Peer pressure and poverty:
Exploring fashion brands and
consumption symbolism among
children of the ‘British poor’
Received in revised form.
Richard Elliott
is Professor of Marketing and Consumer Research at Warwick Business School and a
Fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford. He is Associate Editor of the British Journal of
Management and European Editor of the Journal of Product and Brand Management. His
research focuses on the symbolic meaning of brands, consumer culture and identity
and the dynamics of brand ecology.
Clare Leonard
graduated in Management from Exeter University and is currently travelling the
world.
symbolism, fashion
Abstract
Attitudes towards fashion brands (trainers/athletic shoes) and their symbolic meanings are
explored among a sample of 30 children aged 8–12 years from poor homes in the UK, in an
interpretive study using projective methods. The children form stereotypes about the
owners of trainers: if the trainers are obviously branded and expensive the children believe
the owner to be rich and young, if the trainer is unbranded and inexpensive looking the
children believe the owner to be poor and old. If a child is wearing branded trainers they are
seen as popular and able to fit in with their peers. These opinions are so strongly held that
the children would prefer to talk to someone wearing branded trainers than unbranded
trainers. The children also feel pressure to wear the trainers that their friends wear, partly
to make friends and fit in and partly because of the teasing experienced if they are wearing
unbranded clothes or are clearly from a poor home.
Richard Elliott
Warwick Business
School,
University of
Warwick,
Warwick, CV4 7AL,
UK
Tel: +44 024 7652 4800
Fax: +44 01392 263242
e-mail: richard.elliott@
relliott.demon.co.uk
INTRODUCTION
Despite anecdotal evidence that peers
exert a very powerful influence over
children’s consumer behaviour, ‘there
has been a surprising lack of research on
the topic’ (Bachmann et al., 1993). Peer
pressure is most likely to be experienced
for ‘public luxuries’ such as branded
fashion items (Childers and Rao, 1992)
and the authors concentrate here on the
case of branded trainers (athletic shoes)
rather than clothes, as they are
considered to be a high fashion item,
but do not have the extreme variance in
their types that clothing does.
The emergence of a ‘British
Keywords:
Children, peerpressure, brands,
poverty,
underclass’, of which single mothers
and children are a major element, has
been widely discussed (Murray, 1990;
Smith, 1992) and an international
lifestyle segmentation study identified a
unique social group termed the ‘British
poor’ who make up 10 per cent of the
UK population (Solomon et al., 1999).
The pressures felt by inner-city young
people to fit in with the prevailing
fashions are discussed by Chin (1992).
‘The almighty dollar is the guiding factor.
Kids as young as 9 got involved (with the
drug trade) just to get a dollar to get what
other kids have. The peer pressure is
unbelievable, especially for material
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Richard Elliott and Clare Leonard
CHILDREN AND PEER PRESSURE
Probably the strongest influence on
children is their peer groups: friends
and siblings (Pilgrim and Lawrence,
2001), starting as early as six years old
(McNeal, 1987) and becoming
particularly significant as they enter
adolescence when they ‘learn about
their peers’ product favourites and take
them into account when evaluating
products on their own’ (Gunter and
Furnham, 1998). This influence is at its
height in relation to symbolic goods
such as clothes and fashion items
(Brittain, 1963).
more (Coe, 1971). This suggests that
branded items are purchased by poorer
families, not just because children have
a huge desire to own them but because
their parents choose the most readily
available and most well-known option.
Darley and Johnson (1985) suggest
that generations hand down a ‘design
for living’, which gives the poor a
different set of values to those of the
middle class. This implies that both
parents and children have a similar
perception of branded items, and that
parents may understand fully their
children’s desire to own branded
trainers.
Belk et al. (1982) explored perceptions
of product ownership and consumer
stereotypes among young children and
found that product owners who were
judged to be more successful were also
more likely to be the subjects of
aspiration. Lower social class children
saw these persons as ‘lucky’, higher
social class children saw them as the
type of person they would ‘like to be’.
Lower social class people seem to be
more fatalistic and believe in external
control of their lives while higher social
class people appear to believe that they
have personal control over their lives
(Herzog, 1963). It has been
demonstrated that children with low
self-esteem are more likely to be
susceptible to peer-group purchase
influence (Achenreiner, 1997).
POVERTY AND ITS EFFECTS ON
CONSUMPTION
The poor are often treated as ‘strangers’
who are outside the concerns of
mainstream consumer and marketing
research (Alwitt, 1996). Low-income
households have more restricted
shopping scope and know less about
shopping alternatives available, because
they have physical and psychological
restrictions on mobility (Goldman,
1976). In addition, the poor have little
knowledge about less well-known
brands and prefer information about
more popular brands, thus spending
BRANDS AS SYMBOLIC RESOURCES
Consumers do not make consumption
choices based solely on products’
utilities but also utilise their symbolic
meanings; social symbolism and selfidentity are provided largely by
advertising and are transferred to
brands, allowing the consumer to
exercise free will to form images of who
or what he or she wants to be (Elliott
and Wattanasuwan, 1998). Children
may learn much of the symbolic
meaning of goods from their peers,
however (Gunter and Furnham, 1998).
The possession of branded goods may
things. They wear gold chains, $120
pump Nike Air sneaks, $300 sweat suits.
Kids who can’t get those things suffer and
are the centre of teasing.’
Page and Ridgway (2001) point out that
‘little attention has been focused on the
consumption patterns of economically
disadvantaged children’ and Chin
(1997) argues that consumption has not
been examined often as a medium
through which social inequality is
engendered. This study’s informants
were children aged 8–12 years referred
by Social Services Departments for help
from a voluntary agency because of
being on the ‘At Risk’ register.
Placement on the register is highly
correlated with poverty (Kumar, 1993)
and with the British underclass (Smith,
1992).
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Peer pressure and poverty
be an aspect of ‘symbolic selfcompletion’ where individuals who
perceive themselves as lacking in a
personal quality attempt to fill the gap
using symbolic resources (Wicklund
and Gollwitzer, 1982). This suggests that
a poor family may be more likely to buy
their child branded trainers because
they are aware of the absence of money
in their life and are using the symbolic
meaning of branded goods to fill that
gap.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
— Do poor children own branded
trainers? This will consider the
brands they own, the circumstances
in which they receive them and the
importance they place on them.
— To what extent do children form
stereotypes about the owners of
trainers? This will consider the
symbolic meaning of brands, the
links the children form between
individuals and their trainers and
any connections with the children’s
view of themselves and their future.
— To what extent does peer pressure
influence perceptions of brands?
How do the children feel about it?
— To what extent can brands influence
the children’s popularity? This will
consider the children’s perceptions
of their peers’ beliefs about branded
trainers, any bullying related to the
brands the children do or do not
own and any bullying relating to
the children’s financial situation.
METHODOLOGY
General issues when conducting
research with children
It is important to ensure that children
understand the questions being asked,
reading out questions to the younger
children ensures that the reading ability
of the children does not affect the results
(Achenreiner, 1997). Audio-taping is
necessary to ensure that children’s
answers are not limited by their writing
skills, nor the speed at which the
interviewer can write.
Children in the age group 8–12 years
are in Piaget’s cognitive stage of
Concrete Operational Thought, and it is
important to recognise that they can
only work with concepts related to
concrete objects (Roedder John, 1999).
Belk et al. (1982) used paired pictures of
three houses and four automobiles, and
then elicited a response from
participants to measure impressions of
the owners of each object. The
methodology of showing pictures to
respondents appears successful as it
gives the respondents something
tangible with which to frame their
answer. This method is appropriate here
as children may struggle to form and
articulate clear opinions without a
concrete stimulus.
Elliott (1993) highlights another
problem of data collection when
working with children, which is that of
the double meaning of words such as
‘bad’ which can mean both ‘cool’ and
‘rubbish’, ie children are likely to use
slang of which the interviewer may not
be aware. Therefore the interviewer
must endeavour to offer the children
terms that they use in their everyday
lives (Peracchio, 1990).
The environmental context is a vital
issue in research with children as an
unfamiliar environment may severely
inhibit a child’s ability to respond
accurately (Peracchio, 1990). In this case,
the children were used to travelling in a
minibus every week to and from fun
activities. This was a familiar and
friendly environment which, although
far from ideal from a research point of
view, meant that the children could be
interviewed singly by talking to them at
the rear of the bus but without taking
them out of the relaxed surroundings.
Development of an appropriate
methodology
The choice of research methodology
was based on the specifics of the group
being interviewed. It proved difficult to
access children from poor families, as
within the UK education system
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Richard Elliott and Clare Leonard
enquiries about access from researchers
at a Business School were treated with
some suspicion. Eventually, direct
access was obtained to 30 children, 18
girls and 12 boys, aged between 8 and
12, who had been referred by Social
Services Departments for help from a
voluntary agency because they were on
the ‘At Risk’ register. All of the
children’s parents or guardians proved
willing to allow their children to be
interviewed if they could remain
anonymous. To ensure anonymity the
names of the children were changed in
the transcripts and in any discussion of
the data. These children were all from
socially disadvantaged backgrounds,
with the vast majority being from
single-parent homes and also
experiencing quite severe financial
difficulties. This had the drawback,
however, of making it impossible to
access a directly comparable sample of
children. Consequently, this must be
treated as an exploratory study focused
on only one sociodemographic group.
One-to-one interviews were deemed
the most appropriate method of data
collection. As the reading and writing
skills of the children to be interviewed
were known to be poor, a decision was
taken to eliminate the need for any
reading and writing by reading the
questions out to the children and audiotaping their replies.
The method for research was
interpretive in order to glean rich,
descriptive data from the children
without the limitations of the closed-end
measures of experimental research
(Moore and Lutz, 2000). The authors
pretested asking questions with a more
quantitative focus, with the hope that
the children would find this easy to
understand and reply to. It was found
that after asking a small sample group
of children if they had recently bought a
new pair of trainers and whether they
had seen them advertised, however,
that a very limited spectrum of what the
children thought was actually being
represented. In addition, the questions
350
used also meant that no feedback was
received about their motivations for
buying trainers or what they thought
about themselves and their friends
based on their purchases. Therefore, it
was decided to adopt a more projective
approach and show the children
detailed picture boards and lists of
words as stimuli and ask for a response
to more probing questions which asked
the children to point out pictures and
words which described the person they
thought would wear a certain pair of
trainers. This was again tested on a
small sample of children, and it was
discovered that the task was too difficult
for the children, as they struggled to
take in all the available information and
to answer coherently. In addition, the
back of the bus where the children were
to be interviewed had limited light so
complex pictures were unsuitable.
The successful approach proved to be
asking the children factual questions to
get them used to being interviewed,
such as what brands of trainers they had
and which is their favourite (see the
Appendix). This gave an overview of
the children’s brand awareness and
which trainers they desired, before
moving on to the questions they found
harder. Pictures of trainers were used as
a stimulus for the children and they
were asked to choose a trainer they
liked the most and the least, and to
comment on who might wear them (see
Figure 1). The interviews were informal
and unstructured, all children were
asked the same questions, but when an
interesting topic came up additional
questions were asked to glean further
information. This flexible method
helped to produce interesting and rich
data and made the children more
relaxed as they were able to say as much
or as little as they wished.
The children also found it hard to
understand the idea of imagining a
person being described from their
trainers. Some of the children tried to
think of someone they knew who
actually wore the trainers described.
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Peer pressure and poverty
2
1
4
3
5
7
6
9
8
No.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Brand
Nike Air Turbulence
Amulet (Reebok)
Unbranded shoe for men (Kee)
Nike Air Max 90
Walk-Lite (Hi-Tec)
Detroit
Unbranded shoe for women (Kee)
Nike Air Tremble Cross
Nike Air International Trait 3
Retail Price (approx.)
£80
£28
£22
£105
£30
£20
£22
£90
£90
Figure 1: Stimulus board
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Richard Elliott and Clare Leonard
The analogy of the playground ‘would
you talk to someone who wore these
shoes’ worked well, however, as did
making the interviewer the subject
‘what kind of person would I be if I
wore these’.
The interviews were audio-taped,
fully transcribed, and analysed for
interpretive themes, relationships with
the literature and assumptions using
pattern-coding methods (Miles and
Huberman, 1984).
FINDINGS
Brands — The dominance of Nike
Almost all the children interviewed said
that they owned branded trainers; this is
surprising considering the relative
poverty of many of the children. Some
of the ‘branded trainers’ were from the
cheaper end of the market and had been
worn until ripped and frayed. The range
of trainers the children owned varied
from Nike to Donnay, but the range of
trainers the children wished to own was
far narrower, with the majority wishing
to own Nike. The children’s reasons for
wanting to own Nike varied, but most
of the children came up with a practical
and then an emotional response.
. . . why did you choose Nike ones?
L (girl) cos I have had Nike ones before
and they are really, really, really
soft on the feet and they don’t
hurt when you run
did you choose them because they are comfy,
or cos they looked cool?
L
cos they are comfy and cool
which is the coolest trainer?
L
Nike
The majority of the children desired
branded trainers, and they particularly
asked for Nike shoes. This may be
because they are the most well known
and are perceived to be the most
expensive trainer on the market; the
children appeared to desire goods
which they were aware cost a lot of
money, perhaps because of the lack of
money in their own lives. All of the
children expressed a preference for the
expensive, ‘flash’ and branded trainers;
352
once again this may be explained by the
children’s poverty and their desire to
have what they could not afford.
. . . if you could buy any trainer in the world
ever, if money was no object, what would you
have?
D (boy) the most expensive pair ever
what make are those?
D
Nike
Consumption symbolism and brand
stereotyping
When asked to describe the kind of
person who might wear the trainers that
they liked, the children portrayed the
potential wearer in a positive light.
. . . imagine someone walking down the street
wearing these shoes (indicating the ones she
likes) tell me what they would be like
B (girl) they would be happy and they
would be nice and fun wearing
them
. . . what sort of person would they be?
B
they would have lots of children
why do you think that?
B
cos cos they have got, cos they
are rich
why do you think they are rich?
B
cos they buy decent stuff like
them shoes and like that
Conversely, they described the wearers
of the trainers they did not like in a
negative way. The majority of the
children chose number 7 (unbranded) as
the trainer they disliked most and, in
contrast to imagery associated with the
trainers they prefered, the image they
formed about the wearer of the trainers
was homogenous.
so what about number 7, why don’t you like
that one?
L (girl) because it looks like something
my grandma would wear
so imagine walking along behind a granny
who wears those, tell me other stuff about this
granny
L
I think this granny would be
wearing a flowery skirt and a
long woolly jumper
which trainers don’t you like?
J (boy) number 7
what is wrong with those?
J
well an old granny would wear
them and I don’t think any of my
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Peer pressure and poverty
friends would wear them
so if you went into school wearing number 7
what would your friends say to you?
J
oohhh look who is a little granny,
or something, I don’t know
The children described the wearers of
the trainers they liked best in a positive
way. There is a strong positive
correlation between these characteristics
and the descriptions the children gave
of who they wanted to be when they
were older. They appeared to desire,
and identify with, the positive
characteristics they used to describe the
wearers of the trainers they prefered.
imagine if you met me for the first time ever,
and you saw me wearing those trainers
(number 8), you didn’t know anything about
me at all, all you saw was the trainers, what
sort of person do you think I was like?
T (boy) very good paid job
. . . in 20 years’ time what would you really
like to be doing? Would you like to have kids
or have a big house, anything like that?
T
I’d have a big mansion
yeah, why do you want that?
T
out in a big field, so I have a big
enough field to ride a motorbike
in
and in 20 years time what kind of trainers
would you like to be wearing?
T
number 8 again
When the children were asked what
they would like to be when they grew
up, almost all answered with the job
they would like to do. All the children
chose aspirational careers such as
lawyers and pop stars; these well-paid
and successful careers again correlate
with their choice of trainers, as they
chose expensive, ‘flash’ trainers that
their parents currently could not afford.
Their choice of trainer appears to reflect
how they would like to see themselves,
and how they hoped to be in the future.
When asked to look at the pictures of
trainers and talk about what they
thought the owner might look like, the
children associated the more expensive
and more obviously branded trainers
with richer and younger owners.
so you talked about the kind of person who
might wear these trainers, can you tell me
anything else about them?
S (girl) they would be young people
why do you think they would be young?
S
because I don’t think old people
would wear these trainers
ok, would they be rich or poor?
S
quite rich
why do you think that?
S
because some parents won’t buy
those trainers for their children
what kind of parent doesn’t buy trainers for
their children?
S
like ordinary people . . . cos not
many people can afford trainers
like that
In addition they associated the
unbranded, ‘old-fashioned’ trainers
with poorer and older owners.
what about number 7?
Z (girl) poor
why?
Z
cos they are not that good, and
number 9 is better and bigger
The children formed very strong
opinions regarding money and trainers
and they formed stereotypes of who
would wear a certain trainer brand or
style. The opinion seemed to be that if
someone is wearing expensive-looking
shoes, they could not be poor, as
‘ordinary’ parents cannot afford to buy
branded trainers.
so if you saw someone in number 9 you would
think, they can’t be poor?
J (boy) yeah
Poverty is an important factor in the
consumption of branded trainers, few of
the children said that they had ever
been bought trainers because they
wanted a new pair, most children said
that they had got new trainers because
the old ones were worn out or too small.
. . . when you last got your trainers, why did
you get them?
T (boy) I got my last pair cos my shoe
size got bigger and my trainers
got smaller so I had to get a new
pair
The children also appeared to value the
trainers’ physical attributes as well as
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Richard Elliott and Clare Leonard
the brand; this may be a message they
have learnt from their parents. They
were aware of their parents’ financial
situation and were expressing the same
frugal views as them, demonstrating an
understanding that trainers are for
practical purposes as well as being
fashion accessories.
can you remember why you chose the ones
you did?
V (boy) um cos the leather ones are if
when you fall they won’t get
scratched and the others I
wanted them cos when I play
football I always kick it so hard
they can’t beat me
so can you remember when you were walking
around the shop why you chose the exact ones
that you did?
V
I wanted to choose the pair
because cos they have got quite
good grip on the bottom
In addition to the children’s
understanding of the importance of the
practical need for trainers, there is also
evidence that the children shared
trainers and that they are passed down
from other family members when they
have been grown out of.
why did you get some (new trainers) B?
B (girl) um well I didn’t get them, my
sister did because like Tess got
them for me, cos they are very
special and they are from my
sister
Once again this implies that the children
had less say in the brand of trainers they
wore and that a practical or financial
issue dictated what they wore, in this
case what an older sister passed down.
The family also appeared to have an
effect on the consumption choices of
children with many children citing their
family as a motivation for wanting a
particular trainer.
why did you choose those shoes?
E (girl) because I was copying my sister
has she got a pair of Nikes?
E
cos she always gets the good
stuff, so I thought I would copy
her
so you wanted the same shoes as her, does she
look good in hers?
354
E
yeah
did you want to look good like her?
E
yeah
do you think now that you have them you look
kind of like your sister a bit?
E
yeah
E thought that her sister ‘looks good’ in
her Nike trainers and her jealousy of the
sister who ‘always gets the good stuff’
seemed to prompt her to ask for the
same brand. She appeared to want to
emulate her sister by is asking for the
same trainers as her in order to help
effect this transformation.
Some of the children seemed to be
defensive about, and aware of, being
poor. One girl said she would like to be
a pop star so that she could give her
mother more money. She also confided
that money was tight at home.
W (girl) I said to my mum that if I ever
get really rich I will give her
some of my money, cos my mum
doesn’t really get much money
to pay her bills and stuff, so I
would like to give it to my mum
is it sometimes hard for you at home, making
sure you have got trainers like number one
and stuff?
W
yeah, but I always make mine
last cos my mum hasn’t got
much money
Many of the children displayed this
attitude, they were very keen to own
branded trainers, but they were aware
of the financial trouble at home and
wanted to help out if they could. The
children were also very conscious of the
stigma and difficulty of being poor and
did not want the other children at
school to know about the financial
troubles at home.
is it hard to be poor do you think?
F (girl) yeah, I think it’s very hard to be
poor
why do you think that?
F
cos you wouldn’t have much
money so you couldn’t buy food
for your kids and things like that
would they (friends at school) think that you
couldn’t afford to buy other trainers?
J (boy) yeah
do you mind if they thought that?
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Peer pressure and poverty
J
yeah
so if they thought, oh look J can’t afford to buy
number 8 would you be sad?
J
yeah
Peer pressure
People with ‘decent’ trainers also
appeared to be popular with their peers,
the children seemed to fit into gangs
and groups of friends easier if they were
appropriately dressed, one interviewee
saying ‘my best friends wear trainers
that I like’. This peer pressure seemed to
lead to many of the children wanting
branded trainers to fit in with their
friends and the popular children at
school.
why are they (shoes you are now wearing)
decent?
R (boy) because everyone at my school
wears them
. . . why do you want to wear the same as the
others?
R
because then I don’t feel left out
. . . so if tomorrow everyone decided that they
want to wear Nike trainers you would try and
get some as well?
R
yeah
When asked who they would talk to
first in the playground, the person
wearing the trainers they liked or those
they disliked, almost all of the children
said that they would talk to the person
wearing the shoes they liked first.
so would you prefer to be friends with
someone who wears trainer number 1 or
trainer number 3?
Q (boy) trainer number 1
why do you think that?
Q
cos they look more decent than
number 3
yeah, so would you be embarrassed to be a
person in number 3? If your friend came
towards you in those would you be umm aahh
not too happy?
Q
well if they were my friend I
would like them, but if they were
not I would take the mick out of
them
do you prefer to talk to people wearing the
kind of trainers you like?
Q
if they are my friends, if they are
my best friends, they have my
best trainers on that I like
do you choose people to be friends who wear
the stuff you like?
Q
um I change my friends so they
are wearing the stuff that I like
They appeared to see the choice of
trainers as a good indicator of what the
other child was like, and a way to help
them decide who to talk to if they did
not know anything about a group of
people. Z was the only person who said
she would talk to the person wearing
the trainers she did not like, however,
her answer is more telling us she was
merely being charitable.
ok, imagine the first day of school right and
you have been introduced to a couple of
people, one wearing trainer number 4 and one
wearing trainer number 7, who would you
talk to first?
Z (girl) trainer number 7 . . . cos you can
see that they are not as well off as
the others and if you go to
number 7 and you complement
them on their trainers, even
though you don’t think they are
ok, just tell a little white lie, then
maybe it would cheer them up . . .
because they might feel teased
because they might look at other
people’s trainers and say that
their trainers are better than
mine, why can’t I have them
There was also a lot of discussion about
‘taking the mick’ out of someone with
‘manky’ trainers and the possibility of
being beaten up because of not being in
the ‘in crowd’, a group one could not
enter without the appropriate footwear.
Most of the children were either the
victim or the potential perpetrator of
bullying, for example, one boy said he
would be unwilling to let someone in
‘granny shoes’ join in his football game.
People’s images seemed to be a big
trigger for bullying, and many of the
children chose their trainers
accordingly.
and what made you choose Nike ones when
you came to get some more trainers?
V (girl) I don’t know, I just prefer Nike
cos they are the kind of brand
that people in my school like now
so you choose ones that all your friends like?
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Richard Elliott and Clare Leonard
V
yeah
is it really important that you have the same
ones as all your friends
V
yeah, cos if you want friends
then, if you want to hang around
with friends then it is best to look
quite good and that, like um
otherwise they are just going to
go away cos that’s what they are
like in our school
oh right, so if you haven’t got the right sort of
stuff they don’t want to be your friend?
V
yeah
Many of the children talked about the
bullying they had experienced or
witnessed in school, a lot of which
appeared to be centred around an
individual’s clothes and financial
situation.
can you tell me a bit more about wearing the
right shoes to fit in?
P (girl) well if we don’t wear like what
our other friends wear, like cool
stuff and that, we get picked on
like and we won’t quite fit in
there and that cos we just get, like
picked on and stuff. And I don’t
think that’s fair really, because it’s
not fair on other people if their
mums and dads can’t afford stuff
like other people, its not their
fault so I don’t know why people
have a go at them.
have you been picked on for not wearing the
right stuff?
P
yeah, people do pick on me,
people wear stuff like this
(indicates jeans) yeah and stuff
like that and the cool people at
school they always be horrible to
you and I don’t know why, it just
gets right on my nerves and I
think it’s horrid. They pick on this
girl, who her mum ain’t got
enough money for stuff like other
people wear . . . this girl called
Kathryn who is new to the school
and they always get picked on all
the time, and I don’t know why
they do it. People who do are just
bullies. It annoys me, cos I don’t
really like it myself.
When some of the children talked about
wanting to have branded trainers they
appeared to want to use them as a
defence mechanism. One girl described
how she did not think that anyone
356
should have to have branded trainers,
but that she had them ‘just in case’ to try
and prevent the other children from
picking on her.
Surprisingly, a number of children
recognised and desired branded
trainers, but thought, ‘it’s what’s on the
inside that counts’. They understood
that at the moment they did not have
access to expensive, branded trainers
and were trying to play down their
significance. It is quite possible that the
children would like branded trainers,
but by reaffirming that the brand of
trainers they wore was not important
they hoped that their lack of branded
trainers would be viewed less
negatively by their peers.
. . . anything else you want to tell me about
your friends at school and trainers or wearing
the right clothes, stuff like that?
G (girl) shoes aren’t everything in a
person. You can’t always look at
someone’s shoes and tell what
they are like. It’s the person that
you are meant to like, not the
shoes. You are supposed to be
liking the whole person, not the
shoes, they are not everything
they are only shoes, it’s not like
they are friends or nothing is it?
It’s like you are liking the shoes
instead of the actual person
themselves.
DISCUSSION
Very few of the children interviewed
owned new, premium-branded trainers,
despite saying that they desired them.
The majority of the children indicated
that their trainers had been bought
when the previous pair wore out; this
suggests that poor children have less
control over their parent’s spending, as
they do not have the trainers that they
want. The children interviewed were
from poor families and appeared to
have little influence over the brand of
trainers they had, the vast majority
desiring Nike trainers, but often
wearing cheaper brands.
Although few of the children were
able to afford expensive, top-of-therange trainers, the majority owned a
Journal of Consumer Behaviour Vol. 3, 4, 347–359 #Henry Stewart Publications 1472-0817
Peer pressure and poverty
recognisable brand (Hi-Tec, Adidas etc)
despite there being cheaper alternatives
available. This implies that the
children’s parents did have poor
knowledge about the cheaper options
available and bought branded trainers,
albeit from the less expensive end of the
market, because they were familiar with
these popular brands and had some
knowledge about them. These findings
support those of Coe (1971) and
Andreasen (1975) that the poor have
little knowledge about less well-known
brands and prefer information about
more popular brands, thus spending
more.
These findings strongly support the
suggestion of Pilgrim and Lawrence
(2001) that the most powerful, and yet
most unregulated, influence on children
is their peer group. The children
indicated that one of their primary
motivations for desiring a certain brand
of trainer was their need to fit in with
their peers. They feared that their peers
would refuse to be friends with them, or
subject them to bullying, if they did not
fit in with the group by wearing the
same, fashionable, brand of trainers.
When the children were asked what
they would like to be doing when they
were older, they all gave aspirational
careers and said that they would like to
be financially secure. This differed
considerably from the situation in
which their parents currently lived, so it
could be that the children were
beginning to think outside of Darley
and Johnson’s (1985) ‘design for living’
handed down by their parents, even if
they never achieved these goals.
Most children interviewed discussed
bullying and the pressure of wanting to
wear fashionable clothing. Many of the
children said that they would not talk to
someone who was not wearing the right
trainers and that they would be
embarrassed to be seen with someone
wearing unfashionable shoes. The
pressures found in Chin’s (1992) US
study of inner-city life are also found in
much smaller cities in the South West of
England but, unlike Chin’s study, these
children made no mention of damaging
other’s clothing through jealousy,
although many of the children
expressed strong desires to own
branded clothes, a jealousy of those who
were lucky enough to own branded
trainers and a need to fit in with their
peers.
The children interviewed appeared to
have a strong attachment to the Nike
brand, with almost every child stating
that Nike was their preferred brand of
trainer. The children’s reasons for
wanting to own Nike varied, but most
of the children came up with a practical
and then an emotional response. This
reflects the model of brand trust in the
consumer-brand relationship developed
by Gurviez (1996), who argues that trust
involves both a cognitive (functional
attributes) and an emotional element. In
addition, the children seemed to exhibit
a ‘shared consciousness’ regarding their
feelings for Nike, with the majority of
children describing Nike as ‘cool’ and
‘helps you to run fast’. Muniz and
O’Guinn (2001) introduce the concept of
‘brand community’, which is a
specialised, non-geographically-bound
community, based on a structured set of
social relations among admirers of a
brand. The children appeared to be part
of a ‘symbolic’ brand community,
united by their shared feelings about
Nike trainers.
This study clearly demonstrates how
children want to own the branded
trainers that their peers do in order to
enable them to have equal status in the
eyes of their friends. The children who
owned branded trainers were seen as
having a referent power (Solomon et al.,
1999) as they inspired admiration among
their peers and caused others to attempt
to emulate them. The symbolic meaning
of branded trainers appears to be that of
a fashionable and popular person; if
Nike were a person it would be the
‘coolest kid in school’. The children felt
that by owning ‘decent’ branded trainers
they were making a statement about
Journal of Consumer Behaviour Vol. 3, 4, 347–359 #Henry Stewart Publications 1472-0817
357
Richard Elliott and Clare Leonard
themselves, they were saying that they
were equal with their peers and were
fashionable and popular.
Many of the children seemed to use
branded trainers as a disguise, they
were aware that only their closest
friends would see their home and be
aware of the poverty they lived in, but
everyone could see their trainers or
school shoes and make a judgment
about them. So, by wearing branded
trainers, they were preventing negative
reactions from other children by hiding
their poverty. Branded trainers seemed
to be used as ‘symbolic self-completion’
in an attempt to disguise the children’s
poverty (Wicklund and Gollwitzer,
1982). Many of the children did not
think that it was possible to be poor and
own expensive trainers, therefore, by
owning branded trainers themselves
they were distancing themselves from
their financial situation and taking on a
new status, that of a wealthier child. If
they owned branded trainers they could
not be poor, could they?
Fashion brands can be part of a
system of meaning transfer from culture
to the individual (McCracken, 1988).
This is demonstrated here as the
children attempted to transfer branded
trainers’ ‘personality’ onto their own,
trying to transfer Nike’s ‘popularity’
and ‘cool’ onto themselves by wearing
Nike trainers. Elliott (1993) argues that
in order for a product to function as a
symbol it must have commonality of
meaning among consumers, such that
those in the reference group must have
in common a shared conception of the
product’s meaning. This study suggests
that this ‘common shared conception’
has been achieved among children with
trainer brands, particularly with Nike as
the children have a homogenous view
of what the product means and the
values they associate with it.
Gorn, 1978) demonstrated that children
would rather play with a child who had
an advertised product than a child who
had an unadvertised one. It seems that
successful brand-building strategies,
particularly those that focus on
symbolic meanings, may be having
unintended and undesirable
consequences on various aspects of
children’s attitudes and behaviour. In
this respect marketers may be playing
into the hands of no logo anticonsumerists (Klein, 2000). Surprisingly
little is known about how consumption
symbolism and materialism may arise
from peer interaction (Roedder, 1999)
and this study suggests that peer
pressure may play an important role in
the process and have effects which
persist long after childhood.
REFERENCES
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IMPLICATIONS
A seminal study on the unintended
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on children’s behaviour (Goldberg and
358
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APPENDIX: INTERVIEW GUIDE
What brands of trainers do you own?
Why did you get them?
What do you like best about them?
What is your favourite trainer ever and
why?
What brands do your friends have?
What do the kids at school wear?
Routledge, London, UK.
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Klein, N. (2000) No Logo, HarperCollins Publishers,
London, UK.
Kumar, V. (1993) Poverty and Inequality in the UK: The
Show stimulus board
What do you think about these trainers?
Are there any that stand out?
Are there any you particularly like/
dislike? (prompt: cool, crap, expensive,
cheap)
Do you know what make they are?
Would you be popular if you had these
trainers?
Effects on Children, National Children’s Bureau,
London, UK.
McCracken, G. (1988) Culture and Consumption: New
Approaches to the Symbolic Character of Consumer Goods
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McNeal, J. (1987) Children as Consumers, Lexington Books,
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Miles, M. and Huberman, A. (1984) Qualitative Data
Analysis: A Sourcebook of New Methods, Sage
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Moore, E. and Lutz, R. (2000) ‘Children, advertising, and
product experiences: A multimethod inquiry’, Journal of
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Muniz, A. and O’Guinn, T. (2001) ‘Brand community’,
Journal of Consumer Research, 27(4), 412–433.
Murray, C. (1990) The Emerging British Underclass, IEA,
London, UK.
Ask for response to each picture
If you saw someone walking down the
street wearing those, what else might
they be wearing?
What kind of person would they be?
(prompt: tell me about them, are they
young/old, what sort of job might they
do, what do they wear, what are their
friends like)
If it was the first day of school and
someone was wearing trainer number X
and someone was wearing trainer
number Y, which of the two people
would you talk to first?
Page, C. and Ridgway, N. (2001) ‘The impact of consumer
environments on consumption patterns of children
from disparate socioeconomic backgrounds’, Journal of
Consumer Marketing, 18(1), 21–40.
Peracchio, L. (1990) ‘Designing research to reveal the
young child’s emerging competence’, Psychology and
Marketing, 7(4), 257–276.
Pilgrim, L. and Lawrence, D. (2001) ‘Pester power is a
destructive concept’, International Journal of Advertising
and Marketing to Children, 3(1), 11–22.
Close
You said earlier what all the cool kids at
school wear, do you think you are one
of the cool kids?
Would you like to be really popular/
cool?
Do you think if you wore these trainers
you would be?
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