Empowering Young Consumers Who Experience Vulnerability

This multi-study program of research identifies key vulnerability factors that young consumers experience, particularly in persuasive communications. Solutions to empower these young consumers are provided for each identified vulnerability factor.

Why is this important?

Children represent a fast-increasing market. As a group of consumers, they consume products (e.g., toys and food) or services (e.g., theme parks and childcare) targeting them; they also influence family purchases since they were born and become buyers starting from the school canteen or even earlier. Many critics of marketers that target children argue that children are vulnerable to the persuasion used in marketing messages with potential consequences of obesity issues, parent-child conflict, and materialism. However, our knowledge about children’s vulnerability factors is still unclear or inconsistent. We are not able to empower children without understanding these vulnerability factors.

What did we do?

This project was initiated from Dr Wang’s PhD research and is now one of her main research streams. Aspired to empower young consumers who experience vulnerability, we scaffolded vulnerability factors, tested potential solutions to empower children, and proposed future research agendas. This research project comprises various studies, including conceptual, empirical and opinion pieces.

What did we find out?

This project suggested a research paradigm change from over-protecting children (from the 1970s to now) to treating them as consumer trainees, consistent with the original studies about young consumers in the 1950s.

  • Conceptually, Mizerski, Wang, Lee and Lambert (2017) discussed ways to empower children with targeted strategies for different developmental and contextual vulnerability factors.
  • Empirically, Wang and Mizerski (2019) became the first in the world who develop measures of persuasion knowledge for very young consumers (< 8 yrs).
  • In an experiment-based study, Wang and Mizerski (2018) found that children can make rational decisions when endowed with crucial consumer skills – earning and buying.
  • Different from previous assumptions, Wang and Japutra (2021) found that scepticism increased with children’s recognition (memory) of the prominently displayed brand and suggested a learning approach to empower the young audiences.
  • With more than 7000 reads, Wang and Mortimer (2021) contributed to a meaningful societal discussion on whether to ban banks’ programs targeting children, and further advocated empowering children as consumer trainees.

Dr Wang is extending her research on young consumers who experience vulnerability by investigating more on the following areas:

  • Technology and digital vulnerability
  • Online trolling/abuse
  • Gamification in marketing communications
  • Kidfluencer marketing

Chief Investigators

Team


Publications


Project Summary Poster:

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