Children and Young People's Developing Concept of Perceived Value

This thesis examines value perception as part of the decision to purchase, from the perspective of the child consumer. To date no academic research has defined the concept of value perception from a child‟s perspective. On the basis of a two stage qualitative investigation with children aged eight to fourteen years, value for children was found to be an important concept in consumer decisions. Even from the age of eight years, evidence emerged that children were quite „canny‟ in their purchasing. While value was found to be comprised of benefits and costs of purchase for children from this young age, the nature of these factors and the way they contributed to value perception varied considerably as they grew older. Six distinct dimensions emerged from diaries and a series of in-depth interviews with children. The benefits which were identified were functional value, emotional value, social value and curiosity/novelty value while the costs included both price and risk related factors. The way in which the dimensions were considered was found to vary with age, changing from separate consideration of benefits and costs to a more adult like trade-off between the two. The emotional value of products was consistently important for children of all ages, sensory response in particular. Several concepts were found to become increasingly complex. Conceptual understanding of quality emerged as children grew older. Branding was found to be central to children‟s value perceptions despite limited conceptual understanding for very young consumers and the way price was considered changed markedly with age and experience. A conceptual model defining perceived value from a child‟s perspective is detailed and a series of propositions relating important conditions to perceived value are advanced. A discussion of the findings as they relate to the extant literature is provided along with directions for future research, building on the results of this work. Finally, a discussion of the implications of this work for the field of Marketing is presented.