A Study of the Relationship between Family Communication Patterns and Adolescent's Pre-Purchase Decision-Making Process

Today's adolescents have a great influence on the family purchasing behavior. Adolescent's critical role is based on the four pillars: 1) they have more money for purchasing, 2) they are potential consumers in the future, 3) adolescents influence family purchasing decisions (Hawkins, 2006), and 4) they receive more attention from their parents. According to the last statistics of IRAN general census in 2006, adolescents (aged 15-19) composed %38.12. of the total population. So understanding the purchasing behavior of this population category is very critical to marketing managers. On the other hand, family communication patterns impact adolescent's attitudes and behavior. Based on investigation of the current literature, it is clear that in the three-step consumer behavior process, that is, pre-purchase, purchase and post-purchase, the first step has not been studied adequately before. In this research, we try to study the impact of family communication patterns on the adolescent's pre-purchase decision-making process. McLeod & Chafee (1972) provided a typology for parent-child communication schema. Their typology based on two types of parent-child communication: socially oriented which care about complying social norms and concept oriented which concerns persuading the children to convey their viewpoints and attitudes freely regardless of the norms. In 1981, Moore and Moschis categorized parent-child communication patterns, based on McLeod & Chafee's typology, to four different pattern types. Their four-dimensional typology has two axes from high to low. The first axis is socially oriented communication and the second is concept oriented communication. So we have a 2*2 cells matrix. Low concept with social orientation shows a laissez faire pattern. Low concept orientation with high social orientation shows a protective schema. In low social orientation with high concept orientation, a pluralistic pattern emerges. If social and concept orientations are high simultaneously, a consensual schema emerges. According to the literature review we formulate 12 hypotheses as below:H1: Adolescent's proactive problem recognition is higher in families with high concept orientation than families with lower concept orientation.H2: Adolescent's in families with high concept orientation use internal source of information more than families with lower concept orientation.H3: Adolescent's in families with high concept orientation use their parents as source of information more than families with lower concept orientation.H4: Adolescent's in families with high concept orientation use their friends and classmates as sources of information more than families with lower concept orientation.H5: Adolescent's in families with high concept orientation use business advertisements as source of information more than families with lower concept orientation.H6: volume of the external search of adolescent's in families with high concept orientation is greater than families with lower concept orientation.H7: Adolescent's in families with high concept orientation trust more to business advertisements than families with lower concept orientation.H8: Adolescent's in families with protective communication pattern pay attention to their parents preferences while evaluate options. H9: Adolescent's in families with protective communication pattern pay attention to their friends and classmates preferences while evaluate options.H10: Adolescent's in families with pluralistic communication pattern pay attention to product brand while evaluate options.H11: Adolescent's in families with consensual communication pattern pay attention to product price while evaluate options.H12: Adolescent's in families with protective communication pattern pay attention to product quality while evaluate options. Research population is composed of 16-18 years old students in non-governmental high schools of Tehran. Clustering sampling was used, and sample size is based on Cochran formula which was calculated as 290 students. 98 cases were from the North, 50 from center, 80 from the West, 39 from the East and 23 from the South of Tehran. A 32-items questionnaire including 29 specialized and 3 demographical questions was designed and applied. The data was gathered by self-reporting method. Cronbach's alpha coefficients for all the variables were at acceptable range to guarantee research reliability. The questionnaire was product specific. Clothing was chosen as object of the questionnaire design because of the status orientation and adolescents concerns. Each of the social and concept orientation latent variables were measured according to Moore and Moschis (1981) proposed scale including six items. External search volume was measured by three items; information gathering source by four items; trust to business advertising agencies by five items and option evaluation preferences by five items, all designed by the researchers. For testing hypothesis 1 through 7 we used independent samples t-test. For testing the other variables we applied one sample t-test.Discussion of Results & %54.8 of respondents were female and %45.2 were male. %45.2 of respondents were 16 years old, %31.7 were 17 and %23.1 were 18 years old. Based on Moore and Moshis's typology: %10.3 of respondents were living in families with protective communication pattern, %51 were living in families with pluralistic communication pattern, %24.1 were living in families with consensual communication pattern and %14.5 were living in families with laissez faire communication pattern. The results of testing hypotheses are shown in table 1. As these results indicate, all hypotheses except the sixth hypothesis, were confirmed (p<0.005).As research limitations, we should note that lack of domestic studies about the research subject does not allow us to compare the results of this study with other studies in Iran. According to research findings, we suggest that future studies consider the following points:•Performing this research in other cities of Iran, to consider sub-cultural differences• Studying other types of status oriented products such as: cell phone, watch and comparing the findings with no-status oriented product such as food.•An overall communication pattern between parent-child was studied here but further studies should be done about dyadic patterns, for example between father-boy, father-girl, mother-boy and mother-girl.•Studying the effect of parent-child communication patterns on the adolescent's decision-making style.