Household decision-marking: an exploratory study of parent's snack buying intention and key factors that influence snack purchase for their children.

Abstract

Research interest in marketing children’s products has grown immensely over the years. Although findings from these studies have provided great insights for understanding children’s influence for purchase in a variety of contexts, majority of research were conducted in developed countries which thus create paucity in the study of buying intention and key influences on parental decision making for snack products in developing countries like Thailand. The aim of this research is to investigate buying intentions and identify key factors influencing mother’s snack purchasing for their children in the Thai context as well as examine the roles of parents and children in the household decision making process. A total of 10 respondents who were mothers of children aged between 3-9 years old were selected in Bangkok. The result of the research revealed four buying intentions and four key factors influencing parental decision for snack purchase. Some were consistent with previous model of household decision making process. However, a few noteworthy differences emerged. Although children is a huge influencer on parental decision by using tactics such as pestering power, parents themselves are aware of their child’s preference in terms of taste and images and consider those when purchasing without their child. This revealed that nutrition is not the only concern for parents and is less important for certain buying intentions such as coercive control when fulfilling their children’s preference in taste and image are more important than nutrition. Findings of this study will benefit to marketers and entrepreneurs who have an interest of snack business in Thailand as it provides guidance for understanding children’s snacking behavior and mother’s buying decision in order to formulate better strategic decisions on marketing strategies for kids’ snack products.