Empirical Study Of Tweens' Influence On Family Purchase Decision In China: An Integrated Method

Children are influential, primary and future customers They form a large and ever increasing market segment.. Owing to the biggest children populations,the special family planning policy and its special culture background, the potential of children's influential market is extremely large in China.Based on Consumer Socialization Theory and Social power Theory, this paper put forward an integrative model of children's influence on family purchase decision-making to solve three questions, including the amount of influence Chinese children exerting to family purchase decision-making, key factors that will affect Chinese children's influence on family purchase decision-making, and how these factors may impact on family decision-making process in Chinese culture background. By the survey to 342 tweens samples, this research empirically demonstrates the integrative model and makes conclusions as follows:Firstly, we find out that Chinese tweens wield substantial influences to family purchase decision-making process, and tweens'influence is higher in initial stage than in information search/final decision stage.Secondly, our analysis results show that the main factors affecting Chinese tweens'influence on family purchase decision-making are family socialization factors(family communicate pattern, FCP), the intensity of tween's motivation (perceive product importance), tweens'personal resource (product knowledge) and family power factors(tweens'perceived parents'power and tweens'influencing strategy).Thirdly, our analysis results show that FCP and tweens'product knowledge exert an indirect rather than direct effect on tweens'influence in family decisions. The relationships between them are partially mediated by family power factor.Fourthly, resource theory proposes that the amount and value of resources possessed by an individual has a direct, positive relationship with the amount of power possessed by the individual and, therefore, a direct effect on the influence a person may exert in decision-making. From the view of Resource Theory, knowledge is a kind of resource. Our analyses show that tweens'product knowledge has a significantly negative correlation with tweens'perceived parental power which provides an empirical support to the proposition above. In addition, we find out that tweens' perceived parent power, partly mediate the relationship between product knowledge and influence strategy.Finally, we find out that tweens who take bilateral strategies are more influential in family purchase decision-making than those who take unilateral strategies in China.This paper makes some important theoretical contribution to family decision making as follows:First, most empirical researches of children's influence on family purchase decision-making were in American or European context. Empirical related researches in Chinese context are still lack. Our empirical research provides the probability for inter-country.comparison.Second,previous empirical research of children's influence on family purchase decision making were mostly in 1980's and 1990's in 20th century. Present Per Capita Net Income in China is almost corresponding to Per Capita Net Income that time in America. So our research is ready for the base of country comparison.Third, by integrating social power theory and consumer socialization theory, the study proposes a conceptual model of tweens' influence on family purchase decision. Power relational theory appears to complement the consumer socialization theory in explaining children's gains of consumer knowledge and skills from their parents.Four, there is inconsistencies in relationship between tweens's product knowledge and children's influence in previous empirical research. Some concluded that it has direct and positive correlation between them (i.e. Foxmal et al.,1989; Tinson & Nancarrow,2005) but some argued that there are no significant correlation between them (i.e. Beatty & Talpade,1994).The study shows that the relationship between tweens's product knowledge and tweens' influence on family purchase decision-making is mediated by social power factors (tweens's perceived parents power and tweens'influence strategy).This suggest that the lack of mediating variable in prior research may have led to the inconsistencies in the relationship between product knowledge and children's influence.