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Family Communication Patterns and Childrens influence on Family Decision Making

Wut, Tai Ming,* University of South Australia, edmundtmwut@yahoo.com.hk Chou, Ting-Jui, Renmin University of China, tchou@mail2000.com.tw

Abstract World economy has changed significantly in past decades. Parents usually come out to work and family communication pattern expecting to be changed. The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between family communication patterns and childrens influence on family decision making. It has been shown that children have more influence for pluralistic families on the choice stage than protective families and there is no significant difference between pluralistic and protective communication types for childrens influence in the decision stage.

Keywords: Family communication patterns, family decision making, childrens influence

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Family Communication Patterns and Childrens influence on Family Decision Making

Introduction

Chaffee et al. (1971, p331) develop a framework on family communications. Socio-orientated is a type of parental style that a child has to accept his or her parent values and instruction without disagreement. The second type of parental style is concept orientated, which is more open and encourages child to develop his or her own idea. Four different types of communications: Laissez-faire, Protective, Pluralistic, and Consensual are classified according to levels of two above-mentioned orientations. When both levels of socio- and concept- orientation are low, it is classified as Laissez-faire families. There is lack of parent-child communication in those families. When Socio-orientation is high and conceptorientation is low, it is a protective family. Obedience and family harmony are stressed. Pluralistic families encourage open communication and childs independent thinking. High concept-orientation and low socio-orientation is expected. Consensual families focus on both types of parental styles. There is little research specifically targeting the impact of communication pattern styles on childrens influence on family consumption. Thus, a new model is proposed for the issue. Conceptual Framework Consumer Socialization is the process children get knowledge and skills in order to become an independent consumer in a family context. It is under a larger socio-cultural environment examining parent-child interactions within (Moschis and Churchill, 1978, p599; Rose et al., 1998, p73). According to Moschis and Moore (1979, p106), parents are the main source of rational influence on children. Thus, parental style is one of important factor affecting family members buying behaviour. According to Caruana and Vassallo (2003), socio- and concept- orientations are two important parental styles that are likely to affect the perceived influence that children believe they hold. Chan and McNeal (2003, p324) report that Chinese parents are mostly consensual with both high scores on socio- and concept- orientations. They conclude that Chinese parents have strict control over their children on purchasing but give them some freedom in choice of brands of specific products. The study is conducted in Chinas cities Beijing, Nanjing and Chengdu. A modified theoretical framework after Chan and McNeal (2003, p318) is developed to predict family communication pattern and consumption decision: Figure One: A theoretical framework predicting family communications and buying choice and decision

Family communication pattern

Choice and buying decision

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It is expected that children in pluralist families would have more influence than protective families on family decision making. Two hypotheses have been set up in order to test the effect of parental communication pattern on family decision making: Hypothesis One: Children influences on family decision making is greater on pluralistic than protective communication patterns for choice independence stage Hypothesis Two: Children influences on family decision making is greater on pluralistic than protective communication patterns for decision stage Methodology Carlson and Grossbart (1988)s scale items have been modified in order to use as parental style (concept orientation) and (socio-orientation) constructs in the study. Original scale is five point Likert scale and this questionnaire is using seven-point scale anchored by 7=strongly agree and 1=strongly disagree. The Choice independence scale item used by Carlson and Grossbart (1988) has been revised from a five item, four point Likert scale to seven point Likert scale. Kim and Lee (1997) decision-maker roles scale is used without modification. Original scale is 1=My parents entirely through 4=My parents and I jointly to 7=Myself entirely in childrens version of questionnaire. All items for those constructs are chosen for pre-test and reliability of whole questionnaire is established through test-retest method with two to three weeks interval. Correlation coefficients among almost all questions in test-retest are significant at least at the p < 0.5 level. This suggests a good reliability of instrument design. Three questions in the parental styles construct are discard because their result is unstable. For construct reliability, all constructs include parental style (concept orientation) and (socio orientation) shows good results for Cronbachs alpha. All exceed desired value 0.7. Samples are collected through convenience sampling. Although a convenience sample is used, specific demographic quotas are established to ensure adequate representation of families in Hong Kong. Only those families in which the husband, wife and at least one child are currently living at home are included in the sample. Moreover, the child has to be at least seven years of age. At least half of families are living in New Territories, a quarter of families is living in Hong Kong island and the rest are living in Kowloon side. The distribution is similar to the actual population in Hong Kong. The large-scale survey was conducted on February 2006. Since target respondents are Chinese, back translation is used to ensure the meaning of original questions fully converted. It is the process of translating questionnaire that has been translated into Chinese back to English by an independent translator. Minor corrections have been done on the wording of questionnaire. Data is analyzed using cluster analysis using SPSS statistical package. Findings and Discussion After discarding 36 sets of incomplete questionnaires, there are 732 valid sets of questionnaires from a total of 122 families are available for further analysis. In terms of total number of siblings, the average for respondent families is 2.03, which corresponds to the whole population in Hong Kong. The gender distribution of children also approximates that of

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the whole population. Below are demographic profiles of children in the sample. Ages of children, ranks of children and numbers of sibling in families are treated as control variables. Table Two Variables Gender of child Demographic profiles of children Categories Male Female 7-10 11-14 15-18 19-29 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 Percentage % 41 59 29.5 40.2 13.9 16.4 30.3 46.7 14.8 5.7 2.5 61.5 24.6 9.0 4.1 0.8

Age of children

Number of sibling

Ranking

First of all, factor analysis is performed on the concept-orientated parental style and socioorientated parental style together. Three out of seven questions on concept-orientated parental style and three questions on socio-orientated parental style remain as final candidates for further analysis. Bartlett test of sphericity is significant since Chi-square value is 1151.43 and p-value is less than 0.001. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy is 0.733 is greater than acceptable level of 0.5. Data are divided into four groups by cluster analysis according to the ratings on conceptualorientated and socio-orientated parental style questions from family members.

Table Three Variable

Clusters Analysis on parental styles Cluster numbers 2 3 5 3 5 3 178 204 F-value 4 3 5.33 106 185.12*** 227.88*** Total: 732

Concept-orientated parental style Social-orientated parental style Sample Size *** p < 0.001

1 4.67 4 244

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Four clusters have been identified as family communication patterns according to their levels on two parental styles (Table Four). Cluster centres larger than four would be regarded high level and clusters centres equal or less than four would be regarded as low level. Similar result is reached using medium split by Chan and McNeal (2003, p324) and Rose et al. (1998, p78).

Table Four

Family communication patterns Concept High High Low Low Social Low High Low High Pattern Pluralistic Consensual Laissez-Faire Protective

Cluster number 1 (n=244) 2 (n=178) 3 (n=204) 4 (n=106)

From the above table, pluralistic and laissez-faire family communication patterns are the two common ways in which Hong Kong family members would be adapted whereas protective communication pattern is not a favorable choice.

Table Five

Summary result for Choice Independence and Decision role Choice independence 3.57 (1.65) 4.16 (1.39) 3.20 (1.83) 4.11 (1.68) Decision Role 3.15 (1.60) 3.01 (1.52) 3.18 (1.75) 2.87 (1.82)

Communication type Pluralistic Consensual Laissez-Faire Protective

Note: Reverse scale is used in decision role

For pluralistic parental style, children are encouraged to express their idea, which indicates they tend to choose for themselves. Rather low rating on choice independence confirms the prediction (Table Five). The second highest rating on decision implies some involvement of children in family decision making. Children are discouraged to make their own choice and obey parent instructions for protective parental style. Therefore, highest rating on choice independence and lowest rating on decision role are obtained (reverse scale on decision role). For laissez-faire parental style, there is lack of parent and child communication. It may due to parents usually go out for work and seldom to talk with their children. Children expect to have making their own decision. For consensual parental style, both communications types are emphasised. Figures in table five indicate that children are encouraged to make their own choice and decision. Thus, lowest rating on choice independence and highest rating on decision role are obtained. There is significant difference in choice independence ratings between pluralistic and protective (F statistic is 7.8385 and p value is 0.005). On the other hand, they are no significant difference in decision stage ratings (F statistic is 2.0754 and p value is 0.1506). Hypothesis one is supported and hypothesis two is not supported. That means although

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children in pluralistic family have more freedom in search and evaluation, they are more or less the same with protective family that parents hold final decision.

Conclusion In conclusion, children has more influence for pluralistic and lassie-faire communication type on the search and evaluation stage in family decision making and there is no significant differences among communication types for children in the decision stage. It is clear that marketers should pay equal emphasis on both parents and their children because over 60% of samples are lassie-faire or pluralistic families. Children on those families have less parental influence in choice stage. In addition, parents have last gate of financial control therefore luxury or relatively high price products should be acceptable to parents first. Results indicate that there may be cultural difference between Eastern and Western families, which are suggested by Chan and McNeal (2003, p318). The study can also be replicated in other countries such as Singapore, Mainland China or Taiwan where Chinese families are located. Further research in this area may also include a range of products and services. Family influence is only one of the important factors in childrens consumer socialization. Dotson and Hyatt (2005) find that irrational social influence, importance of television, familial influence, shopping importance and brand importance are five major consumer socialization influence factors. Those factors vary according to the childs gender, age, amount of spending money available, amount of television viewing and how child spends time after school. There are also other limitations in the results and generalizability of this research in terms of sampling. The choice of the sample, which is non-probabilistic in nature, is other limitation. Furthermore, self-reported answers are usually socially biased.

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