DEMOGRAPHIC & SOCIAL CHANGE
EDITOR—ANN CLURMAN
Senior Vice President
Yankelovich Clancy Shulman
Kids are Consumers
Ann Clunnan
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Let's face it. Kids are consumers. Experience suggests this.
Each of us who has recently spent time with an 8-year-old
has a story or two about how the child has most definite
ideas about what he or she wants and few qualms about expressing those desires.
It's not just experience that tells us that kids are consumers. Research—ours and others'—confirms it. We know
from the Nickelodeon/Yankelovich Youth Monitor™ that
children are indeed consumers and that they are becoming
involved in decision-making at younger and younger ages.
Discussions about kids as consumers range from anecdotal
tales of brand conscious 4-year-olds, to new names for groups
within the market (e.g., tweens), to expressions of concern
about the "hurried child" syndrome. Inevitably, two topics
enter the conversation: money and purchase influence.
Money first. We know from the 1988 survey that 53% of
children in grades 1 through 12 receive an allowance, the average weekly figure being $6.45. As one would expect, the
amount of allowance increases with the child's age: from $3.36
among first to third graders to $12.61 among eleventh and
twelfth graders. If we extrapolate these figures to the 35.3
million children represented in the survey, the projected annual "income" from allowance is $6.2 billion.
In addition to allowance, 687o of kids report that they receive money from their parents on an as-requested basis to
the tune of an average $7.87 per week. Again, projecting to
the first through twelfth grade population, we reach $9.6 billion, 53% more than the amount received as allowance.
Now not all of this $15.8 billion nonwork "income" is discretionary. More than 20% of kids "have to" spend some
proportion of their weekly resources, on average $3.10, leaving a grand total of $13.2 billion discretionary dollars in the
hands and pockets of kids.
Turning to purchase influence, we have found that children report influence over a wide range of product categories. Clothing leads the list, followed by breakfast cereal,
soft drinks, ice cream, movies from the video store, and
cookies—each reported by more than half the children.
Clothing, by the way, is at the 83% level, with breakfast cereal following at 60%. To the astonishment of all but those
MARKETING RESEARCH, MARCH 1989
who have recently shopped, pleaded with, and lost the battle
with a 6-year-old, 71% of first-to-third-graders report influencing their clothing purchases.
Some observers may view the child-reported data with
skepticism. To fine tune our understanding of the children's
information, we asked parents of children 6 through 17 in a
separate study (the Yankelovich MONITOR) if their children
were indeed as influential as they said they were. It's clear
that children are overestimating their influence in some areas,
but it is also apparent that they are underestimating it in others. Parents were more likely than children to report kids' influence on breakfast cereal, toys, ice cream, and toothpaste.
Children tended to overestimate their role in decisions about
cars, clothing, and movie rentals. But despite these differences, the role of children in the purchase decision is still
formidable. For example, 83% of the children, as mentioned
before, reported influencing their clothing purchases; 72% of
parents, a smaller but by no means insignificant number, so
report. On the question of kids' influence on soft drink and
personal computer purchases, children and parents are in
complete agreement.
Let's end where we started. Kids are indeed consumers
and woe to anyone who minimizes their power and influence. •
Reprint No. MR12113
DEMOGRAPHIC & SOCIAL CHANGE
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