An attempt to construct a model in building reverse socialization theory: An emprical investigation of the teenagers? influence over family purchasing decision

The changing role in the family which is the smallest unit in the society has become important subject in the field of marketing. The developments in both technology and economics have greatly influenced the role distribution within family which in turns lead to shift in the position of teenagers in family structure. This transformation has caused teenagers to play important role (both as decision makers and influencers) in family shopping process. Due to these developments, it is an important issue to understand the teenagers? role in family purchasing process. Although the transformation has observable over many aspects of purchasing process and over variety of products and services, the influence of teenagers over some particular products has been more intense than others. In particular, the influence of teenagers over technology-related products has become getting more and more prominent. In marketing field, although the literature investigating the effects of teenagers over family purchasing process over goods and services has generally employed the traditional theories and is well established, these theories have some shortcomings in explaining the effects of teenagers over family-purchasing of technology-related products. In particular, since traditional theories (i.e. consumer socialization theories) argue that almost all of the consumer-related information is passed from family to teenagers, these theories implicitly do not incorporate a possibility that for some products the information set of teenagers might be more than that of family (mother-father) and do not involve possibility that in some products mother and father are in need of the opinions and knowledge of their teenagers. Due to the shortcomings, reverse socialization as a new concept has been introduced in the field.The reverse socialization is not well established theory yet. The objective of this study is to shed some lights over theoretical dimension and also to enrich the literature by using survey research. The study consists of four sections. The first part serves two objectives; first, we will discuss both the importance of teenagers in both family and their own consumption structure; second, we will go over the process in which teenagers gain their consumer identity. In the second part of the study, we will explain some of the related topics including technology, innovation, the link between teenagers and technology and new products. In the third part of the study, we will give very detail explanation of reverse socialization. In the fourth part of the study, we will explain our survey which is conducted over high school students in Eskişehir and it is aimed at searching reverse socialization.The objective of this study is aimed at investigating the effects of teenagers over the purchase of cell phone and computer of their family. The investigation involves using variables outlined in socialization and reverse socialization literature. This study uses a survey applied to 821 students attending various type of high schools (including general public, private, Anatolian, science and occupational and artisan high schools) in Eskişehir. The survey consists of three sections and we utilize SPSS-15.0 package for our statistical analysis. The study shows that the teenagers play dominant role in purchasing process of both technology-related goods and goods that are mainly for their own use. In addition to this, the study finds that teenagers are effective purchasing of some of the goods used by their mother and father. In particular, we found that teenagers play important role in purchasing process of cell phone and computer used by their mothers and fathers. In sum, the study find some evidence supporting reverse socialization in purchase of some technology-related products in Turkey.