Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Young Consumers, Volume 14, Issue 2

Welcome to this second issue of Young Consumers for 2013. We have several papers from the southern hemisphere. Lisa McNeill and Lucy Turner from New Zealand are primarily interested in exploring the consumer socialization process that children undergo in the parent-child dyad. Using qualitative research procedures involving in-depth interviews they demonstrate the power of good parenting for future fiscal attitudes. I think it is important to quote them directly from the Abstract “Key financial attitudes and behaviours of young home-leavers are almost directly related to the parental financial education they received whilst growing up and still living at home and in many cases parental influence is still present even once the child has moved away from home and is responsible for making their own financial decisions”. Given the importance of this finding I have flagged this as the lead article for this issue. The work is important and needs to be explored in future research in other cultural contexts.

Andrew Parson and Nicola Stephenson in a two-nation study in New Zealand and Australia were interested in the effects of price changes and alcohol content changes on behavioural intention in young consumers. Understanding why youth drink and shedding light on the complex relationship between pricing, value and social norms is vital and this paper contributes to the debate on youth drinking which exists in Europe as well as Australasia.

Liyanage Perera and Chandana Hewege in another Australian study conducted depth interviews with young adults in order to explore their perceptions of the risks associated with climate change. Four thematic categories emerged: unperceived adverse effects of climate change, disassociation between adverse effects of climate change and environmentally conscious behaviour, challenges to the dominant economic model and, redefined environmental paradigm.

Tobacco consumption is a health risk world-wide and efforts to curb smoking have been approached in different countries with varying degrees of enthusiasm and success. Australia however is in the forefront of those nations that are determined to do something about this kind of consumption in youth. Ian Phau and Graham Ferguson looked at anti-smoking fear appeals and validated a study conducted over 20 years ago, showing that now in 2013 factual and social appeals are better targeted at adolescents than young adults.

Kara Chan and her colleagues at Hong Kong Baptist University are interested in celebrity endorsement in advertising to adolescents. Using a focus group methodology they found that teens were savvy when it came to the use of celebrities in advertising popularity, a good image, and that congruence between the celebrity’s image and that of the brand are important factors for marketers to consider when choosing celebrity endorsers.

The last of our academic papers is by Deborah Toomey and Alisha Francis from Northwest Missouri State University used a two-group experimental design with pre-teen consumers. Their findings suggest that branded product placement may not affect attitudes or behaviour of pre-teenaged consumers, although theoretical considerations suggested an effect.

And finally we have our regular paper looking at regulatory aspects of advertising to children on a country by country basis. This quarter we look at Finland with a paper by Mikael Segercrantz and Suvi Laes. As usual these are coordinated by GALA, the Global Advertising Lawyer’s Alliance and I am grateful to Stacy Bess from their New York office for all the help and assistance she provides with each issue.

I hope you enjoy these papers and many thanks to all our reviewers and contributors without whom these regular issues would not be possible.

Brian M. YoungEditor