Degree of influence children have on parental purchasing decisions in Singapore.

Abstract

Our research is to investigate the degree of influence children have on parental purchasing decisions in Singapore. We explore the influence by defining the final user(s) of the products (Children Products, Family Products and Adult Products), the types of products in terms of involvement (High-Involvement and Low-Involvement) and the types of influences children have on the purchasing decisions (Direct Request, Solicited Opinions and Indirect Influence). Our purpose is to provide meaningful insights to marketers regarding who to target with their marketing mix strategies (the parents and/or the children) as well as which strategies to use in relations to the types of products being marketed when it comes to making purchasing decisions. We carried out surveys and interviews for our research. The findings are that children exert the most influence on children products, followed by family products and finally adult products. Generally, they have higher influence on low-involvement products than high-involvement products. On the whole, indirect influence has the most effect on parental purchasing decisions, followed by solicited opinions and then direct influence. For adult products, children generally have little influence and thus no reason to be the focus of marketing efforts. For children products in general, marketers can use all three influences (direct influence, solicited opinions and indirect influence) to affect parental purchasing decisions as all three influences affect parental purchasing decisions. Marketers can consider putting more influence on children in low-involvement products especially foodstuff.