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Intergenerational similarities, socialization and mother's and adolescent's marketplace orientations
Abstract
This study examined adolescents' orientations towards the marketplace and their correspondence to mothers' views and socialization styles. More specifically, it attempted to (1) measure mothers' and adolescents' beliefs and attitudes about the marketplace, (2) gauge intergenerational similarities in views, and (3) identify factors which influence levels of mother-adolescent congruence. The investigation drew upon two streams of research, intergenerational influence and socialization, because each stream offered different but complementary advantages to the consumer socialization perspective taken here. Intergenerational influence research provided insights of factors which affect parent-child similarity. The socialization literature provided a cross-disciplinary perspective and theoretical framework. Furthermore, it supported a link between parental styles and differences in children's dispositions and behavioral tendencies. Although few researchers have conducted comprehensive studies of consumer orientations towards the marketplace, a number have developed indices reflecting current thinking about the domain of marketplace views. This study focuses on a representative set of orientations which differ in abstraction level and content. The central premise tested in this research was that intergenerational congruence of marketplace orientations is a function of abstraction level and parental styles. Intergenerational research suggests abstraction influences congruence by contributing to the accuracy of judgments about other family members' views. Socialization research indicates that more interactive parental styles and issue-oriented versus relationship styles are associated with higher levels of perceptual accuracy for mothers and adolescents. Consequently, parental styles which enhance perceptual accuracy, encourage more decision-making input from children, and provide offspring with more opportunities to learn and observe were hypothesized to be related to higher levels of mother-adolescent similarity. Differences were found which support the role of abstraction. Mothers and adolescents more accurately perceive each other's views and have more similar views when these views are less abstract. Also, a positive relationship between adolescents' perceptual accuracy and mother-adolescent similarity was observed. This study did not generate evidence of a relationship between parental styles and mother-adolescent perceptual accuracy or similarity. Given what appears to be high overall levels of perceptual accuracy and similarity for the entire sample, differences among parental styles may be subtle, thus, difficult to detect.
Subject Area
Marketing
Recommended Citation
Walsh, Ann D, "Intergenerational similarities, socialization and mother's and adolescent's marketplace orientations" (1991). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9129574.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9129574