Summary: | Interest in the relationship between children and the marketing system
is a relatively new development especially in Malaysia. In Malaysia,
the population for age group below 14 years old was about 8.2 million
(Statistic Department: Malaysia, 2005). The powerful presence
of this age group population has made it important to understand
children’s consumption behaviour in Malaysia. Although children
may not be the actual decision maker in deciding the need for goods
or services and may not be the one who really purchase the goods
or services, but since they may be the ultimate users to consume the
goods and services, their influence on the purchasing process should
not be undermined. According to Henthorne, La Tour and Hudson
(1997), children are becoming frequent and active shoppers in the
rest of the world and they will continue to have influence on certain
unique product categories such as fast foods and breakfast cereals.
In developed countries such as the USA, children play an important
part in the household’s consumption pattern. For instant, American
children under 12 years old and younger spend over USD14 billion
of their own money each year and influence over USD160 billion in
household purchases (Azoulay, 1998 and Woft, 1998). In addition,
they indirectly impacted on USD300 billion of parental expenditures (Brennan, 2000) and this trend is growing at a steady 15 percent per
annum over the past decade (Angrisani, 2001).
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