A Qualitative Study of Mother - Adolescent Daughter - Vicarious Role Model Consumption Interactions

Usually parents are perceived as consumption role models for their children through a socialization process. Yet, today's Western culture emphasizes a youthful ideal, strenghened by the mass media leading individuals to use different means to feel or look younger than their age. Hence, in contrast to the parent-child direction mostly assumed in previous research, many mothers emulate their daughters and consume similar perfumes,make-up, or clothes to look younger.Notably, studies of family consumption decisions have investigated children's relative influence in different stages of the buying process mostly on products directly relevant to them or to the family as whole but not on the influence of children on consumption of products that are used by parents. We address this gap in the literature in a qualitative study that focused on tri-directional mothers- adolescent daughters- vicarious role models interactions as drivers of consumer behaviors.

Citation:

Yossi Gavish, Aviv Shoham, and Ayalla Ruvio (2008) ,"A Qualitative Study of Mother - Adolescent Daughter - Vicarious Role Model Consumption Interactions", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 35, eds. Angela Y. Lee and Dilip Soman, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 732-734.