Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2008

Publication Title

International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management

Volume

36

Issue

10

Pages

831-855

Abstract

Purpose
– The purpose of this study is to examine the consumer socialization of preschool age children in a peer‐to‐peer context as they participate in dramatic play in a grocery store setting.
Design/methodology/approach
– This research employs a case study approach as outlined by Yin. A preschool located within a major metropolitan area in the Southeastern USA was selected for investigation. Located within each of the three classrooms was a grocery store learning center. This learning center provided children the opportunity to engage in dramatic play while enacting grocery shopping scripts. A total of 55 children between the ages of three‐ and six‐years old were observed over a six‐week period. Observations were recorded via field notes and transcribed into an electronic data file. Emergent themes were compared with theoretical propositions, fleshing out an overall interpretation and description of the case context.
Findings
– Findings indicate that even very young children (ages three to six years) are able to successfully adopt and utilize adult shopping scripts within the grocery store shopping context. The children followed a common sequence of behaviors that mimicked adult shopping patterns. Furthermore, the children demonstrated peer‐to‐peer consumer socialization strategies, directing each other on how to perform appropriate shopping scripts.
Originality/value
– This study differs from previous research in that the data reveal that preschool age children do in fact exhibit peer‐to‐peer influence while enacting shopping scripts. Although research has examined children as consumers, no researchers have used dramatic play to study young children in a grocery store setting. The rich content obtained from observing children in dramatic play in a grocery store learning center is unique to the marketing literature and provides a better understanding of the consumer socialization of young children.

Identifier

0959-0552

Comments

Author Posting. © Emerald Publishing Group 2008. This article is posted here by permission of Emerald Publishing for personal use, not for redistribution. The article was published in the International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 2008, https://doi.org/10.1108/09590550810901017

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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