children. Parental mediation of television viewing was measured by self‐reports. A structural equation model was built using data from a sample of 485 parents.

The study finds that parental nutrition attitudes and the degree to which advertising causes family conflicts and pestering are among the most important drivers of restrictive mediation of television. Attitudes towards food advertising, the degree to which children can understand the commercial intent of advertising and the perceived influence of advertisements on children do not directly affect restrictive mediation.

The model was based on a single‐country study, and did not distinguish between parents of different socio‐economic backgrounds or between parents with children in different age categories. All the constructs used in this model were self‐reports. The model could also be extended to encompass different types of mediation.

Parents serve as gatekeepers for children's television viewing. Advertisers targeting children need to obtain the green light of the gatekeepers before they can reach the children. It is therefore important that advertisers have an understanding of how parents perceive advertising and which factors specifically incite them to restrict their children's viewing.

Attitudes of parents are considered as a multidimensional construct, consisting of “commercial intent”, “conflict” and a separate component relating to advertised foods. The differential impact of each of these components, as well as parents' nutritional concerns and perceived advertisement influence, on restrictive mediation is assessed.

Reports research on the degree to which UK adolescents feel they have an impact on decision making within their families, and the extent to which adolescents and parents agree or disagree with the adolescent’s perceived influence when purchasing products;most previous research has concentrated on children rather than adolescents. Discusses the concept of consumer socialisation, i.e. the process by which young people acquire skills, knowledge and attitude relevant to their functioning as consumers; although parents are the foremost influences in this, there is also reverse socialisation, where children use their product knowledge to influence parents’ decisions. Distinguishes between socio‐oriented and concept‐oriented parental communication: the latter is likely to increase the child’s influence on decision‐making. Outlines demographic changes, such as the greater number of one‐parent households and two‐income families, which have produced “time‐poor” parents: the result is that children and adolescents now exercise a greater influence on purchasing decisions. Tests two hypotheses: that parents and adolescents disagree in their perceived ratings of adolescents’ product category decision influence; and that male and female adolescents’ perceived influences differ across a range of product categories. Concludes that parents and adolescents generally agree, but that there is some degree of difference between male and female perceived influence ratings, in the categories of large purchases and food.

Discusses the hot topic of anti‐brand activity, in particular the dangers of treating children as mini‐adults in marketing, and the issue of anti‐fast food campaigns; the article is based on a speech of Malcolm Earnshaw, Director General of the ISBA. Summarises some current press coverage which is critical of the advertising industry given the growing problem of child obesity, and the resulting adverse impact of this hostile coverage on companies like McDonalds; the campaigns link up with the anti‐globalisation movement. Urges corporations to consider fully the social as well as the financial effects of their activities.