Investigation on the levels of Children's participation in family food purchasing process¹

Today, children constitute an important consumer group as they influence their families’ buying and spending patterns. We conducted a survey to understand levels ofchildren's participation in family food purchasing process. The sample group for the survey consisted of 258 parents (154 mothers and 104 fathers) from Aksehir town of Konya province. Children's participation levels in the process of purchasing the food for their families, were examined at the three stages of "shopping planning", "shopping action" and "act of buying.” According to the testimonies of parents, their children participated in half of the "act of buying" (50.4%), in more than half of the "shopping action" (56.6%), but only 33.4% participated in "shopping planning" stage. Further, we analyzed the relation between the independent variables and children's participation by "Pearson Correlation Coefficient."

According to mothers their children participated in the "act of buying" stage more when accompanied by them than by their fathers (p<0.05). Age of either the accompanying mother (p>0.05) or father (p>0.05) made no difference to the level of partication by their children during the three-phase shopping. The level of participation of children during all three stagesof shopping increased with the accompanying mother's level of education (p<0.05). Only during the “purchase action" stage, a decrease in the accompanying father's level of education caused an increase in the level of participation of children. During the stage of "purchase action” three and four-person families allowed greater participation by children during "shopping action” than larger families did (p<0.05). Finally, the level of participation increased during the “act of buying” for families with higher income (p<0.001).