DOCTORAL THESIS Title a STUDY of the FACTORS THAT
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DOCTORAL THESIS Title A STUDY OF THE FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE MATERIALISM IN CHILDREN. Presented by JUAN FRANCISCO DÁVILA BLÁZQUEZ Centre ESADE BUSINESS SCHOOL Department DEPARTMENT OF MARKETING MANAGEMENT, OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT AND INNOVATION AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT Directed by MÒNICA CASABAYÓ, PhD ii | Page To my parents iii | Page iv | Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I want to thank Professors Núria Agell, Cristina Giménez and Vicenta Sierra, Heads of the PhD Program at ESADE Business School, for all the valuable help and support received during my PhD. I would also like to thank Pilar Gállego and Silvia Espin from the PhD Program office. Of course, I thank my PhD supervisor, Mònica Casabayó, first for believing with me in the importance of the topic of children’s materialism, and then for guiding me throughout the long process of the doctoral research, being always available and enthusiastic to propose ideas and projects. I must also thank Mr. Carlos Camí for his invaluable help building bridges between the university and the school, as well as all the anonymous Spanish schools for supporting the data collection process. I would also like to thank Jordi Crespo of the Hamilton Intelligence and Professor Jatinder Jit Singh for his help during the data-gathering and analysis stages. And finally, I want to thank the Directors and residents of Col·legi Major Pedralbes, the students hall of residence which became my home during these four years in Barcelona. Thank you for being a real family away from home. v | Page vi | Page TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1: Introduction........................................................................................... 1 1.1 Personal Motivation ................................................................................ 3 1.2 Contribution to the Area of Transformative Consumer Research ........... 6 1.3 Structure of the Thesis ............................................................................ 8 Chapter 2: Children in Consumer Society ................................................................ 9 2.1 Consumer Society, Consumerism and Materialism ................................. 9 2.2 Exposure of Children to Consumer Society ........................................... 12 2.3 Consumer Socialization of Children ...................................................... 19 2.3.1 John’s Model of Consumer Socialization ........................................ 21 2.3.2 Differences in Brand Symbolism for Children across Ages, Gender and Social Class ............................................................................................. 28 Chapter 3: Literature Review ................................................................................ 35 3.1 Materialism ........................................................................................... 36 3.1.1 Measuring Materialism .................................................................. 41 3.1.2 Sources of Materialism .................................................................. 46 3.1.3 Effects of Materialism ................................................................... 48 3.2 Factors that Influence Materialism in Children ..................................... 58 3.2.1 An Overview .................................................................................. 58 3.2.2 Conceptual Framework .................................................................. 62 3.2.3 Connection to Previous Models..................................................... 81 Chapter 4: Research Design .................................................................................. 85 vii | Page 4.1 Research Problem and Hypotheses ....................................................... 85 4.2 Data Collection ...................................................................................... 93 4.2.1 Survey to Children .......................................................................... 94 4.2.2 Survey to Parents ......................................................................... 109 4.3 The Sample .......................................................................................... 118 Chapter 5: Analysis and Results........................................................................... 123 5.1 Analysis and Interpretation of Results ................................................. 124 5.1.1 Identifying the Factors Related with Materialism ........................ 124 5.1.2 Identifying the Factors with the Highest Impact. ......................... 133 5.1.3 Identifying Interaction Effects ...................................................... 134 5.1.4 Understanding Clusters of Children by Materialism ..................... 142 Chapter 6: Conclusions ........................................................................................ 147 6.1 Contributions ....................................................................................... 148 6.2 Limitations and Further Research ........................................................ 152 6.3 Recommendations............................................................................... 156 References .......................................................................................................... 159 Appendixes .......................................................................................................... 173 viii | Page LIST OF FIGURES Figure 3.1 Conceptual framework of the forerunners of materialism in children . 63 Figure 3.2 Family communications patterns ......................................................... 74 Figure 4.1 Conceptual framework and hypotheses ............................................... 86 Figure 4.2. Example of use of smiley faces in children’s survey ............................ 95 Figure 4.3. Goldberg's (2003) Youth Materialism Scale (YMS) .............................. 98 Figure 4.4 Age measure ...................................................................................... 100 Figure 4.5 Gender measure ................................................................................. 100 Figure 4.6 RSE Rosenberg (1965) Self-Esteem scale, obtained from Blascovich & Tomaka (1991) .................................................................................................... 101 Figure 4.7 Rosenberg and Simmons (1972) Self-Esteem scale. ........................... 102 Figure 4.8 Measures of media exposure ............................................................. 104 Figure 4.9 Attitudes towards ads & perceived intention of ads .......................... 105 Figure 4.10 Consumer Susceptibility to Influence Scale adapted from Bearden, Netemeyer and Teel (1989). ............................................................................... 106 Figure 4.11 Imitation of media celebrities (Chan and Zhang 2007) ..................... 108 Figure 4.12 Role model influence (from Martin & Bush 2000) ............................ 109 Figure 4.13 Family income question ................................................................... 110 Figure 4.14 Family structure question................................................................. 111 Figure 4.15 Material Values Scale with 15 items (Richins, 2004). ....................... 112 Figure 4.16 Family communications pattern (Buijzen & Valkenburg, 2005) ....... 114 Figure 4.17 Questions on family’s religiosity ....................................................... 117 Figure 5.1 Structural Equation Model of Children’s Materialism controlling for Gender and Income ............................................................................................ 134 ix | Page Figure 5.2 Slopes of the regression of materialism on TV hours at three levels of Attitudes to Ads .................................................................................................. 136 Figure 5.3 Slopes of the regression of materialism on TV hours by school type . 138 Figure 5.4 Slopes of the regression of materialism on Internet hours at three levels of age .................................................................................................................. 140 Figure 5.5 Slopes of the regression of materialism on Internet hours by school type ..................................................................................................................... 141 Figure 5.6 Clusters of children by materialism .................................................... 146 x | Page LIST OF TABLES Table 1.1 Kids segmentation by age. (Kurnit, 2004 p.29) ........................................ 5 Table 2.1 Age span of stages in Piaget, Selman and John’s models ...................... 24 Table 2.2 Stages in children's consumer socialization ........................................... 27 Table 3.1 Measures of materialism in adults and children .................................... 45 Table 3.2 Studies of factors that influence children’s materialism........................ 62 Table 3.3 Overview of effects of factors on children’s materialism ...................... 81 Table 4.1 Age expressed in years with decimals ................................................... 99 Table 4.2 Pupils in catalan schools, 2010-2011 ................................................... 118 Table 4.3 Population of pupils from 3rd grade of elementary to 1st grade of ESO. ............................................................................................................................ 118 Table 4.4 Surveys by school and answer rates ...................................................