Effect of Parental Attitude on the Relationship between Children's Exposure to Advertising and Their Purchase Request

Abstract

This study tries to measure the relationship between children’s exposure to advertising and its effects on their purchase requests in Pakistan. It also seeks to know how parental control affects this relationship. Parental control, for the purpose of this study, has been operationalized through the dimension parental attitude towards advertising. This paper endeavours to add to an existing pool of research on children as consumers while focussing specifically on the consumer market in Pakistan. Previous researches on the topic, though exhaustive, have concentrated mainly on the Western consumer as the focus of analysis. This study expands on the concept by concentrating on Pakistan, where the cultural dimensions are far removed from the West. Since culture shapes individual attitudes and behaviours, therefore changing the context of the research has brought about significantly different results. This is an empirical study that employed data collection through structured questionnaire survey method. Data was gathered from mothers of 208 school-going children. The respondents were categorized into two age groups; mothers of children aged 5-8 and mothers of children aged 9-12. Six schools were chosen as sampling frames from Rawalpindi and Islamabad area. The responses were analysed as multiple response sets in SPSS. Findings validate previous researches and most of the proposed hypotheses are proven. Keywords: Parental, Pakistan, SPSS, Child