Mother's Consumer Socialization of Children and Related Variables

어머니의 아동기 자녀에 대한 소비자사회화 수행과 관련변수

Mothers play a major role in children's consumer socialization but little is known about differences in mother's consumer socialization tendencies and the antecedents causing the differences. This study addresses two research questions: First, what are the underlying dimensions of mother's consumer socialization? Second, what are the antecedent variables causing differences in mother's consumer socialization tendencies; can parental style, consumption-related attitudes (attitude toward marketplace and ads., attitude toward consumerism and consumption-oriented attitude) be used as a conceptual basis for hypothesizing these differences? The findings of this research were as follows: 1. Factor analysis suggested five underlying dimensions of mother's consumer socialization of children; Mother-child communication about consumption, Mediation of media, Reaction to purchase requests, Restriction of allowances and Restriction of consumption. 2. The differences in the mother's consumer socialization tendencies among different parental groups matched the differences in child-rearing behaviour suggested by Developmental Psychology and this provided support for expected relationships between general-consumer socialization tendencies, as measured by mothers' behaviour. 3. Differences were found on all factors according to mothers consumption-related attitude. This provided support for the expectation that mothers' consumption related attitudes are important antecedent variables causing differences in consumer socialization tendencies. Some implications and directions for future research were discussed.