Children's influence strategies in practice: Exploring the co-constructed nature of the child influence process in family consumption

Abstract

Existing child influence studies have been critiqued for employing an individualistic or dyadic approach to explore the types of influence strategies which children use to sway parental decisions. In this paper, we refocus research attention to explore the intra-familial processes leading to child influence strategies deployed within the family setting. Using a family perspective, we present the stories of 29 family informants, capturing the voices of children and their parents through a series of in-depth interviews. Our findings suggest that the influence strategies which children subsequently utilised were informed by a process of pre-influence strategy interaction. That is, children's interactions with their parents and siblings work to co-construct the eventual influence strategies utilised, illuminating the emergence of highly co-constructed and networked influence strategies within the family setting.

Keywords:

• children
• influence strategies
• family
• perspective taking
• co-construction

Notes

¹ The lead author conducted the family interviews.