Childhood consumer socialization agents and process: a review

Children hold the pulse of every member in the family and play the role of active initiators, influencer, information seekers and buyers in the family buying decisions. So children are the very special segment and target for the marketers because they find it's quite easy to penetrate the family's purchase through children. Thus this is the necessary for children to acquire more reasonable and relevant knowledge about market place for becoming witty consumers. There are some factors by which children learn about the marketing activities and their functioning in the market place. These factors are known as socializing agents and the process is called consumer socialization. In this paper, different studies conducted in western countries on the role of socializing agents i.e. advertising, Peers, Parental style, and Family communication Pattern were reviewed. Indian culture is completely different from western culture so the role of children in family buying also differs. Hence the aim of this paper to explore the relevancy of these dimensions in the context of Indian children and to identify the direction for future research