Children as consumers: consumption of carbonated drink at school

Abstract

Interest in the relationship between children and the marketing system is a relatively new development especially in Malaysia. In Malaysia, the population for age group below 14 years old was about 8.2 million (Statistic Department: Malaysia, 2005). The powerful presence of this age group population has made it important to understand children’s consumption behaviour in Malaysia. Although children may not be the actual decision maker in deciding the need for goods or services and may not be the one who really purchase the goods or services, but since they may be the ultimate users to consume the goods and services, their influence on the purchasing process should not be undermined. According to Henthorne, La Tour and Hudson (1997), children are becoming frequent and active shoppers in the rest of the world and they will continue to have influence on certain unique product categories such as fast foods and breakfast cereals. In developed countries such as the USA, children play an important part in the household’s consumption pattern. For instant, American children under 12 years old and younger spend over USD14 billion of their own money each year and influence over USD160 billion in household purchases (Azoulay, 1998 and Woft, 1998). In addition, they indirectly impacted on USD300 billion of parental expenditures (Brennan, 2000) and this trend is growing at a steady 15 percent per annum over the past decade (Angrisani, 2001).