Low-Income Child Consumers across Cultures: An Investigation of Children's Consumer Behavior in Three Diverse Communities in North America

Abstract

Children are exposed to many commercial messages in a given year. Yet, not all child consumers are the same. The purpose of this study was to explore children's consumer behavior, aged 3 to 8, in three diverse low-income communities. One set of children were from western Canada, one from rural Appalachia and the last from the urban northeast of the United States. The study tested whether there were differences across groups for parent-reported purchase requests and purchase related conflict. The results showed wide differences between these three sets of communities. Children from Canada made significantly fewer purchase requests and engaged in less conflict with parents, while the children from the urban northeast made the most purchase requests and experienced the greatest amount of purchase related conflict. The study further tested whether secondary variables accounted for this difference (e.g. television exposure, age). These variables could not account for the differences between communities.