Professor Rob Aitken and Associate Professor Leah Watkins, from the Department of Marketing, found children are capable of being competent and thoughtful consumers.
Taking children to the supermarket isn’t always top of the list for parents, but the family grocery shop can have a positive influence on children’s future buying habits.
New University of Otago – Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka research, published in Young Consumers, found parents can help their children become competent consumers by involving them in supermarket shopping, and explaining the reasons for their purchasing choices and the values that underpin them.
Co-authors Associate Professor Leah Watkins and Professor Rob Aitken, from the Department of Marketing at Otago Business School, set out to discover what factors can help children make thoughtful spending decisions as they grow up.
Associate Professor Watkins says a central concern for researchers is how individuals become competent consumers and develop the ability to make independent and informed choices between competing alternatives in relation to economic, social and personal considerations.
“Given the growing commercialisation of childhood, understanding how children learn about the consumption environments in which they live and develop the competencies needed to negotiate them, is increasingly important.”
They studied pairs of parents and children aged 10 – 12 years old, who were tasked with undertaking a week’s shopping for their family.
While loading their trolleys, the children made sure they stocked up on essential food items as well as salt, pepper, cooking oil and general household items such as tissues, food wrap and toiletries.
They made sure to include specific items that other family members preferred, such as a favourite shampoo.
Importantly, they were conscious of making healthy choices - allocating a large portion of their shop to fresh fruit, bread and vegetables - and echoed their parent’s values around frugality and ethical consumption.
When considering pricing, the children recognised the need to keep within a budget and contemplate price promotions, balancing this with determining which products were best value for money.
“Results show children are highly aware of the competing demands of individual and family needs and exhibited complex decision making that recognised the necessity of reconciling the needs of different family members.”
- Associate Professor Leah Watkins
Associate Professor Watkins says the study revealed the children to be competent, thoughtful and engaged consumers.
“Results show children are highly aware of the competing demands of individual and family needs and exhibited complex decision making that recognised the necessity of reconciling the needs of different family members.”
What makes a positive difference, is how parents speak to their children about buying choices, she says.
Many parent participants in the study identified grocery shopping as an opportunity to teach their children the values and principles that underpinned their decision-making and motivated their product preferences, including the importance of healthy eating behaviours and ethical consumption.
“Although children gained considerable practical knowledge from observing parents’ behaviour around planning meals, selecting products and provisioning the household for example, they also acquired underpinning knowledge from parents’ intentional explanations of the values and justifications for their consumption choices.”
The parental influence on the children’s consumption behaviour is pivotal to the development of long-term attitudes and beliefs, she says.
Professor Aitken says their research was inspired by a previous study in the 1950s, where researchers attempted to discover what consumption choices children would make in the supermarket if they were free from parental control and relieved of financial constraint.
“An assumption was that the children would make decisions based on self-interest and personal indulgence,” he says.
The 1950s children made sensible choices, but researchers put this down to their experiences living through shortages and austerity following World War II.
“With our study, we wanted to find out if the escalating rates of consumption in today’s world would affect children’s choices, but we were pleasantly surprised to see the children making conscientious decisions.”
Publication details
The nature and development of children’s consumer competence: evidence from the aisles
Authors: Leah Watkins, Robert Aitken
Young Consumers
DOI: 10.1108/YC-05-2024-2080
- Further information about Associate Professor Watkins and Professor Aitken
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