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One of the greatest challenges that global brands face as they expand into new markets and segments is overcoming social and cultural barriers that prevent them from being accepted by consumers. By drawing on theories of Mead’s prefigurative cultures, reverse socialization and symbolic interactionism, this paper aims to investigate the process of reverse socialization, the antecedents and its impact on parents’ attitude toward the reverse socialized brand.

Using in-depth interviewing method, data were collected from 20 Chinese consumers by capturing the accounts of both parents and their children involved in reverse socialization. The interpretive content analysis was used to study the data.

Reverse socialization exerts positive influence on brand attitude and facilitates parents’ adoption of the socialized brand. The brand has acquired additional symbolic meanings for Chinese consumers, which in turn enhances self-brand connections among them.

Managerial implications include strategies for cross-cultural marketers to maximize the acceptance of brands by elderly consumers through reverse socialization and efficiently expand the brands’ market into more segments.

As the first research of its kind (to the authors’ knowledge), the findings fill a gap in the marketing literature by demonstrating adult children’s influence on parents through reverse socialization.

This paper aims to offer an interrogation for the purposes of theoretical clarity, precision and validity. Family communication patterns (FCPs) about consumption is a commonly used measure in consumer socialisation. However, it has not been properly assessed for validity in marketing since it was developed in the 1970s. Previously developed and commonly used scales were used to examine communication styles and communication quality to test whether these older measures were still valid and applicable to the modern consumer context.

Critique of extant measures suggested the need for a more precise and contemporary conceptualisation of family communication about consumption. A new conceptualisation was then empirically tested using a psychometric theory approach to scale development. By using a dyadic design, family communication between parents and young adult children in 180 families was examined.

The early concepts are now outdated and do not readily translate into current language and family interaction styles. The terms “socio-” and “concept-orientation” no longer convey the essence of family communication. Contemporary families perceive “socio-oriented” communication as controlling and negative, while “concept-orientation” is seen as encouraging and positive. Thus, the dimensions are more purposefully labelled as encouraging and controlling family communication. A new typology of family communication styles (FCSs) was developed.

A new, empirically tested, four-quadrant matrix of FCSs based on consumer socialisation theories is put forward. This includes four distinct communication styles within families, namely permissive (low encouraging and low controlling), prohibitive (low encouraging and high controlling), pluralistic (high encouraging and low controlling) and protective (high encouraging and high controlling) FCSs.

This paper aims to describe an ethnographic research study conducted within French families in order to examine the transfer of food learning between parents and children.

An ethnographic study in the respondents' home was conducted. Semi‐directive interviews with children and parents and observation were carried out in heterogeneous families.

Results indicate that food meal time is a way of socializing family members in consumption skills related to food. Food learning took place in two ways: from parents to children and from children to parents. Through different socialization factors, children will discover new food products or food practices and will be able to bring them to the home. By sharing these new experiences, children teach (directly or indirectly) parents new consumption skills related to the food domain. The food environment (e.g: familial atmosphere, interactions around the meal), more than the act of eating itself allows for a better understanding of food transmission within the family.

These findings would be of benefit to public policy as well as to investors and food manufacturers by integrating the reverse socialization aspect. Limits and research perspectives are discussed after the presentation of the results.

The paper investigates interactions between parents and children within their natural setting: their home.

The purpose of this paper is to establish how consumer knowledge is transferred among family members in multi-generational families, based on the consumer socialisation theory. Understanding how consumers learn about consumption and are socialised as consumers is critical to developing marketing strategies throughout the family lifecycle. Central to current conceptions of consumer socialisation is the idea that individuals make decisions as outcomes of previous socialisation processes. However, socialisation takes place in the meso-level social setting and there is need to understand how these meso-systems interact when it comes to consumption.

Using a social system design and dyadic analysis, the authors tested knowledge transfer and consumer socialisation agency in multi-generation families in Vietnam, yielding a sample size of 654 individuals and 218 families.

The authors demonstrate the role of consumer socialisation agency on consumer knowledge transfer between people within families. The study illustrates that where knowledge is limited, family-related services and household products will be jointly considered within the family.

This study was undertaken within a single country setting, but the technique and findings have wider implications for collectivist family decision-making in other settings. The limitations of cross-sectional research are acknowledged; the method specifically overcomes issues with self-reported measures by collecting data from multiple people within the social system.

Our findings suggest that consumer knowledge and learning is bi-directionally transferred through consumer socialisation agency. In complex new market situations, marketers can target the social system and ensure that knowledge will be transferred between members.

Social system design and dyadic analysis have not previously been used to examine meso-level consumption settings. The results provide unique understanding of consumer learning in social settings.

The primary purpose of this paper is to investigate empirically the impact of the internet on teenage childrens' roles in purchase decisions.

Based on a survey administered to 346 parent‐child dyads, regression analysis and ANOVA analysis were employed to analyze the impact of the internet on teenagers' influence on several purchase subdecisions related with purchase of high technology products and vacation planning in urban Indian households.

Results indicate that teenage children in urban Indian households are significantly influenced by the internet, i.e. they perceive and disseminate consumption related information from the internet and, further, this influence is positively related to their role in family purchase decisions. Additionally, statistically significant differences were found on children's participation in decision making across the six subdecisions.

These results are important to academicians, researchers and practitioners because they show that the internet does act as a contemporary influence on consumer socialization of children and impacts the teenage child's participation in family which has been relatively unexplored.

Responding to calls for a greater understanding of consumer socialization in young people, this paper aims to investigate daughters' perceptions of shopping with their mothers. It seeks to provide insights into the significance of the retail shopping experience for young women.

This exploratory study is based on 30 online and three face‐to‐face interviews with young women aged between 20 and 22. The authors asked the young women who they shopped with and why and to recount some of their best and worst shopping experiences. The interviews were coded and analysed to reveal several recurring themes. This paper reports only on data relating to shopping with their mothers.

The four major themes that emerged from the interviews with the young women were: gaining independence; trust in mother; the bank of mum; quality time with mum.

The sample is limited to young women in a Midwest university in the USA. Attitudes to consumption and shopping and the mother daughter relationship are culturally derived and may differ in other contexts.

Women are critical to the retail industry and make the bulk of buying decisions for the family. Daughters represent the next generation of this major market force. Marketers and retailers must be cognizant of the power of this relationship.

This paper is the first to report on the daughter‐mother shopping experience, with daughters' perceptions of this experience and the outcomes of the consumer socialisation that occur.

This paper aims to report on the efforts of a wholesaler in overcoming one of the main barriers to successful marketing channels – namely the “transparency problem”.

A decision‐support tool that is capable of providing detailed cost‐analysis of transportation arrangements is developed and applied within the context of an action research project set up to improve information exchange of sensitive information between a shipper and two carriers in a Norwegian grocery supply chain.

The study finds that the application of the decision‐support tool is associated with: a transition from arm's‐length transactional relationships to integrated collaborative relationships; enhanced communication and trust between the parties; and substantial savings in distribution costs.

Action research methodology confined to a single shipper and two carriers limits the confidence with which the findings can be generalised; future studies should formally test the effects of communication and trust on integration.

The study provides practical suggestions for achieving mutual benefits from closer collaboration between buyers and suppliers of transportation services.

The study extends knowledge of how to achieve integrated supply‐chain relationships in practice through the utilisation of a new and comprehensive decision‐support tool.

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.

This paper aims to explore the mother–adolescent daughter shopping trip to better understand the experiences and process that occur during these shopping trips. Adolescent girls and their mothers are an important shopping companion pair that has received minimal study.

This research investigates the mother–adolescent daughter shopping trip using in-depth interviews with 28 mothers, adolescent daughters and retail employees in the USA.

The interviews reveal that the mother–adolescent daughter shopping trip consists of three important developmental experiences: conflict and struggle, education and influence and bonding between mother and daughter. Similarities and differences between middle- and high-school daughters relative to these issues are explored.

This study is the first to bring together the interplay processes of conflict, education and influence and bonding during mother–adolescent daughter shopping trips. This study extends research regarding family identity interplay, companion shopping, adolescent identity development and consumer socialization. The authors find that the mother–adolescent daughter shopping trip involves daughters’ efforts to separate from their mothers and form their own identities, often producing struggle and conflicts; daughters developing as consumers and individuals; and an opportunity to bond.

An important part of the Christmas ritual is the request tradition. Parents ask their children what they would like for Christmas, respond to a child's request or often initiate such Christmas communication exchanges. These styles of family communication relate to the socialization of children into consumption and Christmas. This exploratory study aims to consider aspects of parental approaches to their children's request behavior within the Family Communication Patterns (FCP) typology.

Data were gathered via a survey of parents in the period prior to Christmas supported the factor structure of the FCP typology via Exploratory Factor Analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis.

It appears that parents encourage a positive exchange of desire and opinion from children; they also question the sources of information and suitability of the gift. In this manner, parents appear to condone, if not generate, an atmosphere of open request behavior because the limiting of gift requests through direct parental instruction is minimal.

Continual adaptation of the FCP typology from the original context has implications for consumer behavior theory at a factor analysis level. Parental responses to Christmas request behavior are an important topic of interest to consumer behavior researchers, the toy industry, retailers and business in general.

This research explores contemporary issues of parental interactions with their children during the gift request ritual. It is timely to explore theory related to this topic because much of the rhetoric around Christmas accentuates the pester power syndrome. Yet, Christmas symbolizes love, family and nurture where parental values engender request behavior and children's desires generate the requests. The findings have consequences for consumer advocates and social commentators, as well as providing cultural and ritual interpretations within parent‐child interactions.