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TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1. Problem Statement………………………………………………...6
1.2. Purpose of the Study ………………………………………….......7
1.3. Importance of the Study ……………………………………….....8
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. General Overview...…………………………………………….....9
2.2. Socialization………………………………………………………11
2.3. Consumer Socialization…………………………………………..14
2.4. Socialization Agents...……………………………………………15
2.5. Social Media...…………………………………………………….20
2.5.1. What is Social Media?...…………………………………………….21
2.5.2. History and Evaluation of Social Media…………………………… 23
2.5.3. Challenges and Opportunities of Social Media in Business Life ..... 28
2.6. Kids Marketing...………………………………………………….34
2.7. Adolescents Effects on Purchase Decisions………………………42
3. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY
3.1. Hypothesized Model..............................................................................48
3.2. Research Instrument…...……………………………………………...53
3.2.1. Social Media Usage…...…………………………………………….54
3.2.2. Social Media as a Consumer Socialization Agent…………………..54
3.2.3. Purchase Intention….……………………………………………….56
3.3. Data Collection.....................................................................................57
4. RESULTS
4.1. Descriptive Statistics..………………………………………………..58
4.2. Social Media Usage …………………………………………………63
4.3. Hypothesis …………………………………………………………..63
5. DISCUSSIONS and CONCLUSION
5.1. Discussions ………………………………………………………….80
5.2. Conclusion …………………………………………………………..82
5.3. Managerial Implications …………………………………………….83
7. Limitations and Future research ………………………………………85
8. REFERENCES ………………………………………………………..89
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ABSTRACT
Key words- Kids Marketing, Consumer Socialization, Consumer Socialization Agents, Social Media, Digital Marketing, Internet, Consumer Behaviour, Family Purchase Decision.
Günümüzde kendi ihtiyaçlarını satın alan, ailenin satınalma davranışı üzerinde de ciddi etkileri olan çocuk tüketicilerin sayıları gün geçtikçe artmaktadır. Bu durum araştırmacıların dikkatini çekmiştir. Çocukların tüketici olarak sosyalleşmesi üzerinde aile, medya, okul tipi ve akranlarının etkileri araştırılmıştır. Sosyal Medya, internet kullanımının da artması ile çocukların hayatlarında önemli bir rol kazanmıştır. Bu araştırmada Sosyal Medya, çocukların tüketici olarak sosyalleşmesi üzerinde etkisi olan bir araç olarak incelenmiştir. Bu araştırmanın hedefi Sosyal Medya’nın, İstanbul’daki 11-15 yaş aralığında bulunan çocukların , tüketici olarak sosyalleşmesi üzerindeki ve yine çocukların satınalma tutumları üzerindeki rolünün belirlenmesidir. Araştırma sonuçlarına bakıldığında, cinsiyet, ailenin demografik özellikleri, okul tipi, yaş ve Sosyal Medya üyeliklerinin, çocukların tüketici olarak sosyalleşmesi ve satınalma davranışları üzerinde etkilerinin olduğu anlaşılmıştır.
Adolescents possess an important role as a consumer in the market by making their own purchases and effecting parental purchase decisions . Researchers pay attention on adolescents consuming tendencies and define the socialization agents as peers, school, media and parents. Social Media is taking an important role in adolescents life in the paralel of increase in internet usage . Social Media is in the tendency of being a socialization agent . In this study, Social Media is being kept as a socialization agent for adolescents. The purpose of this study is to share the findings of an exploratory study conducted to determine the role of Social Media as a consumer socialization agent and family purchase decision impact of adolescents between the ages of 11-15 in Istanbul. The results of the survey gives us gender, parental demographical characteristics, school type, age and Social Media membership has a significant effect on adolescents consumer socialization and purchase behaviour.
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LIST OF TABLES
Page No
Table 1: Classification of Social Media ……………………………………………28
Table 2: Distribution of Females and Males ……………………………………….58
Table 3: Distribution of Age ……………………………………………………….59
Table 4: Distribution of Government and Private School Students ……………….60
Table 5: Distribution of Mothers’ Job ……………………………………………..61
Table 6: Distribution of Fathers’ Job ………………………………………………62
Table 7: Chi Square Test of H1 Hypothesis ……………………………………….65
Table 8: Cross Tabulation of H1 Hypothesis ……………………………………...66
Table 9: Chi Suare Test of H2 Hypothesis ………………………………………...67
Table 10: Cross Tabulation of H2 Hypothesis ……………………………………...68
Table 11: Chi Square Test of H3 Hypothesis ……………………………………….69
Table 12: Cross Tabulation of H3 Hypothesis ……………………………………...69
Table 13: Chi Suare Test of H4 Hypothesis ………………………………………...70
Table 14: Cross Tabulation of H4 Hypothesis ……………………………………...71
Table 15: Chi Square Test of H5 Hypothesis ……………………………………….72
Table 16: Cross Tabulation of H5 Hypothesis ……………………………………...72
Table 17: Chi Suare Test of H6 Hypothesis ………………………………………...73
Table 18: Cross Tabulation of H6 Hypothesis ……………………………………...74
Table 19: Chi Square Test of H7 Hypothesis ……………………………………….75
Table 20: Cross Tabulation of H7 Hypothesis ……………………………………...76
Table 21: Chi Suare Test of H8 Hypothesis ………………………………………...77
Table 22: Cross Tabulation of H8 Hypothesis ……………………………………...77
Table 23: Chi Suare Test of H9 Hypothesis ………………………………………...79
Table 24: Cross Tabulation of H9 Hypothesis ……………………………………...79
1. INTRODUCTION
Socialization could be described as the process where a child becomes a member of society and acquires skills that are required to function in the culture he or she is born into. The child takes place an active role in this process that even of a newborn baby, which has biological needs or demands.
Socialization is an unlimited process. Learning and adjusting to new situations is a part of the whole lifecycle, although it is more impressive in infancy and childhood. In modern society we have to go through periods of re-socialization in some respects.
Socialization is not the same for everybody but it is a process that everyone has to go through. Females are socialized in different ways than male . Families from different social classes socialize their children in different ways. The same differences could be recognized between ethnic communities. There are also different kinds of influences occured during children’s primary socialization.
In the seminal work in this area, Scott Ward (1971, p. 2) defined consumer socialization as the “processes by which young people acquire skills, knowledge , and attitudes relevant to their functioning as consumers in the marketplace .” He argued that in order to understand the consumer behavior of adult , one must first grasp the nature of the childhood experiences of the adults, since those experiences shape patterns of cognition and behavior later in life . Ward sought to understand how children acquire attitudes about the “social significance” of goods, or how they learn that the acquisition of some kinds of products or brands of goods can be “instrumental to successful social role enactment” (p. 3).
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Consumer’s skills, attitudes and behaviour are defining consumption actions. Consumer skills include such practices as pricing goods before making a purchase decision , knowing the rights of the consumer and budgeting . Consumer attitudes include the affective orientation toward good, both general and specific , the value placed on the practice of consumption and the products consumed , and evaluation of the marketplace . Consumer behavior simply refers to the consumption of goods.
Consumption presupposes at least knowledge and skills. The real problem starts when it is asked what kind of knowledge or skills are required. Is it as an example of knowledge about the act of consumption, commodities, prizes or the legal rights of consumers ? It could certainly include all of those things, but it has to be emphasized that there is no limitation for this process. Socialization is an unfinished process that holds true for consumer, although this is not a major problem when it comes to define or understand consumer socialization from an adolescent’s perspective.
Consumer socialization starts at a specific period of childhood neither it comes to an end but it develops during the whole life process. It is certain that all people born with needs but they are not born as consumers so consumerism is a process that all people get into. It is needed to be emphasized that there is not a clear point in the development of a child that can be stated as the beginning of consumer socialization. Two main reasons can be given for this statement. The first reason is that all of the children, born in present days societies, has come into a social life where consumption plays an important role. The second reason is that it is in many cases impossible to distinguish clearly between the knowledge and skills that children require to function as consumers from other forms of abilities.
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This could be illustrated by the ability to read, which is scarcely considered as a trait in consumer socialization, but nevertheless something that is required of any consumer in the present society. The same thing is true if it is considered that the ability is called media literacy. A child must have acquired some basic skills in reading and decoding media texts before he or she could make sense of TV ads.
Agents of consumer socialization can range from the small town store clerk who teaches children to exchange bottles for money that they can use to buy candy, to the big city billboard that depicts a liquor which refers to high social status and pleasure for adults. However, there are four agents of consumer socialization that have been formally studied in the literature: family, peers, mass media, and schools.
New media trends are developing faster than at any time in history. Advertising through social networking sites such as Facebook‚ MySpace‚ Twitter has become a great market. Although they are fairly new ‚ in the US and Europe they seem to lead the social media pack.
Social media is an online platform which is used by people who share their opinions ‚ prospects ‚ experiences and want to be in communication with each other. In recent years‚ the time people spend on these platforms is increasing rapidly ‚ so the companies‚ brands begin to use these platforms as an advertising place to reach the people who are the potential customers. Social media advertising is ideal for promoting brand recognition. It is an effective way to increase your overall revenue. Computer, video game, and Internet usage have become a ubiquitous part of adolescent culture, and are popular sources of entertainment, information, and preferred leisure activities.
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Young consumers unconsciously integrate the internet throughout their lives. (K. C. Lee, Christina & M. Conroy, Denise 2003) By internalizing this technology as part of their lifestyle, its use becomes an instinct, and with this instinct comes a new set of beliefs and expectations about consumption. While there is a wealth of research on how children learn to be consumers, and it is well established that the main agents of socialization are family, peers, schools, and mass media, a question of contemporary interest is the impact of the internet as a socialization agent. This relatively new form of media is different to mass media because of its interactive ability, that is, the possibility of users interacting with a machine, virtual communities and individuals, globally. Learning to become consumers does not only occur through modeling, reinforcement and social interaction as posited by the social learning theory, but also participatory learning through discovery and construction, bricolage and play. The acceleration of technology has helped define a new breed of consumers – “net generation” or “cyber-teens”, terms used to describe adolescents of this generation who are computer savvy and techno-literate, and whose abilities often exceed those of their parents and their teachers.
Adolescents constitute one of the fastest growing internet populations, with 77 million adolescent users expected to go online globally by 2005 (NUA Internet Survey 2001). This group of consumers spends more time online than adults and surpasses all other age groups in their use of chat, instant messaging and other new forms of electronic communication (Montgomery, 2000).
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It is the unique features of the internet as distinct from traditional media, together with the explosive adoption of this technology by teenagers that makes this research worthwhile. For example, the ability to access information easily from all over the world is very likely to change the way teenagers learn about consumer products and services; the ability to befriend and to interact with friends globally must also influence the way teenagers view the world.
The interconnections of global computer networks allow individuals on the internet to interact with multitudes of people. In addition to being a conduit for interaction with other individuals, the internet can also be used for machine interaction (e.g. Korgaonkar and Wolin, 1999). Machine interaction involves individuals interacting with the hypermedia environment in order to access texts, audio and visual material in order to sate a specific information goal.
Social Media allows for a plethora of visual and nonvisual methods of communication including words, pictures, video, and live chat without being in person. In fact, recent information has been stating that social media is competing with text messaging in popularity. Social Media is particularly influential for kids who are striving to shape their personalities and incorporate what they have learned from their parents but they also want to know what their peers think and do as they are in the same developmental worlds.
New social media, like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, are being adopted by a growing number of entrepreneurs who seek to deploy them for the benefit of their business.
In this study it is aimed to understand how Social Media effects adolescents’ consumer socialization period as a socialization agent and how about the purchasing decisions of adolescents socialized by Social Media.
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1.1. Problem Statement:
Young people today become consumers at an earlier age than their parents used to do. Indeed, they become consumers in their own right while they are still children (Ahava and Palojoki, 2004; Brusdal, 2006). Young people in modern societies need things in order to participate in certain activities, and express their social identity. Therefore, adolescence has become almost synonmous with possessing consumer goods (Lueg and Ponder, 2006). A young population carries implications for marketing and advertising. According to United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), approximately half of the world’s population is under the age of 25. The rate of adolescents within this population is estimated to be around 16% (www.unfpa.org, 2007).
In Turkey, approximately 41% of the population is under the age of 22. Such a young national population creates a powerful demand for marketing. As is the case in other parts of the world, Turkish youth have a high tendency to consume. On the one hand, expenses are being made for their education and, on the other, they strive to own high-technology products such as computers or mobile phones (Capital, 2007). As 60% of young Turkish consumers dwell in cities and receive better education than in the past, they come in contact with mass communication tools and are better able to follow global trends. These youngsters have altered consumer values and adopt “seize the day” as their motto, which increases their consumer expenses. Obviously, market stimulants such as television advertisements also have a role in the development of new consumer habits (www.tuik.gov.tr).
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In our days, adolescents’ consumption habits are shaped by three important factors. First, adolescents grow into an environment of diverse products and services. Secondly, parents today want their children to grow up into independent individuals who can make their own decisions. Finally, modern day adolescents are more frequently exposed to marketing on television or the Internet. These environmental factors affect young people’s consumption habits (Assael, 1987; Solomon, 2004).
Recently, Social Media is one of the most effective socialization agents especially for adolescents because they are living in a technological age and the internet may be one of the largest, most rapidly growing socio-cultural phenomena. In this study, Social Media is determined as the socialization agent for adolescents between the ages of 11-16.
1.2. Purpose of the Study:
Children live in a technological age and youth have immediate access to immense amounts of information, related to education, entertainment, and health to name a few domains. E-mails and chat rooms have changed the nature of social communication. Virtual reality environments, such as Multi-User Domains or MUDs, challenge our traditional thoughts about identity formation and building of community. There is a great consumer potential in Social Media. Adolescent consumers are significantly effecting parental buying decisions and most of the adolescents can make shopping on their own.
Firms realised potential of Social Media to reach adolescent consumers. The aim of the study is to understand social media role as a consumer socialization agent for adolescents.
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The purpose of this study is to report the findings of a descriptive study conducted to investigate the role of social media as a consumer socialization agent for adolescents and the purchase intentions of social media socialization over the adolescents. We suggest that while social learning theory provides a strong theoretical framework to understand how adolescents learn to be consumers, this framework needs to be updated to include the unique aspects of learning through the internet.
1.3. Importance of the Study:
Adolescents like to spend time on internet , especially on social networking sites , where they can first meet , discuss and compare brands with the help of the advertisements or their peers. Social Media is the strongest platform nowadays to reach adolescents and it is agreed that adolescents has a big influence on both their own buying decisions and also their parents’. It is assumed that this study will be important for firms as a research for the evaluation of Social Media platforms as a socialization agent for adolescents.
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2. LITERATURE REVIEW
Traditional learning theories of socialization assume that developing child is a passive recipient who is non-reactive in the learning process, that exposure to the socializing agent, such as media, directly influences attitudes (Moschis and Churchill, 1978; Moschis and Mitchell, 1986; Villani, 2001). In the past, children and adolescents were limited in their choices of consumption decisions, these were left to the discretion of adults (e.g. editors and advertisers); and all young consumers were understood to react to information in a similar manner (Brown and Cantor, 2000; Tapscott 1998). Contemporary theories of media effects suggest the contrary – that adolescents are active and motivated explorers of media (Valkenburg and Cantor, 2001). The internet has created a new learning culture, which is social in nature, allowing adolescents to share, discuss, influence and learn interactively from each other and from the medium.
2.1. General Overview:
Older children and adolescents are interesting research subjects when it comes to consumer socialization since they are at a very important stage of socialization. According to John, children between 7 and 11 are at the “analytical stage” in the consumer socialization process, while the “reflective stage” includes older children and adolescents aged 11 to 16 . At the analytical stage, enormous changes take place, both cognitively and socially. “This period contains some of the most important developments in terms of consumer knowledge and skills” where information processing abilities are improved, more complex knowledge is achieved, and new perspectives that go beyond their own feelings and motives can be applied.
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At the reflective stage, the social and cognitive development is further developed and knowledge becomes more nuanced and complex. “A heightened awareness of other people’s perspectives, along with a need to shape their own identity and conform to group expectations, results in more attention to the social aspects of being a consumer, making choices, and consuming brands” . However, some of the most important features at the reflective stage is that “attempts to influence parents and friends reflect more social awareness as adolescents become more strategic, favoring strategies that they think will be better received than a simple direct approach” (John, 1999, p. 186-187).
Older children and adolescents have knowledge and a certain experience with decision strategies and strategies to influence buying processes, which to a high degree are similar to that of adults (Easterling, et al., 1995; Grolnick, Deci, & Ryan, 1997; Nørgaard, et al., 2007). Also, pre-adolescent children nowadays play a greater role in household decision-making (Dotson & Hyatt, 2005; Easterling, et al., 1995; Foxman, et al., 1989; Grønhøj, 2002; McNeal, 1992; Nørgaard, et al., 2007).
According to John “there can be no doubt that children are avid consumers and become socialized into this role from an early age. Throughout childhood, children develop the knowledge, skills, and values they will use in making and influencing purchases now and in the future” (John, 1999, p. 207).
Adolescents today learn not by merely observing and modeling, as posited by Bandura’s (1979; 1986) social learning theory, but rather through a process of discovery and participation (Tapscott, 1998). An important part of a child’s developmental process is play and experimentation (Johnson and Yawkey, 1988; Hodgkin, 1985).
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The internet allows the adolescent to participate in the learning process , users are able to synthesize their understanding by trying things out. Such learning is intrinsically motivated by a desire to experience “flow” – a sense of relaxation and control, a time passing activity which is enjoyable and fun (Hoffman and Novak, 1996; Novak, Hoffman and Yung, 2000).
Another characteristic of importance is the view that the contemporary adolescent thrives in an environment that demands the ability to multi-task. They simultaneously surf the net, chat with friends, download music and play on-line games with others (Urban, Weinberg and Hauser, 1996). Shih (1998) describes this form of behavior as bricolage, where information is organized through associations and nodes to fit an individual’s own style of thinking and learning - without interference by the author of the information. While there are studies that have examined adolescents’ relationship with the internet (e.g. Eighmey and McCord, 1998; La Ferle, Edwards and Lee, 2000; Parker and Plank, 2000), these studies have concentrated on the uses and gratification aspects of the net.
2.2. Socialization:
Socialization research seriously started off in the 1960s and the term socialization very generally refers to the process of learning how to behave adequately in a social environment. In an early work in the area, Brim (1966, p. 3) defined socialization as; the process by which individuals acquire the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that enable them to participate as more or less effective members of groups and the society.
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Zigler and Child (1969, p. 474) later additionally included the transactional aspect of learning into their definition; socialization is a broad term for the whole process by which an individual develops, through transaction with other people, his specific patterns of socially relevant behaviors and experience.
There are two major and fundamental conceptual human learning perspectives to look at the acquisition and development of skills, knowledge, and behaviors: these are the models of “cognitive development” and “social learning” (Moschis & Churchill Jr, 1978).
The cognitive development model is primarily based on the work of Piaget (Ginsburg & Opper, 1969; Piaget, 1928) and Kohlberg (1969), and advocates a process perspective on learning, i.e. it views learning as a stepwise adjustment of a person’s (a child’s) cognitive orientation in response to its environment. Basically, the cognitive development perspective understands socialization as “a function of qualitative changes (stages) in cognitive organization occurring between infancy and adulthood” (Moschis & Churchill Jr, 1978, p. 600).
However, the present research is geared to the second approach towards socialization, the social learning model (Zigler & Child, 1969), since this is particularly relevant for this research as it highlights the role of “socialization agents”, i.e. individuals or organizations interacting with a person and thereby influencing, forming, and positively (by reward) or negatively (by punishment) reinforcing the development of this person’s attitudinal and behavioral patterns which can also be built by imitation of the socialization agent’s behavior (Moschis & Churchill Jr, 1978).
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Based on the work of McLeod & O’Keefe Jr (1972) and Moschis & Churchill Jr (1978) conceptualize (consumer) socialization as a three-step process including antecedent variables, socialization processes and outcomes. As antecedent variables which “may affect acquisition of consumer learning properties (outcome) both directly and indirectly through their impact on the socialization processes” (Moschis & Churchill Jr, 1978, p. 600), they consider social structural variables such as social class, gender or family size (see e.g. Moschis & Churchill Jr, 1979), and age or life cycle position. At the core of their model are the socialization processes which describe three types of agent-learner relationships: modeling, reinforcement, and social interaction.
The core notion in various social science fields such as political science, anthropology, psychology and sociology is socialization. It covers the process of inheriting norms and customs and providing the individual with the skills and habits necessary for participating in society (Clausen, 1968). All human activity is subject to habit formation implying that a specific future action can be carried out again in the same way with lesser effort (Berger & Luckmann, 1966).
The processes of habit formation precede institutionalization, and in any repeated social situation, institutionalization takes place resulting in some degree of social control. Habits have a tendency to persist once they are formed, but the possibility of changing or even dissolving them remains. When habits and the institutional setting are passed on to the next generation “the objectivity of the institutional world “thickens” and “hardens”, for not only for the children, but (by a mirror effect) for the parents as well” (Berger & Luckmann, 1966, p. 59).
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This launches the socialization process. The “classic” understanding of socialization is divided into two types of socialization: 1) primary socialization, which occurs when a child adopts attitudes, values, norms and actions appropriate to individuals as members of a particular family, and 2) secondary socialization, which is the process of learning what is appropriate behaviour as a member of a smaller group within a larger society; this occurs later in life than the primary process (Grusec & Davidov, 2007; Parsons & Bales, 1955; Ritzer, 1992). Therefore it is generally assumed that our basic values are acquired through childhood socialization (Clausen, 1968; Schwartz, 1994).
2.3. Consumer Socialization:
“Consumer socialization, defined as the processes by which young people acquire skills, knowledge and attitudes relevant to their functioning as consumers in the marketplace (Ward, 1974), provides a more complete framework for understanding the development of consumption symbolism. Consumer socialization theory stems from social learning theory, but encompasses cognitive development theory as well (Moschis and Churchill, 1978).
Social learning theory assumes that young people learn skills through a continuous reciprocal interaction of personal and environmental factors. The key to understanding development is to identify the personal and environmental factors relevant to the behavior of interest, as well as the processes driving the interaction (Bandura, 1977). Moschis and Churchill (1978) developed a model of consumer socialization which encompasses both social learning and cognitive development theory. The model suggests that age or life cycle (cognitive development approach) and social structural variables such as sex, social class and race are antecedents to the socialization process.
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2.4. Socialization Agents:
Socialization agents are the people and institutions who have great influence on the young person and are actively involved in the socialization process. Learning processes are the heart of the socialization process. They are the mechanisms through which the socialization agent influences the learner. Bandura (1977) identifies three categories of learning; modeling, reinforcement and social interaction, which lead to learning properties or the outcomes of the socialization process Moore and Stephens (1975) used the consumer socialization approach to examine some determinants of adolescent consumer learning. The outcomes or learning properties included slogan recall, attitudes toward advertising, brand specification and price accuracy. The socialization agents included family and the media.
Social structural variables examined included age, socioeconomic status, and intelligence. The study used path analysis to determine the relationships between the socialization variables and learning outcomes for two samples of adolescents; middle school and high school students. The results found some support for a socialization view of adolescent consumer learning. While media exposure and intelligence were significant variables in the middle school group, they were not in the high school sample. This suggests that the specific socialization variables operating vary with age as socialization theory would suggest.
Moschis and Churchill (1978) tested their model of consumer socialization on adolescents aged between 12-18. Social class, sex and age were the social structural variables examined, and parents, mass media, school and peers were the socialization agents. The outcomes of interest included consumer affairs knowledge, consumer activism, ability to manage consumer finances, attitudes toward prices, materialistic attitudes, economic motivations for consumption and social motivations for consumption.
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This study found that the interaction with socialization agents accounted for a substantial amount of the variation in consumer learning outcomes. The family was most important in teaching adolescents rational or economic motives for consumption, while peers contributed to the learning of materialistic values and social motivations. Mass media also influenced adolescents’ materialistic attitudes and social motivations for consumption. There was no evidence to suggest the school plays a major role in consumer socialization. The social structural variables also contributed to adolescent socialization. Older adolescents had more consumer knowledge overall, as did male adolescents. Higher social class led to increased economic motivation and better ability to handle finances. Other studies (Moschis and Moore, 1979; Churchill and Moschis, 1979; Moschis and Moore, 1982) examined the role of various socialization agents on consumer learning. The findings consistently support the notion that the media, peers, and the family are key variables in adolescent learning. In addition, these studies lend support for the need to include social structural variables such as age, sex and social class to fully understand how young people learn consumer skills (Deborah Roedder John, 1999).
Over the past two decades, marketers and advertisers of children’s products have developed a massive and diverse spectrum of strategies to reach the child consumer (Kline, 1993). They are interested in children for three reasons. First, today’s children in western societies have considerable amounts of money to spend on needs and wants of their own, which qualify them as an important primary market . Second, children are also a future market . It has been demonstrated that children develop brand loyalty at an early age, and that favorable attitudes toward brands last well into adulthood (McNeal, 1992, pg27-28).
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Finally, children are an important market of influencers. Not only do they give direction to daily household purchases, such as snacks, sweets, and breakfast products, as they get older, they also have a say in their parents’ choice of the restaurant, the holiday destination, and the new car (Gunter & Furnham, 1998).
By the time children are 9-10 years old, they start to lose interest in toys and develop a preference for products with a social function, such as music and sports equipment (Buijzen & Valkenburg, 2000). At this time, they are also primarily interested in products and entertainment designed for adults (Buijzen & Valkenburg, in press; Rosengren & Windahl, 1989).
Children’s requests for advertised products decrease by 9 or 10 as well (Buijzen & Valkenburg, 2000). Not only do children become more critical about media offerings, their sensitivity to peer influences is at its peak in this period (Costanzo & Shaw, 1966). According to McNeal (1992), by the age of 9 or 10, nearly all children are visiting different types of stores and making purchases on their own several times a week. Although children’s consumer behavior continues to develop during adolescence and adulthood, by age 12, children have become acquainted with all aspects of their consumer behavior, at least in a rudimentary form. Typically, they are able to (1) feel wants and preferences (as early as infancy and toddlerhood); (2) search to fulfill them (as early as the preschool period); (3) make a choice and a purchase (from the early elementary school period on); and (4) evaluate a product and its alternatives (as early as the later elementary school period).
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Young consumers unconsciously integrate the internet throughout their lives. By internalizing this technology as part of their lifestyle, its use becomes an instinct, and with this instinct comes a new set of beliefs and expectations about consumption. The increasing use of the internet as a communication tool makes this a potentially strong agent of socialization. Children experience the internet as a physical and social space, allowing people to talk, form relationships, discuss issues and work, play games, train, and perform many of the social tasks normally performed in the physical environment (Damer, 1997).
The ability to access rich and diverse information, to reach across communities and national borders enhances a young consumer’s learning process. This resonates Moore’s (1996) idea that learning involves getting one’s ideas and opinions into social circulation, starting first with people known to us, such as parents and friends, but eventually flowing to people unknown to us.
With the proliferation of websites worldwide, it is becoming widely accepted that consumers are shifting their daily activities from offline environments to online environments (Toder-Alon et al., 2005). Consumers are not only using websites for information gathering, entertainment, communication and online shopping but they are also using it to share ideas, make friends, and build communities (Kozinets, 2002). Hence, the constant interaction between websites and online users makes the website a solid part of consumers’ daily lives (Maulana and Eckhardt, 2007, p228). As Healy (1996) asserts, the Internet presents a kind of ‘middle landscape’ for consumers because individuals can satisfy their needs for both separation and connectedness.
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The internet has created a new learning culture, which is social in nature, allowing adolescents to share, discuss, influence and learn interactively from each other and from the medium. Adolescents today learn not by merely observing and modeling, as posited by Bandura’s (1979; 1986) social learning theory, but rather through a process of discovery and participation (Tapscott, 1998).
An important part of a child’s developmental process is playing and experimentation (Johnson and Yawkey, 1988; Hodgkin,1985). The internet allows the adolescent to participate in the learning process , users are able to synthesize their understanding by trying things out. Such learning is intrinsically motivated by a desire to experience “flow” a sense of relaxation and control, a time passing activity which is enjoyable and fun (Hoffman and Novak, 1996; Novak, Hoffman and Yung, 2000). Another characteristic of importance is the view that the contemporary adolescent thrives in an environment that demands the ability to multi-task. They simultaneously surf the net, chat with friends, download music and play on-line games with others (aUrban, Weinberg and Hauser, 1996).
Shih (1998) describes this form of behavior as bricolage, where information is organized through associations and nodes to fit an individual’s own style of thinking and learning - without interference by the author of the information. While there are studies that have examined adolescents’ relationship with the internet (e.g. Eighmey and McCord, 1998; La Ferle, Edwards and Lee, 2000; Parker and Plank, 2000), While there is a wealth of research on how children learn to be consumers, and it is well established that the main agents of socialization are family, peers, schools, and mass media, a question of contemporary interest is the impact of the internet as a socialization agent.
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This relatively new form of media is different to mass media because of its interactive ability, that is, the possibility of users interacting with a machine, virtual communities and individuals, globally. With the proliferation of websites worldwide, it is becoming widely accepted that consumers are shifting their daily activities from offline environments to online environments (Toder-Alon et al., 2005).
Consumers are not only using websites for information gathering, entertainment, communication and online shopping but they are also using it to share ideas, make friends, and build communities (Kozinets, 2002).Hence, the constant interaction between websites and online users makes the website a solid part of consumers’ daily lives (Maulana and Eckhardt, 2007, p228). As Healy (1996) asserts, the Internet presents a kind of ‘middle landscape’ for consumers because individuals can satisfy their needs for both separation and connectedness.
2.5. Social Media:
Social media is the manifestation of the Internet and is a social tool that allows media sharing with one another (Goldhammer, 2007, para. 6; Chartered Institute of Public Relations, 2006, p. 2; Wikipedia, 2007, para. 1, as cited in Wong, 2008). This technology has allowed people to interact and share ideas, opinions, experiences, insights and contents instantaneously. As the name implies, social media involves the building of communities or networks, encouraging participation and engagement. (CIPR, 2006, p. 2, as cited in Wong, 2008)
According to Lloyd Salmons, first chairman of the Internet Advertising Bureau social media council “Social media isn’t just about big networks like Facebook and MySpace, it’s about brands having conversations.” (Social Media Marketing, 2009)
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2.5.1. What is Social Media?
Social Media provides a mechanism for the audience to connect, communicate, and interact with each other and their mutual friends through instant messaging or social networking sites. To our knowledge, the majority of research on social media use has solely focused on social networking sites ( Ellison et al., 2007; Raacke & Bonds-Raacke, 2008; Ross et al., 2009; Zywica & Danowski, 2008; Valenzuela et al., 2009).
These sites are virtual collections of users’ profiles, which can be shared with others to create lists of companions and maintain contact with them (Raacke & Bonds-Raacke, 2008). The lists illustrate each user’s connections with others, whose profiles are accessible by individuals included on the list. Most users (nearly 90%) visit the sites to keep in touch with people they already know, and more than half have two or more profiles online (Lenhart, 2009).
Social media can take many different forms including social networks, blogs, micro blogs, instant messaging programs, chat sites, forums such as the one with one of the people to share content and information web sites and the practices they are looking for internet users and interested the opportunity to reach the content they are accessing. At first glance, that occur between individuals or small groups, such as dialogue, although the shared information or content, the number of people who are interested in is growing very fast and the extra features.(Corporate News, n.d. as cited in “Facebook”, 2009)
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Prominent examples of social media applications are Wikipedia (encyclopedia), MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Bebo, Orkut(social networking), Twitter (micro-blogging),YouTube (video sharing), Second Life (virtual reality), Digg (news sharing), Flickr (photo sharing) and Miniclip (game sharing). Indeed, the Internet itself is a giant, global social network which is created by and for individuals (Goldhammer, 2007, para. 11, as cited in Wong, 2008; Wikipedia, 2009)
In summarizing social media, Mayfield, (2007, p. 5) as cited in Wong (2008) concludes that social media has the following characteristics:
1. Participation: Social media encourages contributions and feedback from everyone who is interested. It blurs the line between the concept of media and audience.
2. Openness: Most social media services are open to feedback and participation. They encourage voting, feedback, comments and sharing of information. There are rarely any barriers to the access and utilization of content - password-protected content is frowned upon.
3. Conversation: Whereas traditional media is about “broadcast” content that is transmitted or distributed to an audience, social media is more seen as conversational and having a two-way interaction.
4. Community: Social media allows communities to form quickly and communicate effectively about common interests - be that a love for photography, a political issue or a favourite TV show.
5. Connectedness: Most kinds of social media thrive on their inherent connectedness, via links and the combination of different kinds of media in one place.
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2.5.2. History and Evolution of Social Media:
Social media is not really “new”. While it has only recently become part of mainstream culture and the business world, people have been using digital media for networking, socializing and information gathering – almost exactly like now – for over 30 years.
Social media did not start with computers; it was born on “line” – on the phone. Phone phreaking, or the rogue exploration of the telephone network, started to gain momentum in the 1950’s.
After the phone phreaking era, Usenets, Bulletin Board Systems (BBS), online services, IRC, ICQ and Instant Messaging have come out as precursors to social media. If we go through on these briefly:
Usenets: Usenet systems were first conceived of in 1979 by Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis. Usenets let users post articles or posts (referred to as “news”) to newsgroups.
BBS (1979-1995): The first electronic “Bulletin Board System” was developed and was opened to the public in 1979 by Ward Christensen. The first BBSs were small servers powered by personal computers attached to a telephone modem, where only one person at a time could dial in and get access. BBSs had social discussions on message boards, community-contributed file downloads, and online games. BBSs were the first type of sites that allowed users to log on and interact with one another, albeit in a much slower fashion than we currently do.
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Online Services (1979-2001): Like Prodigy and Compuserve , were the first large scale corporate attempts to bring an interactive, “social” online experience to the masses. They offered a safe, moderated environment for social networking and discussions. Later, AOL gained critical mass with aggressive CD promotions and direct mail campaigns and made great strides at making the Internet more universally accessible in the U.S.
IRC, ICQ and Instant Messaging: IRC (Internet Relay Chat) was developed in 1988 and used for file sharing, link sharing and otherwise keeping in touch.
It was really the father of instant messaging as we know it today. And ICQ was developed in the 1996 and was the first instant messaging program for PCs. This was quickly purchased by AOL and it became a mainstream hit. IM technology helped developed the emotional lexicon of social media, with avatars (expressive images to represent yourself), abbreviations (A/S/L? = age, sex, location?) and emotion icons (or emoticons).
Dating sites are sometimes considered the first social networks. The first dating sites allowed users to create profiles (usually with photos) and to contact other users. Online forums also played a large part in the evolution of the social web. These were really descendents of the BBSs popular in the 70s and 80s, but usually came with a more user-friendly interface, making them easier for non-technical visitors to use.
The first modern social networking website was SixDegrees which let people make profiles and connect with friends in 1997. In 2000, it was purchased for $125 million and in 2001 it was shut down.
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LiveJournal started in 1999 and took a different approach to social networking. While Six Degrees allowed users to create a basically-static profile, LiveJournal was a social network built around constantly-updated blogs. It was really the precursor to the live updates we see in social networks currently.
MMORPGS (Massively multiplayer online role-playing games) have become social networks in their own right. The most famous of these is World of Warcraft, where players interact both in the game world and on related forums and community sites.
The early 2000s brought some huge developments in social networking and social media. Social web application style known as “Web 2.0” really gained momentum with Friendster around 2002-2003, followed by MySpace (2003-2006) and then Facebook (2007 ).
Friendster is still a very active social network with over 90 million registered users and 60+ million unique visitors each month. It allows people to discover their friends and then friends-of-friends, and so on to expand their networks by being a safer place to meet new people than in real-life, as well as being faster.
MySpace was founded in 2003 and by 2006 had grown to be the most popular social network in the world. It differentiated itself from competitors by allowing users to completely customize the look of their profiles.
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While Facebook started out as a Harvard-only social network back in 2004, it quickly expanded to other schools, then to high schools, businesses and eventually everyone (by 2006). In 2008 Facebook became the most popular social networking site, surpassing MySpace, and continues to grow. Facebook doesn’t allow the same kind of customization that MySpace does. Facebook does, however, allow users to post photos, videos and otherwise customize their profile content, if not the design.
FriendFeed, which launched in 2007 and was recently purchased by Facebook, allows you to integrate most of your online activities in one place (Twitter, RSS feeds, and Flickr, among others). It’s also a social network in its own right, with the ability to create friends lists, post updates, and otherwise communicate.
Although mentioning especially social networking sites, social media does not consist of only social networking sites. Sharing photos, videos, news and other multimedia content are also popular social media activities which are:
Media Sharing : Photobucket, Flickr, YouTube, Revver
Social News and Bookmarking : Delicious, Digg, Reddit
The big trend on the web is moving away from static “pages” and into real-time stream of status updates on what is hot and happening right now. With the advent of Twitter in 2006, status updates have become the new norm in social networking. Virtually all major social networks now allow real-time updates.
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Twitter was founded in 2006 and gained a lot of popularity during the 2007 South by Southwest conference. Twitter has developed a cult-like following and has a number of famous users such as Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Soleil Moon Frye, MC Hammer, Oprah, Martha Stewart, and many, many more. Twitter has also spawned a number of third-party sites and applications, turning it into more of a platform than a single service. There are Twitter clients for updating and managing followers; services that track Twitter trends; and services for posting photos and videos directly to Twitter. Names of other sites like Twitter are Posterous and Tumblr. Social media has come a long way since the days of BBSs and IRC chats. And social media continues to evolve on a daily basis. It seems that nowadays there are social and user-generated sites for just about every activity you can imagine.
There are social shopping sites, social financial planning sites, sites for getting book, movie, applications and other reviews, sites to share your goals and meet like-minded people, sites to plan your travels and share them with others and sites to help you make decisions on just about anything. With major social networks and social media sites making changes and improvements on an almost daily basis, it’s sure to keep evolving in coming years. (Borders, B., 2009)
2.5.3. Challenges and Opportunities of Social Media in Business Life:
As of January 2009, the online social networking application Facebook registered more than 175 million active users. To put that number in perspective, this is only slightly less than the population of Brazil (190 million) and over twice the population of Germany (80 million)! At the same time, every minute, 10 hours of content were uploaded to the video sharing platform YouTube.
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And, the image hosting site Flickr provided access to over 3 billion photographs, making the world-famous Louvre Museum’s collection of 300,000 objects seem tiny in comparison. Yet, not overly many firms seem to act comfortably in a world where consumers can speak so freely with each other and businesses have increasingly less control over the information available about them in cyberspace. Today, if an Internet user types the name of any leading brand into the Google search, what comes up among the top five results typically includes not only the corporate webpage, but also the corresponding entry in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.
Social presence / Media richness
Self presentation / Self disclosure
High
Blogs
Social Networking sites (e.g. Facebook)
Virtual social worlds (e.g. Second Life)
Low
Collaborative projects (e.g. Wikipedia)
Content communities (e.g. Youtube)
Virtual geme worlds (e.g. World of Warcraft)
Table 1. Classification of Social Media (Haenlein& Kaplan, 2009, pg.62)
Collaborative Projects:
Collaborative projects enable the joint and simultaneous creation of content by many end-users and are, in this sense, probably the most democratic manifestation of UGC. Within collaborative projects, one differentiates between wikis that is, websites which allow users to add, remove, and change text-based content and social bookmarking applications which enable the group-based collection and rating of Internet links or media content.
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The main idea underlying collaborative projects is that the joint effort of many actors leads to a beter outcome than any actor could achieve individually; this is similar to the efficient-market hypothesis in behavioral finance (Fama, 1970). From a corporate perspective, firms must be aware that collaborative projects are trending toward becoming the main source of information for many consumers. As such, although not everything written on Wikipedia may actually be true, it is believed to be true by more and more Internet users. This may be particularly crucial as regards corporate crises.
Blogs
Blogs, which represent the earliest form of Social Media, are special types of websites that usually display date-stamped entries in reverse chronological order (OECD, 2007). They are the Social Media equivalent of personal web pages and can come in a multitude of different variations, from personal diaries describing the author’s life to summaries of all relevant information in one specific content area. Blogs are usually managed by one person only, but provide the possibility of interaction with others through the addition of comments. Due to their historical roots, text-based blogs are still by far the most common. Nevertheless, blogs have also begun to take different media formats. Many companies are already using blogs to update employees, customers, and shareholders on developments they consider to be important. Yet, as is the case with collaborative projects, blogs do not come without risks. These generally present in two fashions. First, customers ,who for one reason or another, turn out to be dissatisfied with or disappointed by the company’s offerings may decide to engage in virtual complaints in the form of protest websites or blogs (Ward & Ostrom, 2006), which results in the availability of potentially damaging information in online space. Second, once firms encourage employees to be active on blogs, they may need to live with the consequences of staff members writing negatively about the firm.
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Content communities
The main objective of content communities is the sharing of media content between users. Content communities exist for a wide range of different media types, including text (e.g., BookCrossing, via which 750,000+ people from over 130 countries share books), photos (e.g., Flickr), videos (e.g., YouTube), and PowerPoint presentations (e.g., Slideshare). Users on content communities are not required to create a personal profile page; if they do, these pages usually only contain basic information, such as the date they joined the community and the number of videos shared. From a corporate viewpoint, content communities carry the risk of being used as platforms for the sharing of copyright protected materials.
While major content communities have rules in place to ban and remove such illegal content, it is difficult to avoid popular videos, such as recent episodes of comedy dramas, being uploaded to YouTube only hours after they have been aired on television. On the positive side, the high popularity of content communities makes them a very attractive contact channel for many firms; this is easy to believe when one considers that YouTube serves over 100 million videos per day. (Haenlein& Kaplan, 2009, pg:63)
Social networking sites
Social networking sites are applications that enable users to connect by creating personal information profiles, inviting friends and colleagues to have access to those profiles, and sending e-mails and instant messages between each other. These personal profiles can include any type of information, including photos, video, audio files, and blogs.
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According to Wikipedia, the largest social networking sites are U.S.-based Facebook (initially founded by Mark Zuckerberg to stay in touch with his fellow students from Harvard University) and MySpace (with 1,500 employees and more than 250 million registered users). Social networking sites are of such high popularity, specifically among younger Internet users, that the term ‘‘Facebook addict’’ has been included in the Urban Dictionary, a collaborative project focused on developing a slang dictionary for the English language. Several companies are already using social networking sites to support the creation of brand communities (Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001) or for marketing research in the context of netnography (Kozinets, 2002).
Virtual game worlds
Virtual worlds are platforms that replicate a threedimensional environment in which users can appear in the form of personalized avatars and interact with each other as they would in real life. In this sense, virtual worlds are probably the ultimate manifestation of Social Media, as they provide the highest level of social presence and media richness of all applications discussed thus far. Virtual worlds come in two forms. The first, virtual game worlds, require their users to behave according to strict rules in the context of a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. These applications have gained popularity in recent years, as standard game consoles, such as Microsoft’s X-Box and Sony’s Play- Station, now allow simultaneous play among a multitude of users around the globe. Examples of virtual game worlds include the cod-medieval ‘‘World of Warcraft,’’ which counts around 8.5 million subscribers who explore the virtual planet of Azeroth in the form of humans, dwarves, orcs, or night elves, to fight monsters or to searc h for treasure; and Sony’s EverQuest, in which 16 different races of players (e.g., wizards, clerics) travel the fantasy world of Norrath.
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The rules of such games usually limit the degree of self-presentation and self-disclosure possible, although some users spend so much time with these applications that their character, be it a warrior, a wizard, or a dragon hunter, starts to more and more closely resemble real life personality. Besides their use for ingame advertising (similar in idea to product placement in blockbuster movies), the high popularity of virtual game worlds can also be leveraged in more traditional communication campaigns. Japanese automotive giant Toyota, for example, used pictures and mechanics from the World of Warcraft application in its latest Tundra commercial to reach the 2.5 million players in the U.S. alone. ((Haenlein& Kaplan, 2009, pg:64)
Virtual social worlds
The second group of virtual worlds, often referred to as virtual social worlds, allows inhabitants to choose their behavior more freely and essentially live a virtual life similar to their real life. As in virtual game worlds, virtual social world users appear in the form of avatars and interact in a three-dimensional virtual environment; however, in this realm, there are no rules restricting the range of possible interactions, except for basic physical laws such as gravity. This allows for an unlimited range of self presentation strategies, and it has been shownthat with increasing usage intensity and consumption experience, users of virtual social worlds ,or ‘‘residents,’’ as they prefer to be called, show behavior that more and more closely mirrors the one observed in real life settings (Kaplan& Haenlein, 2009a, 2009b). Arguably, the most prominent example of virtual social worlds is the Second Life application, founded and managed by the San Francisco-based company Linden Research Inc.
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Besides doing everything that is possible in real life (e.g., speaking to other avatars, taking a walk, enjoying the virtual sunshine), Second Life also allows users to create content (e.g., to design virtual clothing or furniture items) and to sell this content to others in Exchange for Linden Dollars, a virtual currency traded against the U.S. Dollar on the Second Life Exchange. Some residents are so successful in this task that the virtual money earned that way complements their real life income. Virtual social worlds offer a multitude of opportunities for companies in marketing (advertising/communication, virtual product sales/v-Commerce, marketing research), and human resource and internal process management; for a more detailed discussion, see Kaplan and Haenlein (2009c).
2.6. Kids Marketing :
According to the American Marketing Association (2007), marketing is “an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit an organization and its stakeholders.” Using the “Four Ps” of marketing—product, place, price, and promotion—advertisers use paid public presentations of goods and services in a variety of media to influence consumers’ attention to, and interest in, purchasing certain products.( J. M. McGinnis, J. A. Gootman, and V. I. Kraak,2006) Television has long been the staple of advertising to children and youth. Children view approximately 40,000 advertisements each year. The products marketed to children— sugar-coated cereals, fast food restaurants, candy, and toys—have remained relatively constant over time.7 But marketers are now directing these same kinds of products to children online. ( L. Alvy and S. L. Calvert, 2006)
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Marketing to children has grown substantially in the past few years. In 1992, companies spent $6 billion in advertisements for children (Kasser & Linn, 2004). In 2003, marketers spent approximately $12 billion on advertisement directed towards children (APA, 2004a, “Summary and Findings”, p. 5). Just two years later, the sum increased to $15 billion a year (Ruskin & Schor, 2005). Child marketing has also witnessed an exponential growth in methods of direct marketing thanks to innovations in personal communication.
Today’s marketers are able to incorporate a variety of media including video games, cell phones, mobile music devices, and web-based social networks (Chester & Montgomery, 2008). Such new developments have raised issues related to privacy. For example, customers who use smartphones are supplying marketers with personal information that can be used to tailor specific advertisements to the user (Wedekind, 2008). Marketers have also developed techniques to encourage children to utilize electronic social networks to encourage word of mouth advertising which is directly linked to brand loyalty (Needham, 2008).
Although the kinds of products marketed to children have remained much the same, the buying power of children and adolescents has increased exponentially over time. Youths now have influence over billions of dollars in spending each year. (Economist 357,2001) In 2002, U.S. four- to twelve-yearolds spent $30 billion. American twelve- to seventeen-year-olds spent $112.5 billion in 2003. In 2003, 33 million U.S. teens aged twelve to nineteen each spent about $103 a week. (M.Cardona, 2004) According to one report, parents supply 87 percent of young children’s income. (R.Rubin ,2004) That share drops to 37 percent for teens, who have more of their own discretionary income.
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Youths also shape the buying patterns of their families. From vacation choices to car purchases to meal selections, they exert a tremendous power over the family pocketbook. Experts estimate that two- to fourteenyear- olds have sway over $500 billon a year in household purchasing.Thus, to influence youth is to influence the entire family’s buying decisions. The increase in spending and variety of modes has lead to a new landscape for children. Chester and Montgomery (2008) stated that marketing “has become a pervasive presence in the lives of children and adolescents, extending far beyond the confines of television and the Internet into an expanding and ubiquitous digital culture” (p. 16). The growth of child marketing is uncontested. As noted earlier, many psychologists have noted that this in itself is cause for concern. Yet it is with the perceived effects of child marketing that the ethical nature of the practice comes under the greatest scrutiny.
Youths also shape the buying patterns of their families. (D. Kunkel , 2004)From vacation choices to car purchases to meal selections, they exert a tremendous power over the family pocketbook. Experts estimate that two- to fourteenyear- olds have sway over $500 billon a year in household purchasing. Thus, to influence youth is to influence the entire family’s buying decisions. (Calvert ,Sandra L, 2008)
Rapid growth in the number of television stations and online venues has also led advertisers to market directly to children and youth.( P. Wechsler ,1997) Because children and youth are heavy media users and early adopters of newer technologies, media marketing and advertising campaigns using both television and newer media are efficient pathways into children’s homes and lives.
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Although television is still the preferred medium for reaching children and youth, marketers are exploring how to reach this age group online using cell phones, iPods, game platforms, and other digital devices. Banner ads, for example, which resemble traditional billboard ads but market a product across the top of an Internet page, appear on most webpages. And “advergames” integrate products such as cereal and candy into online video games to sell products to youth. (. Roberts, U. Foehr, and V. Rideout, 2005) Another reason to gear marketing toward children is their parents. Today’s parents are different from those of previous generations.
In 2004, total U.S. marketing expenditures were estimated at some $15 billion to target products to children. Reliable estimates of spending in the newer media are not available. (D.Eisenberg, 2002)
Newer forms of marketing are a small share of the overall marketing budget spent on traditional print, broadcast, radio, and online advertising, but the share spent on these newer forms is growing. Indeed, online venues can reap large returns for relatively small investments. For example, Wild Planet Toys spent $50,000 for a four-month online promotion that was associated with a doubling of Wild Planet’s yearly revenues. A comparable buy for a television advertising campaign would have cost $2 million.(E.Gardner,2000) And a recent Nabisco World game and puzzle website designed to increase awareness of Nabisco’s cookies and crackers cost only 1 percent of the company’s advertising and marketing budget. Advertising on online games was expected to grow from $77 million to about $230 million between 2002 and 2007.26
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There are more dual income families than in earlier decades, and this has resulted in an increase in the spending power of parents as well as children. Often these parents have the desire to satisfy their children’s wants through purchases of material items. When the parents independently make decisions to purchase items for their children, it may be out of guilt for being home so infrequently, it may be to satisfy their own needs for social status or upward mobility or it may be a way to show their love for the children (Guber & Berry, 1993).
Often, parents make purchase decisions based on the influence of their children, and those decisions may simply be a surrander to the cajoling or begging of the child. Because of the influence that children can exert over their parents’ buying decisions, there is some disagreement among marketers about whether to target children directly or target their parents (Boyd, 1994).
There are product messages that speak directly to children, such as those for candy or toys. There are also messages that use the child as a conduit to the parent, including technology products or other more expensive items. Then there are marketers who purposely target the parents. Their approach is to appeal to the parents’ feelings of guilt, or their need for status or safety, to sell products intended for children’s use. It stands to reason that the decision of whom to target probably depends upon the nature of the product, its price, and the particular age group being targeted. In any case, children have the potential to exert a great deal of influence over their parents’ decisions about everything from infant products to vacations. Interestingly enough, their affluent and child conscious parents are more likely than not to follow their recommendations as the children get older. (Kamery , Rob H., 2004)
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One of the primary reasons for the increase in marketing to children is that researchers and marketers alike are beginning to get serious about listening to children. Adults have shown a steady decline in brand loyalty, so marketers are reaching out to their more brand loyal children for insights into increasing their products’ brand awareness and sales (Segall & Paine, 1995).
The growing emphasis on collecting and documenting the opinions of children also indicates the rising awareness of their ever increasing spending power. How should marketers gather research on the opinions of children? The conventional approaches used for adults include focus groups, surveys, questionnaires, and subject observation.
These methods may not work as well on children as they do on adults, however. Experts in children’s market research agree that traditional research techniques that consistently work for adults are not necessarily effective for children (Levin, 1993). These experts in youth research offer numerous suggestions for collecting reliable information from children of all ages (Segall & Paine, 1995). For example, they recommend that marketers hire specialists in children’s research. There are many firms that concentrate solely on youth marketing, and their researchers have both the experience and the techniques to help make children comfortable enough to express themselves openly.
Another approach that can be used to help loosen up children in focus groups is to have a child rather than an adult lead discussions and ask questions. Children often relate better to their peers or slightly older children, whom they may see as role models, than they do to adults. Children also tend to be more forthcoming in settings that are familiar or comfortable to them. If it is not possible to gather children together in a school, home, or activity setting they are familiar with, the research location should be made as child friendly as possible.
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Younger children will respond to bright colors or playground like settings, and older children may prefer to sit on the floor or break into small discussion groups. In any situation, children often need assistance in clearly communicating their feelings or ideas. Adults can help them express themselves by speaking to them at their level, and using stories or examples that the children can relate to. One resourceful publishing company, KidSoft Inc., created a special survey for its young readers/customers (Bianchi, 1994). The survey was designed to be fun for children to fill out, using games and a fill in the blank format to encourage responses. Parents and teachers liked the form as well, and the concept was taken online early in 1995.
KidSoft expects the response rate to increase, but admits that the questionnaire does not always elicit the types of responses the researchers are looking for. Perhaps the children have so much fun “playing” with the survey that they miss the point of the questions. On the other hand, researchers should take into account everything that is said, since children often know themselves as well or better than adults do. It is also beneficial to open up ongoing lines of communication with children to help keep information fresh and current. However, in these situations, where children become accustomed to the types of questions asked, researchers must ensure that they are not being second guessed or “humored.” Experts also suggest that marketers learn about trends in the children’s market through various research channels. Many different organizations offer trend information that is available for a nominal fee. It is also important to survey a diverse group of children, both in ethnicity and age, and to allow parents to participate when appropriate as well. In order to effectively target children, marketers need to keep abreast of or engage in new research, constantly reassessing their marketing tactics and strategies.
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Target marketing within the children’s market itself is a strategy that has so far been largely overlooked by marketers. Children, just like adults, have a broad range of attitudes, opinions, behaviors, and interests (Stipp, 1993). Targeting children by age group is probably the most common way to segment the children’s market, but not all children within the same age group will respond to the same products, advertisements, or incentives, nor will they have the same level of interest or cognitive awareness in relation to particular marketing approaches.
There is a limited amount of research about the development of decision-making skills in children throughout their various stages of childhood. A recent study examined the ability of children to adapt their particular level of decision making strategies to a variety of consumer decision environments (Gregan Paxton & Roedder, 1995).
The study offered insights into children’s thinking and reasoning processes. In their simplified worlds, very young children are often forced to decide between waiting for the most desirable option and getting a less desired option immediately. Other researchers have noted that children generally tend to be creatures of instant gratification (Boyd, 1994). The first study cited, however, found that even some four and five year olds have the ability to adapt their decision making -processes when they know a product decision will be final. The same children did have difficulty in weighing multiple costs and benefits of the decision, however. Even into elementary school, children can often attend to only one dimension of a problem or choice at a time (Gregan Paxton & Roedder, 1995). This is valuable information for marketers who target very young children, since it suggests that in targeting products to this group, very few product attributes should be communicated at one time. Other empirical research has attempted to determine how effectively advertisers present material to kids relative to their cognitive development.
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One study determined that advertisers have been presenting messages of different complexity to different age groups, but that on the whole, they try to present too much information to younger kids (Smith, 1995). This may be one of the pitfalls of television advertising in particular. With the ability to bombard viewers with sight and sound messages, and to have complete control over the speed and duration of the messages, marketers may sometimes feel that they must not leave out any dimension of the product pitch. When young children are the targeted audience, though, this approach may be too overwhelming.
Marketing to children is not as simple as increasing the complexity of the message as children grow older. Children must go through a learning process to become consumers. They must first develop a value system outside of the realm of marketing and advertising, and then they can apply their developing values to their purchase decisions. That entire process is an inherent part of cognitive development (Kennedy, 1995). Marketers must understand that to be effective, their messages must coincide with the values that permeate children’s life stages and guide their growth.
2.7. Adolescents Effects on Purchase Decisions:
Historically, both marketers and consumer researchers have ignored children as a consumer segment because of their little disposable income (Ward, 1974). Since the 1980s, interest has been growing in children’s consumption behavior, especially their influence in family consumption decisions. Contrary to the traditional assumption that parents dominate in family decisions, abundant research has found that children have substantial relative influence (i.e., influence relative to their parents) in family consumption decisions. Such academic findings actually parallel the reality in the marketplace.
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McNeal (1998) reported that children aged 4 to12 roughly doubled their direct purchase during each decade of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, and tripled it during the 1990s, reaching about $24 billion in 1997. In addition, children’s indirect purchase through influencing parents’ decisions soared from $5 billion in the 1960s to about $188 billion in 1997. Thus, children’s influence in family consumption decisions is a topic worthy of research attention both theoretically and managerially.
From the theoretical perspective, including children as a decision role will help researchers fully understand family consumer behavior. Past research has opened an avenue, but more effort is needed to further the stream. From the managerial perspective, provided children’s growing consumption power (McNeal, 1998), understanding children’s influence would help practitioners better serve the child consumer segment.
Guided by the consumer socialization theory, researchers have found that children’s influence is affected by a variety of factors, including family variables (e.g., social class, family size, and family structure), children’s characteristics (e.g., gender, birth order, and age), parents’ characteristics (e.g., education, occupation, and consumption experiences), parental style, and family communication environment. (Peterson and Rollins, 1987).
Parents are in the aim of encouraging their children to develop their skills in order to make their own purchase decisions. Parents value their children’s opinions in purchase decisions for products that are not for their consumption.(Carlson et al., 1990a; Carlson et al., 1990b; Ekstrom et al., 1987; Moschis and Moore, 1979; Moschis et al.,1984; Moschis et al., 1986)
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Children’s influence depends also on the decision-process stage. They exert the most influence at the problem recognition stage than on subsequent phases, such as decision-making (Beatty and Talpade, 1994; Belch et al., 1985; Mangleburg, 1990; Swinyard and Sim, 1987). Moreover, influence differs by sub-decision type purchase location, amount spent, product selection criteria (color, style, and brand), and purchase timing). Children’s influence on amounts spent and on purchase location is lower than on other sub-decision types and is highest for product attribute decisions (Belch et al., 1985; Foxman et al., 1989a, b). Other factors affecting children’s influence relate to demographic variables like family income and children’s age.
Family income and children’s influence are related positively (Foxman et al., 1989b). Children’s ages also affect their level of influence. Specifically, children’s influence increases with age (Laczniak and Palan, 2004; Mangleburg, 1990; Swinyard and Sim, 1987). While requests’ frequency decreases with the child’s age (Isler et al., 1987), yielding by parents increases with it (Laczniak and Palan, 2004). Yielding increase with age because older children are perceived to have had more experience with products (Mangleburg, 1990) and have more understanding of economic concepts and consumer skills (Laczniak and Palan, 2004; Roedder-John, 1999).
Palan and Wilkes (1997) examined children’s influence tactics specifically in the context of the content of family communications. However, their study was concerned with the relationship between influence tactics and parental response strategies, including an imputed measure of the effectiveness of different influence tactics. Their study did not report on demographic variables as potential antecedents to influence tactics or parental yielding, except to note that they “found little difference in adolescent strategy usage by sex” (Palan and Wilkes, 1997, p. 168).
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Consumer socialization theory asserts that children gain consumption-related skills, knowledge, and attitudes through the interaction with socialization agents in various social settings. Such socialization agents include parents, peers, schools, and mass media and children’s learning might involve three processes: modeling, reinforcement, and social interaction (McLeod and Chaffee, 1972; McNeal, 1987; Moschis and Churchill, 1978; Moschis and Moore, 1979). Modeling involves children’s observation and imitation of the agent’s behavior. Through observing others’ behavior, children could acquire novel behaviors, become aware of the consequences of different behaviors, and discover new ways to combine various elements in their existing repertories of behaviors (Maccoby and Martin, 1983).
Children may see the socialization agents get rewards for performing a certain behavior, and by performing similar behaviors, children themselves may get rewards in the future (Bandura, 1977). Consequently, children gain some of agents’ behaviors through this imitation process. It explains, at least partially, the findings that children possess similar favorite store types and brand choice to their parents (Arndt, 1971; Childers and Rao, 1992; Heckler, Childers, and Arunachalam, 1989). Children’s modeling of agent’s behavior is selective. The simple parrot-like imitation of what other people do or say might happen during the first 2 years, but when children grow older , this becomes very rare (Piaget, 1962). Children are most likely to model after socialization agents who are powerful or prestigious, nurturant and possessing greater knowledge and skill than themselves (Yando , Seitz, and Zigler, 1978). From infancy on, parents are highly available; they provide children’s basic physical and mental needs , thus appear very powerful; they are nurturant and provide emotional support; and they are also knowledgeable and skillful in performing various tasks about which children need to learn. Thus naturally parents become one of the most important socialization agents.
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Children’s influence depends also on the decision-process stage. They exert the most influence at the problem recognition stage than on subsequent phases, such as decision-making (Beatty and Talpade, 1994; Belch et al.,1985 ; Mangleburg, 1990; Swinyard and Sim, 1987). Children’s influence on amounts spent and on purchase location is lower than on other sub-decision types and is highest for product attribute decisions (Belch et al., 1985; Foxman et al., 1989a, b). Other factors affecting children’s influence relate to demographic variables like family income and children’s age. Family income and children’s influence are related positively (Foxman et al., 1989b). Children’s ages also affect their level of influence. Specifically, children’s influence increases with age (Laczniak and Palan, 2004; Mangleburg, 1990; Swinyard and Sim, 1987). While requests’ frequency decreases with the child’s age (Isler et al., 1987), yielding by parents increases with it (Laczniak and Palan, 2004). Yielding increase with age because older children are perceived to have had more experience with products (Mangleburg, 1990) and have more understanding of economic concepts and consumer skills (Laczniak and Palan, 2004; Roedder-John, 1999)
.
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3. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY
The study was applied to government and private school students between the ages of 11-15 in order to understand how social media effects adolescents as a consumer socialization agent within the years of 2011-2012.
The purpose of this study is to report the findings of a descriptive study conducted to investigate the role of social media as consumer socialization agent for adolescents and the purchase intentions of social media over the adolescents. Target Audience of this research is the adolescents between the ages of 11-16 in Istanbul.
Recently, Social Media is one of the most effective socialization agents especially for adolescents because they are living in a technological age and the internet may be one of the largest, most rapidly growing socio-cultural phenomena.
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3.1. Hypothesized Model :
Figure 1: Core Concept Diagram
Social Media Usage
•Adolescents Social Media usage frequency
•Social Media Membership
Social Media as a Socialization Agent
•Enjoyment
•Social Media Learnings
•Reliability
•Best Fitted products
•Comparison between goods/brands
•Information about goods/brand
Purchase Intention
•Purchase of the products recommended in Social Media
•Adolescents as Purchase Decision Owners
Demographic Variables
•Age
•Gender
•School Type
•Mother & Father Job
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Past research indicated that female children were more influential than were male children across all stages of the decision-making process (Atkin , 1978; Moschis and Mitchell,1986). Changes in the contemporary family, such as delayed child-bearing, decreasing household size and fused relationships suggest that the moderating effect of gender may no longer be in effect. In fact, gender role socialization in many aspects is egalitarian. Parents socialize their sons and daughters equally in regard to the amount of time spent with them, discipline, and communication (Demo and Cox, 2000). To investigate the possible change from past research,
The following hypothesis is suggested,
H1: There is a significant difference in parental purchase decision between male and female adolescents.
Children are also faced with an unprecedented technological environment. For example, 47% of children aged 2–18 have a television in their bedroom. These children are consuming an average of 5.5 h a day using media such as television, print, and the computer (Dotson and Hyatt, 2005). In fact, the marked pace of technological change and educational development has left many children more knowledgeable than their parents (Francisco, 1999). As a result, children not only have greater input, but their input is being shaped by unmatched access to external socialization agents.
Through participation in family decision-making, children raised in different types of families learn norms, roles, and consumer skills and are thereby able to exert influence on purchase decisions (Mangleburg et al., 1999).
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Research suggests that differences in children’s consumption behavior may be attributed to differing skills learned in disparate socio-economic backgrounds (Page and Ridgway, 2001), parental child-rearing attitudes (Darley and Lim, 1986; Roberts et al., 1981), and parental communication styles (Carlson and Grossbart, 1988) Socialization also determines a child’s access to market information and impacts a child’s ability to effectively utilize this information (Moschis, 1987).
The family has long been identified as the primary socialization agent for children; however, recent trends indicate that agents external to the family, such as the mass media and peers, are outpacing the family (Dotson and Hyatt, 2005).
Finally, research suggests that the age at which children understand and utilize market information is getting younger. Children in the analytical stage of development (ages 7–11), for example, are more aware of their environment, actively seek information from multiple sources, and utilize this information to exert influence in purchase decision-making (Roedder-John, 1999).
The following hypotheses are suggested,
H2: There is a significant difference in purchasing adolescents’ needs between the adolescents who have Social Media membership and who do not have Social Media membership.
H3: There is a significant difference between the reliability of brand or good recommendations in Social Media between Adolescents who have Social Media membership and who do not have Social Media membership.
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Children’s influence depends also on the decision-process stage. They exert the most influence at the problem recognition stage than on subsequent phases, such as decision-making (Beatty and Talpade, 1994; Belch et al., 1985; Mangleburg, 1990; Swinyard and Sim, 1987). Moreover, influence differs by sub-decision type (purchase location, amount spent, product selection criteria (color, style, and brand), and purchase timing).
Children’s influence on amounts spent and on purchase location is lower than on other sub-decision types and is highest for product attribute decisions (Belch et al., 1985; Foxman et al., 1989a, b). Other factors affecting children’s influence relate to demographic variables like family income and children’s age. Family income and children’s influence are related positively (Foxman et al., 1989b).
Children’s ages also affect their level of influence. Specifically, children’s influence increases with age (Laczniak and Palan, 2004; Mangleburg, 1990; Swinyard and Sim, 1987). While requests’ frequency decreases with the child’s age (Isler et al., 1987), yielding by parents increases with it Laczniak and Palan, 2004). Yielding increase with age because older children are perceived to have had more experience with products (Mangleburg, 1990) and have more understanding of economic concepts and consumer skills (Laczniak and Palan, 2004; Roedder-John, 1999).
The following hypotheses are suggested,
H4: There is a significant difference in purchasing adolescents’ needs between the adolescents who go to Private School and who go to State School.
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H5: There is a significant difference about the reliability of brand or good recommendations in Social Media between adolescents who go to Private School and who go to State School.
H6: There is a significant difference in purchasing goods or brands recommended in Social Media between adolescents who go to Private School and State School.
H7: There is a significant difference in parental purchase decision between adolescents who go to Private School and who go to State School.
H8: There is a significant difference in parental purchase decision between different ages of adolescents.
Some studies have found that female adolescents tend to compare products before buying more than males, yet they show more positive attitudes towards advertising (Moore and Moschis, 1978). Still, they do not appear to adopt more preventive or defensive behaviors than boys (Lachance et al,. 2000), and among college students females score lower on consumer knowledge than males (Stafford- Smith and Mackey, 1989). The gender of young adults is not however related to their knowledge about credit matters (Lachance et al., 2005b).
Two significant but modest relations involved socio-demographic variables. Gender was related to a critical consumer attitude, with boys showing less compulsive buying tendencies than girls and this in line with many studies (as per d’Astous , Malta is, and Roberge, 1990; Roberts, 1998; Dittmar, 2005).
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The following hypothesis is suggested,
H9: There is a significant difference in comparing goods or brands in Social Media before purchasing between male and female adolescents.
3.2. Research Instrument:
It is believed that gender, school type and social media membership has a meaningful effect on children’s consumer socialization. The questionnaire consisted of 22 scaled items as well as demographic questions on participants’ gender, age, school type, class number, mother job and father job.
According to Burns and Bush (1998:297) the value of the Likert scale format lies in the fact that respondents are asked to indicate how much they agree or disagree with the statement. In this survey respondents were asked to indicate to what extent they agree or disagree with statements regarding the possible influence of Social Media for adolescents consumer socialization and purchase decision. The scale therefore captures the intensity of adolescents’ feelings toward Social Media.
In this study, it is aimed to understand the effects of social media on children’s consumer socialization. Furthermore, the general research question has to be divided into three sub-questions in order to understand the social media effects in Turkey over adolescent consumers:
How often do adolescents use Social Media?
How do adolescents socialized as consumers by Social Media?
What are the purchase attitudes of the adolescents socialized as a consumer by Social Media?
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3.2.1. Social Media Usage :
There are 24M internet users in Turkey according to the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) Turkey research. (July 2011) Social demographic characteristics of internet users in Turkey are commonly high potential consumers and the decision makers on purchase. Due to the research % 57 of the users are men and %34 of the main responsible of parental purchase. %86 of the users are using internet in daily basis and mobile connection percentage is %32.%30 of the users are graduated in primary school, %25 of them are graduated in secondary school, %30 of them are high school and only %15 of them are graduated at university. 875.297 people are making online shopping and 3,4M of the internet users are living in urban region. %10 of the users who are more than 2M are between 12-14 years old.
There are three questions take part in the survey in order to understand Social Media Usage of adolescents. First of all is to understand that adolescents have any Social Media membership. Second and the third questions are to measure Social Media usage frequency, day and hour basis in a week.
3.2.2. Social Media as a Consumer Socialization Agent:
Socialization agents are the sources of information about the specific area group membership and have been used in many prior studies. The conventional agents as defined in prior literature (see for example Arnon, et al., 2008; Moschis & Churchill, 1978) are parents, peers, school and media. However, given the internet’s influence on modern society , Roedder-John’s (1999) suggestion that the Internet should be considered as another socialization agent leads us to consider personal experience on the Internet as an additional agent.
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A literature study in the fields of marketing to children, advertising and marketing communication served as basis for the compilation of Elliot’s scale.There are ten questions take part in the survey in order to perceive the impact of Social Media as a consumer socialization agent for adolescents. Most of the questions in this part are scaled from Ernest J North and Theuns Kotze (2001), that the research topic is parents and tv advertisements as consumer socialization agents for adolescents. Unfortunately, there is not any scale about Social Media as a consumer socialization agent for adolescents in the literature for this reason our survey has been inspired and customized from this research.
Questions are stated as:
 Adolescents want to buy goods that they first meet in Social Media.
 Adolescents find enjoyable to spend time in Social Media.
 Adolescents learn new things about goods/brands every day.
 Adolescents believe the comments about goods/brands that they find in Social Media.
 Adolescents want to buy the products that they see in Social Media.
 Adolescents believe when they purchase a good by learning from Social Media, it is the best fitted product for themselves.
 Adolescents can compare goods/brands in Social Media.
 Adolescents believe that they can find all information about goods/brands in Social Media.
 Adolescents prefer to buy the goods/brands which are recommended in Social Media.

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3.2.3. Purchase Intention :
Historically, both marketers and consumer researchers have ignored children as a consumer segment because of their little disposable income (Ward, 1974). Since the 1980s, interest has been growing in children’s consumption behavior, especially their influence in family consumption decisions. Contrary to the traditional assumption that parents dominate in family decisions, abundant research has found that children have substantial relative influence (i.e., influence relative to their parents) in family consumption decisions.
Guided by the consumer socialization theory, researchers have found that children’s influence is affected by a variety of factors, including family variables (e.g., social class, family size, and family structure), children’s characteristics (e.g., gender, birth order, and age), parents’ characteristics (e.g., education, occupation, and consumption experiences), parental style, and family communication environment. (Peterson and Rollins, 1987).
In the survey, it has prepared three questions to understand if adolescents are decision makers such as:
 Adolescents are the decision makers when to purchase for their own needs.
 Parents take adolescents’ opinions when to purchase for one of the parents needs.
 Parents take adolescents’ opinions when to purchase something for home.
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3.3. Data Collection:
The population of the research includes all students studied in private and State Schools between 2010 - 2011 . The sample of the research is 199 students selected randomly from the students studied in private and State Schools between 2010 - 2011 .
The designated teachers at three schools were requested to distribute the questionnaires to grade fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth classes at the school. The teachers were specifically requested to take care that both genders and classes from a variety of cultural backgrounds were given the opportunity to complete the questionnaire. The teachers requested the students to complete the questionnaires in class and return them immediately. The questionnaire is in Turkish in to be understand by both State School and Private School students clearly.
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4. RESULTS
4.1. Descriptive Statistics:
Figure 4.1: The Distribution of Females and Males.
Frequency
Percent
Valid Percent
Cumulative Percent
FEMALE
101
50,8
50,8
50,8
MALE
98
49,2
49,2
100,0
Total
199
100,0
100,0
Table 2. Distribution of Females and Males.
%50,8 of the adolescents who have been participated in our survey are female and %49,2 of the adolecents are male.
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Figure 4.2 : Distribution of Age.
Frequency
Percent
Valid Percent
Cumulative Percent
11
46
23,1
23,1
23,1
12
45
22,6
22,6
45,7
13
63
31,7
31,7
77,4
14
28
14,1
14,1
91,5
15
17
8,5
8,5
100,0
Total
199
100,0
100,0
Table 3. Distribution of Age.
According to the table mentioned above, %23,1 of the adolescents who have been participated in our survey are 11 years old, %22,6 of the adolescents are 12 years old, %31,7 of the adolescents are 13 years old, %14,1 of the adolescents are 14 years old and finally %8,5 of the adolescents are 15 years old.
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Figure 4.3 : Distribution of Government and Private School Students.
Frequency
Percent
Valid Percent
Cumulative Percent
State School
158
79,4
79,4
79,4
Private School
41
20,6
20,6
100,0
Total
199
100,0
100,0
Table 4. Distribution of Government and Private School Students.
%79,4 of the adolescents who have been participated in our survey have been studying in State School and %20,6 have been studying in Private School.
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Figure 4.4 : Distribution of Mother’s Job
Frequency
Percent
Valid Percent
Cumulative Percent
MILITARY
2
1,0
1,0
1,0
LAWYER
2
1,0
1,0
2,0
OFFICER
13
6,5
6,5
8,5
WORKER
4
2,0
2,0
10,6
ENGINEER
6
3,0
3,0
13,6
DOCTOR
15
7,5
7,5
21,1
ACCOUNTANT
14
7,0
7,0
28,1
TEACHER
33
16,6
16,6
44,7
SELFEMPLOYMENT
13
6,5
6,5
51,3
HOUSEWIFE
97
48,7
48,7
100,0
Total
199
100,0
100,0
Table 5. Distribution of Mothers’ Job.
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%48,7 of the adolescents’s mothers are housewifes on the other hand most of the working mothers are teachers with a %16,6 ratio.
Figure 4.5 : Distribution of Farher’s Job.
Frequency
Percent
Valid Percent
Cumulative Percent
SOLDIER
61
30,7
30,7
30,7
LAWYER
2
1,0
1,0
31,7
OFFICER
7
3,5
3,5
35,2
WORKER
10
5,0
5,0
40,2
ENGINEER
36
18,1
18,1
58,3
DOCTOR
11
5,5
5,5
63,8
ACCOUNTANT
15
7,5
7,5
71,4
TEACHER
7
3,5
3,5
74,9
SELFEMPLOYMENT
50
25,1
25,1
100,0
Total
199
100,0
100,0
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Table 6. Distribution of Fathers’ Job.
%25,1 of the adolescents’ fathers have their own work and the fathers who does not have their own work are commonly soldier with a %30,7 ratio.
4.1. Social Media Usage:
%94 of the participants are members of a social media platform in Istanbul. It has measured within the scope of the survey that %7 of the adolescents are using internet only a day in a week, %13 of the adolescents are using two days in a week, %31 are using three daysin a week , % 16 are using four days in a week and finally %33 of the adolescents are using internet 5 days in a week. When it is needed to understand how many hours an adolescent spend in internet when he or she starts surfing; %4 of adolescents who have been participated in our survey are surfing in the internet for one hour, %13 of adolescents are surfing in the internet for 2 hours, %48 of adolescents are surfing in the internet for three hours, %31 of adolescents are surfing in the internet for four hours and finally %4 of adolescents are surfing in the internet for five hours.
4.2. Hypothesis:
Pearson Chi-Square Test is used to determine whether there is a significant difference between the expected frequencies and the observed frequencies in one or more categories. Iit is aimed to be reached the number of individuals or objects that fall in each category differ significantly from the number expected. It is intended to understand the difference between expected and observed value due to sampling error is a real difference.
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Pearson Chi-Square Test Requires; quantitative data, one or more categories, independent observations, adequate sample size, simple random sample, data in frequency form, all observations must be used. When a value is found for chi square, it has to be determined whether the observed frequencies differ significantly from the expected frequencies.
Pearson Chi-Square analysis are mentioned below the tables so as to understand the relations between demographic variables, social media usage, social media as a socialization agent and purchase intention statements The relations which are resulted as significant, cross tabulation has performed to understand the relation status.
It has mentioned below that the hypothesis which are aimed to be quantified in this research in order to understand how social media effects adolescents between the ages of 11 to 15 as a socialization agent.
H1o: There is not a significant difference in parental purchase decision between male and female adolescents.
H1ı: There is a significant difference in parental purchase decision between male and female adolescents.
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Chi-Square Tests
Value
df
Asymp. Sig. (2-sided)
Pearson Chi-Square
10,187
4
0,037
Likelihood Ratio
13,282
4
0,01
Linear-by-Linear Association
4,6
1
0,032
N of Valid Cases
199
2 cells (20%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is 3,94.
Table 7. Chi Square Test of H1 hypothesis.
P = 0.037 < 0.05 ; H1o has been rejected and H1ı has been accepted.
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GENDER * Cross tabulation
Count
Total
Strongly Disagree
Disagree
Unstable
Agree
Strongly Agree
GENDER
Female
Count
0
10
22
25
44
101
Expected Count
4,1
11,2
20,3
26,4
39,1
101
Male
Count
8
12
18
27
33
98
Expected Count
3,9
10,8
19,7
25,6
37,9
98
Total
Count
8
22
40
52
77
199
Expected Count
8
22
40
52
77
199
Table 8. Cross Tabulation of H1 hypothesis.
It has clearly understood from the cross tabulation table that parents of female adeolescents are more likely to take their children’s decision when they make a parental purchase rather than male adolescents. Most of the male are disagreed about the statement which means their parents do not take their ideas when they make a purchase.
H2o: There is not a significant difference in purchasing adolescents’ needs between the adolescents who have Social Media membership and who do not have Social Media membership.
H2ı: There is a significant difference in purchasing adolescents’ needs between the adolescents who have Social Media membership and who do not have Social Media membership.
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Chi-Square Tests
Value
df
Asymp. Sig. (2-sided)
Pearson Chi-Square
21,3156067
4
0,000274152
Likelihood Ratio
23,39789943
4
0,000105433
Linear-by-Linear Association
12,87895656
1
0,000332297
N of Valid Cases
199
1 cells (10,0%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is 4,45.
Table 9. Chi Square Test of H2 hypothesis.
P = 0.00 < 0.05 ; H2o has been rejected and H2ı has been accepted.
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Social Participation*
Cross tabulation
Count
Total
Strongly Disagree
Disagree
Unstable
Agree
Strongly Agree
Social Participation
Social
4
1
6
29
19
59
Unsocial
13
4
46
46
21
140
Total
17
15
52
75
40
199
Table 10. Cross Tabulation of H2 hypothesis.
It has mentioned in cross tabulation table that adolescents who have Social Media membership are commonly decision makers when to purchase their own needs.
H3o: There is not a significant difference in the reliability of recommendations in Social Media between Adolescents who have Social Media membership and who do not have Social Media membership.
H3ı: There is a significant difference in the reliability of recommendations in Social Media between Adolescents who have Social Media membership and who do not have Social Media membership.
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Chi-Square Tests
Value
Df
Asymp. Sig. (2-sided)
Pearson Chi-Square
33,39122991
4
0,00
Likelihood Ratio
32,39341704
4
0,00
Linear-by-Linear Association
28,07875037
1
0,00
N of Valid Cases
199
1 cells (10,0%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is 3,85.
Table 11. Chi Square Test of H3 hypothesis.
P = 0.00 < 0.05 ; H3o has been rejected and H3ı has been accepted.
Social Participation*
Cross tabulation
Count
Total
Strongly Disagree
Disagree
Unstable
Agree
Strongly Agree
Social Participation
Social
7
9
19
16
8
59
Unsocial
42
48
37
8
5
140
Total
49
57
56
24
13
199
Table 12. Cross Tabulation of H3 hypothesis.
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It has mentioned at cross tabulation table that adolescents who have Social Media membership, are strongly agreed that the reccomendations about goods or brands in Social Media are reliable.
H4o: There is a significant difference in purchasing adolescents’ needs between the adolescents who go to Private School and who go to State School.
H4ı: There is not a significant difference in purchasing adolescents’ needs between the adolescents who go to Private School and who go to State School.
Chi-Square Tests
Value
df
Asymp. Sig. (2-sided)
Pearson Chi-Square
21,3156067
4
0,000274152
Likelihood Ratio
23,39789943
4
0,000105433
Linear-by-Linear Association
12,87895656
1
0,000332297
N of Valid Cases
199
1 cells (10,0%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is 4,45.
Table 13. Chi Square Test of H4 hypothesis.
P = 0.00 < 0.05 ; H4o has been rejected and H4ı has been accepted.
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School Type* Cross tabulation
Count
Total
Strongly Disagree
Disagree
Unstable
Agree
Strongly Agree
School
State School
17
14
52
50
25
158
Private School
0
1
0
25
15
41
Total
17
15
52
75
40
199
Table 14. Cross Tabulation of H4 hypothesis.
State School Students and Private School Students are different as a decision owner to purchase their own needs. %52 of State School students are unstable
H5o: There is not a significant difference in the reliability of recommendations in Social Media between adolescents who go to Private School and who go to State School.
H5ı: There is a significant difference in the reliability of recommendations in Social Media between adolescents who go to Private School and who go to State School.
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Chi-Square Tests
Value
df
Asymp. Sig. (2-sided)
Pearson Chi-Square
26,11626449
4
0,00
Likelihood Ratio
27,38293696
4
0,00
Linear-by-Linear Association
19,88526795
1
0,00
N of Valid Cases
199
0 cells (,0%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is 7,12.
Table 15. Chi Square Test of H5 hypothesis
P = 0.00 < 0.05 ; H5o has been rejected and H5ı has been accepted.
School Type * Cross tabulation
Count
Total
Strongly Disagree
Disagree
Unstable
Agree
Strongly Agree
School
State School
70
24
28
16
20
158
Private School
1
0
14
15
11
41
Total
71
24
42
31
31
199
Table 16. Cross Tabulation of H5 hypothesis.
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Private School Students are strongly agree that the goods they buy according to the reccomendations in Social Media are best fitted however Government Students are strongly disagree about this statement.
H6o: There is not a significant difference in purchasing goods/brands recommended in Social Media between adolescents who go to Private School and State School.
H6ı: There is a significant difference in purchasing goods/brands recommended in Social Media between adolescents who go to Private School and State School.
Chi-Square Tests
Value
df
Asymp. Sig. (2-sided)
Pearson Chi-Square
65,26590527
4
0,00
Likelihood Ratio
64,35188547
4
0,00
Linear-by-Linear Association
49,01432986
1
0,00
N of Valid Cases
199
2 cells (20,0%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is 1,78.
Table 17. Chi Square Test of H6 hypothesis
P = 0.00 < 0.05 ; H6o has been rejected and H6ı has been accepted.
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School Type * Cross tabulation
Count
Total
Strongly Disagree
Disagree
Unstable
Agree
Strongly Agree
School
State School
89
40
18
7
4
158
Private School
0
1
14
24
2
41
Total
89
41
32
31
6
199
Table 18. Cross Tabulation of H6 hypothesis
It has stated that State School Students are strongly disagree about buying products recommended in Social Media on the other hand Private School Students are agree on this.
H7o: There is not a significant difference in parental purchase decision between adolescents who go to Private School and who go to State School.
H7ı: There is a significant difference in parental purchase decision between adolescents who go to Private School and who go to State School.
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Chi-Square Tests
Value
Df
Asymp. Sig. (2-sided)
Pearson Chi-Square
19,76429231
4
0,00055584
Likelihood Ratio
22,3971944
4
0,00016704
Linear-by-Linear Association
11,12207602
1
0,00085306
N of Valid Cases
199
1 cells (10,0%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is 2,37.
Table 19. Chi Square Test of H7 hypothesis
P = 0.011 < 0.05 ; H7o has been rejected and H7ı has been accepted.
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School Type* Cross tabulation
Count
Total
Strongly Disagree
Disagree
Unstable
Agree
Strongly Agree
School
State School
7
22
36
37
56
158
Private School
1
0
4
15
21
41
Total
8
22
40
52
77
199
Table 20. Cross Tabulation of H7 hypothesis
State School Students are mostly disagree that their parents take their ideas when to make a purchase for home on the other hand it is clearly seen from the cross tabulation table that Private School Students’ parents are concerning about their children’s ideas when to make a purchase for home.
H8o: There is not a significant difference in parental purchase decision between different ages of adolescents.
H8ı: There is a significant difference in parental purchase decision between different ages of adolescents.
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Chi-Square Tests
Value
Df
Asymp. Sig. (2-sided)
Pearson Chi-Square
33,87001403
16
0,005656321
Likelihood Ratio
35,12273645
16
0,003823411
Linear-by-Linear Association
0,184857924
1
0,667231233
N of Valid Cases
199
10 cells (40,0%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is ,68.
Table 21. Chi Square Test of H8 hypothesis
P = 0.00 < 0.05 ; H8o has been rejected and H8ı has been accepted.
AGE * Cross tabulation
Count
Total
Strongly Disagree
Disagree
Unstable
Agree
Strongly Agree
AGE
11
3
5
9
13
16
46
12
3
4
10
6
22
45
13
0
7
10
19
27
63
14
2
5
1
11
9
28
15
0
1
10
3
3
17
Total
8
22
40
52
77
199
Table 22. Cross Tabulation of H8 hypothesis
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It has stated from Chi-Square test that there is a significant difference between the adolescents’ age and parents to take their decisions to purchase something for home. It is also mentioned in the cross tabulation table above that in the ages of 13 and 14 parents pay attention on their children’s opinions when purchasing for home more.
However it cannot be clearly understood from the table that adolescents decision influences are increasing in the direct proportion of age, it can be inferenced from the cross tabulation table that within the ages of 13 and 14,” agree” and” strongly agree” answers are increasing. It means that there is a minor difference about taking decisions or taking initiatives between the ages of adolescents on the other hand 15 year old adolescents are mostly answered this question as unstable.
H9o: There is not a significant difference in comparing goods/brands in Social Media before purchasing between male and female adolescents.
H9ı: There is a significant difference in comparing goods/brands in Social Media before purchasing between male and female adolescents.
Chi-Square Tests
Value
df
Asymp. Sig. (2-sided)
Pearson Chi-Square
25,94475002
4
0,00
Likelihood Ratio
26,79137622
4
0,00
Linear-by-Linear Association
11,32997765
1
0,00
N of Valid Cases
199
0 cells (,0%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is 11,33.
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Table 23. Chi Square Test of H9 hypothesis P = 0.00 < 0.05 ; H9o has been rejected and H9ı has been accepted.
GENDER * Cross tabulation
Count
Total
Strongly Disagree
Disagree
Unstable
Agree
Strongly Agree
GENDER
Female
22
11
13
28
27
101
Male
8
12
11
10
57
98
Total
30
23
24
38
84
199
Table 24. Cross Tabulation of H9 hypothesis
It is stated at the cross tabulation table that female adolescents want to compare goods in Social Media more than male adolescents.
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5. DISCUSSIONS and CONCLUSION:
Children and adolescents today have increased access to information and a greater knowledge and understanding of today’s issues. They get their news and information primarily from television. They can aptly be called the television and Internet generation and can thus better understand the marketing and advertising campaigns presented to them. At the same time, however, the family is still the most important social group and source of information for children and adolescents (North and Kotze, 2001). It is mainly from parents that today’s adolescents learn their consumer behaviour. Therefore, parents are still the primary socialization agents who introduce and indoctrinate their children into the consumer role.
5.1. Discussions:
It is measured that an adolescent spend time in internet about 11 hours in a week due to our research . This value is almost same with the one mentioned in EU Kids Online Project (2011) as adolescents between 9-16 years old are using internet between 7-10.5 hours in a week. Young people today become consumers at an earlier age than their parents used to do. Indeed, they become consumers in their own right while they are still children (Ahava and Palojoki, 2004; Brusdal, 2006). Young people in modern societies need things in order to participate in certain activities, and express their social identity. Therefore, adolescence has become almost synonmous with possessing consumer goods (Lueg and Ponder, 2006). In our days, adolescents’ consumption habits are shaped by three important factors; First, adolescents grow into an environment of diverse products and services. Secondly, parents today want their children to grow up into independent individuals who can make their own decisions.
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Finally, modern day adolescents are more frequently exposed to marketing on television or the Internet. These environmental factors affect young people’s consumption habits (Assael, 1987; Solomon, 2004).
The difference between results of previous studies and those completed more recently implies that the technological developments are influencing purchasing behavior as are changes in family structure (e.g., the proliferation of computer and internet use, the increase in the number of working mothers giving more purchasing responsibility to children because the mothers have limited time to shop.) Results from these studies have also suggested that children have begun to influence the purchase of products which are not for their use. Although the difference is not important in terms of statistics, male adolescents consider their influence to be greater than of girls, in both the purchase of all the products covered by the study and the general issues related to decision making. The results of studies done in various countries in the past have shown that girls are more influential than boys at all the stages of decision making in shopping activity (Atkin, 1978; Mochis & Mitchell, 1986; Tansuhaj & Foxman, 1996)
Children’s influence depends also on the decision-process stage. They exert the most influence at the problem recognition stage than on subsequent phases, such as decision-making (Beatty and Talpade, 1994; Belch et al., 1985; Mangleburg, 1990; Swinyard and Sim, 1987). Moreover, influence differs by sub-decision type (purchase location, amount spent, product selection criteria (color, style, and brand), and purchase timing). Children’s influence on amounts spent and on purchase location is lower than on other sub-decision types and is highest for product attribute decisions (Belch et al., 1985; Foxman et al., 1989a, b).
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5.2. Conclusion:
In this survey, it is measured that %94 of the participants have a social media membership and % 96 of them has a Facebook profile Facebook membership rate is so high even though it is not allowed to have a membership for the adolescents under age of 18, adolescents prefer in order to create a profile by raising their ages. Social Media membership rate is extremely high however State School students have the biggest ratio, the survey was applied only in Istanbul and also in some well known schools in Istanbul.
Consumer socialization starts at a specific period of childhood neither it comes to an end but it develops during the whole life process. There are some variable which effects consumer socialization such as peers, demographic characteristics, parental behavior ..etc. It is mentioned in survey’s results that parents of female are more likely to take their daughters’ decision when they make a purchase rather than sons but there is not also a significant ratio difference between girls and boys as stated in the previous paragraph quoted from literature. Social Media is a new area of research for this reason it cannot be discovered hypothesis in the literature. On the other hand there are some findings in this survey that adolescents who have Social Media membership are mostly decision makers while purchasing for their own needs.
Nowadays according to the increasing rate of working mothers, parents expecting from their children to take more responsibility in the daily life such as purchasing decisions for their own needs which proceeds children consumers. School type is classified as State School and Private School in the survey. Whether it is deduced that parent’s income is better for private school students. It is stated as the results of this research that school type is positively effecting consumer socialization and purchase decisions of adolescents in a positive way.
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According to the results of the hypothesis, students of private school are commonly the main decision makers when to purchase for their own needs. Students of private school are in the tendency of buying the goods/brands which are recommended in Social Media. Parents of private school students are also in the attitude of taking their children’s opinion when to purchase for home. The results maintained from the survey are commonly corresponded to literature.
In conclusion, growing power of children over purchase decisions has to be paid attention on, by the companies in order to identify targets clearly about the market. Social Media effects of adolescents consumer socialization and adolescents impact on family purchase decisions are not only important for managerial or marketing perspective but also from a technological, societal and cultural perspective that social media requires the attention of researchers.
5.3. Managerial Implications:
Youths also shape the buying patterns of their families. (D. Kunkel , 2004)From vacation choices to car purchases to meal selections, they exert a tremendous power over the family pocketbook. Experts estimate that two- to fourteenyear- olds have sway over $500 billon a year in household purchasing. Thus, to influence youth is to influence the entire family’s buying decisions. (Calvert ,Sandra L, 2008) Our study’s findings provide useful managerial implications, especially Social Media influence on children so as to be socialized as a consumer and children’s impact on family purchase decision. In some cases, the recommendations we make are relevant for both adolescents in Istanbul, and can be used by managers regardless of their firms in order to understand the adolescents power on consumerism and family purchase decisions in Istanbul .
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It is essential to listen what adolescents say and what they want, and to maintain contact with adolescent’s worlds. Campaigns must be built with in the awareness of trends and wonders are living in the hearts of the young. Adults should never make assumptions about children’s wants or desires. Most importantly, marketers must have respect to adolescents. Adolescents are intelligent consumers and they deserve messages which are appropriate to their ages without being underestimated, and products and services that are proper for their needs.
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6. LIMITATIONS and FUTURE RESEARCH :
Research over children is a challenging work as it is resulted in this study. Marketers and researches who require to understand children’s way of thinking should notice that today’s children are completely different. According to Liebeck (1998), children are now more knowledgeable – they have increased access to information and a greater knowledge and understanding of today’s issues. However Social Media is the hot topic in our time, it is difficult to find academical researches about Social Media as a consumer socialization agent. This is the most challenging issue to prospect and discuss the research and results.
Other limitations existed in the survey that for instance, the survey was applied for only three schools with a limited number of participants. The more number of participants the more reliable results could be obtained. Future studies can be applied for an increased number of participants who are selected randomly from several types of schools in Istanbul in order to define more relevant results of the adolescents attitudes about Social Media and their purchase decisions in Istanbul. It may be enlarged to Turkey as well to identify adolescents’ attitudes about Social Media and purchase. As it is mentioned above only wellknown schools’ students in Istanbul attend the survey so this is another limitation for the research.
Adolescents like to be included into enjoyable activities and also they increase their learning curve if they enjoy it for this reason in the future researches it can be studied the relations between Social Media usage frequency and adolescents find Social Media enjoyable to learn more information about goods/brands from Social Media.
Finally, future research should consider whether the relations between adolescents’ Social Media membership and purchase opinions validity of adolescents when to buy something for home as a phd dissertation.
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ANNEX A - QUESTIONNAIRE
Cinsiyetiniz Kız __ Erkek __
Yaşınız ___________
Hangi tür okulda öğrenim görüyorsunuz?
Devlet Okulu __ Özel Okul __
Kaçıncı sınıfa gidiyorsunuz?
Anne/ Baba Mesleği ____________________________________________________
1.İnternette hangi sitelere üyesin ? (Facebook, Penguen, Tipeez.com… vb)
2.Haftada kaç gün internet kullanıyorsun ? (1,2,3,4,5,6,7)
1 gün 2günt 3 güm 5 gün hergün
3 Internete girdiğinde kaç saat kalıyorsun?
15 dakika yarım saat 1 saat 2 saat 3 saat ve daha fazlası
.
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Lütfen her bir ifadeyi dikkatlice okuyunuz ve bu ifadelere ne derece katıldığınıza ilişkin görüşünüzü “Herzaman” dan “Hiçbir zaman” a doğru uzanan ölçek üzerinde belirtiniz.
Herzaman
Sık sık
Bazen
Seyrek
Hiçbir zaman 4.Bana bir şey alınacağı zaman kararı yalnızca ben veririm. 5.Internette (Sosyal Ağlarda) reklamını gördüğüm ürünleri her zaman satın almak isterim. 6.İnternette (Sosyal Ağlarda) vakit geçirirken oldukça eğleniyorum. 7.İnternetten (Sosyal Ağlardan) her gün ürünlerle ilgili yeni bilgiler öğreniyorum. 8.İnternette (Sosyal Ağlarda) ürünler hakkında yapılan yorumların doğruluğuna inanıyorum. 9.İnternette (Sosyal Ağlarda) gördüğüm ürünleri her zaman almak isterim. ® 10.İnternetten (Sosyal Ağlardan ) öğrenerek aldığım ürünler her zaman bana en uygun ürünler olmuştur. 11.İnternette (Sosyal Ağlarda) ürünler ve markalar arasında kıyaslama yapma şansım oluyor. 12.İnternette (Sosyal Ağlarda) ürünler ile ilgili aradığım her türlü bilgiyi bulabiliyorum.
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13.İnternette (Sosyal Ağlarda) tavsiye edilen markaların benim için en uygun ürünler olduğuna inanıyorum. 14.Her zaman internette (sosyal ağlarda) tavsiye edilen ürünleri satın almayı seçerim. 15.İnternette (Sosyal Ağlarda) gördüğüm ürünleri asla satın almam. ® 16.Ailemden biri alışveriş yapacağı zaman benim fikrimi alır. 17. Eve herhangi bir ürün alınacak zaman mutlaka bana sorulur.
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