Socialization and the buying behaviour of the Arab child consumers: insights from Oman

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to explore and analyze the various consumer socialization agents for the young Omani Arab children, who play a key role in the family purchase process. Design/methodology/approach A mixed method research approach was adopted in the form of a survey and short interviews for the study. The study was performed on the children in the age group of 7-14 years, enrolled in Omani schools. The socialization factors were grouped through the exploratory factor analysis and multiple regression analysis was conducted to assess the impact of the factors on the purchase of various product categories. Finally, short personal interviews with the children were made to validate the results. Findings A model was proposed incorporating the four different socialization patterns of Omani children involving parents, friends, television and internet. The model was tested with the purchase of different product categories through multiple regression analysis. The results supported the parents, television and friends while rejected the internet as a means of socialization of Omani children. The qualitative analysis also revealed the same results, further incorporating the role of other family members in the socialization of the children. Research limitations/implications A research gap exists in the consumer literature related to the Arab child socialization as the previous scholars had contributed mainly in the developed Western context, hence, demanding further research studies in the young Arab consumers’ perspective. Practical implications Being the first of its type in the regional context, the research is important for the researchers who wish to understand the socialization process and its agents for the Omani Arab children. The research provides insights about the psychology of Omani children towards the products, which can aid the marketers to design appropriate marketing programmes targeting the growing child segment in the Arab world. Originality/value A significant research gap exists and suggests a research study on the patterns of socialization of the Arab children as no similar research had been previously conducted related to this context on child socialization. This research will serve as a base for future research studies in the socialization and purchase behavior of the Arab children.

A Study of Children’s Influence in Family Purchasing Decisions: Parents’ Perspective

“…Fan and Li (2009) conducted a study regarding children's buying behavior in China and findings implied that TV advertisements are considered as the most important information source for the new product for children. Moreover, children study "expressive elements of consumption" (materialistic values and social motivations) or "affective consumption" (styles and moods of consumption) from their peers (Parsons et al, 1953 cited by Ghouse, Chaudhary andDurrah, (2019). These findings also revealed that children demanded more stationary items from peer influence.…”

“…Though children don't have enough knowledge about the market initially, they stand fully-fledged customers with the help of socialization agents. Media is one of the socialization agents which has been the subject of many Western researchers -especially television advertising (Ghouse, Chaudhary and Durrah, 2019). According to the findings children are more addicted to television and learned more about related product items.…”

“…Family or parents are considered as primary socialization agents. Ghouse, Chaudhary and Durrah, (2019) noticed that family provides four basic functions for a child: 1) economic well-being; 2) emotional support; 3) family lifestyles, and 4) child socialization. Further, Ekasasi, (2009) recognized several ways that parents used to make their children as effective consumers.…”

Fathers' Predominance in Transport Arrangements for Family Tourism: E-Chaid-Based Profiling in East Asia

“…Conversely, the societal-divergence theory argues that individual-level values with respect to culture are preserved over time, regardless of changes in economy and technology [25][26][27][28]. Recently, the perspective of multilevel crossvergence, which entails societal-level divergence by culture and convergence by ideology and individual-level characteristics [29], has completely documented, [8,12,15,[45][46][47][48]. Third, these cases were drawn from four East Asian societies that have similarities yet are diverse in their sociocultural and ideological backgrounds and the sample size accommodated the conditions for applying a decision tree model.…”

Negative behaviors among employees: the impact on the intention to leave work

“…The Sultanate of Oman is one of the founding members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). With the projected population of 5 million, it is one of the least densely populated nations (Ghouse et al , 2020). In 1972, Oman became part of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).…”