Comportamento do consumidor infantil : características e decisões de compra

Abstract

The consumers behavior is a largely studied theme and the findings in said field guide the planning of many companies, comprising from the development to the communication of a product. The infant consumer has, more specifically, gained evidence since the sixties, being legitimately considered as an important element in the world of business. In Brazil, nonetheless, that is still an incipient field, with very little scientific literature published on same. Based on the importance of said market, opposed to mentioned scarce studies, present research aims at describing the child s behavior as a consumer deciding about the purchase. Through a qualitative research, with in-depth interviews with children aged 7 and 8 and their respective mothers, the study depicts the consumer s profile of that public, as well as its behavior in the purchase decision making process. It also displays the difference of perception between mothers and children on those issues. As a variable, there is the mother s occupation, characterized under three profiles: highly occupied mothers (HOM), mothers with a low level of occupation (LOM) and mothers with no occupation (NOM), as a proposal to identify differences in the consumption profile of the children, according to the physical presence of their mothers. Based on the decision making process theory of Blackwell, Miniard and Engel (2005), both the instrument of data collecting and the analyses of same, covered all the steps of the model proposed by the authors, thus making the outline of the consumer child possible in every stage of the deciding process. The results show up that children have a incipient consumer decision process. Children go shopping with an adult, the influence in family consumer is low, and mother occupation interferes in consumer process