The Changing Household

How do Households Influence Consumer Behavior?

• How are decisions made in your household?
• Stereotypes!  Women shop for food! Men fix cars! Men buy hardware supplies! Is this really true?
• Who is the decision maker?
• How do household members interact?  What is a buying unit within the household? What are the possible combinations?
• How do changes in households affect your business?  How would it affect the way people buy furniture?  Computers?  Televisions?

• Who are the decision makers
• Does it depend on the product or service being considered?
• Does it depend on who will use the product?
• How do household members interact?  What is a buying unit within the household? What are the possible combinations?  Mom and Dad, Mom and kids, Dad and kids, just kids, etc.
• How much influence do children have in purchasing decisions?

What is the Difference Between Families and Households?

• A family is a group of two or more persons related by blood, marriage, or adoption who reside together. Nuclear, Extended.
• A household consists of all persons, related and unrelated, who occupy a housing unit.
• Some definitions include household pets
• Note, different types of influence are possible when different people are part of households

Types of Families

• The consanguine family or family of orientation refers to the family in which we are born.
• Conjugal family or family of procreation refers to the family formed by marriage.

Composition of Families and Households

• Changing household demographics (trends) influence consumption patterns:
• Lower birth rates have led to smaller families
• People are marrying later or are not marrying at all
• High first marriage and even higher second  marriage divorce rates

Economic Impact on Households
Two-income families
In 1999, 65 million women were in the work force
Career women and just-a-job women
Single women heading families
In 1998, 13 million single-parent families in the U.S. headed by women
 

Roles must be considered
Initiator/gatekeeper: initiator of family thinking about buying products and gathering information to aid decisions
Influencer:  individual whose opinions are sought about purchase criteria and which brands fit those criteria
Decider: person with financial authority to choose how family money is spent
Buyer: person who actually buys goods
User: person(s) who uses the product
 

Other roles
Initiator – who recognizes the problem
Gatekeeper – control of info
Preparer – who actually gets the product ready to use
Disposer – who throws away what’s left
 

Dog Food Example
Cycle Dog Food Example – these roles were studied in developing the product
Initiator – who sees that we are out of dog food!
Gatekeeper – female household head – consid. set
Influencer – veterinarian – dog must lose weight
Decider – actual owner in household
Buyer – send teenager to the store
Preparer – teenager must feed dog as chore
User – dog, will the dog eat it? Get sick?
Disposer – who cleans up uneaten dog food, messy?
 

Family Lifecycle and Consumption Patterns

• Young singles
• Newlyweds
• Young couples without children
• Married couples with children
• Households with teenagers
• Mature couples

Who is missing in this typology?

• Family (Household) Life Cycle
• Consider the traditional life cycle  - Who’s missing?
• What does this mean for marketers?
• The “working wife” studies
• Effect of divorce and remarriage
• Trends:  stepchildren, single parent households, gay households, persons who are living together, and so forth
• How design ads for singles without insulting them

Gender Role Impact

• Is there a blurring of gender roles (androgyny) in today’s society?
• In reality, gender roles have been slow to change.
• Women are still expected to perform tasks traditionally associated with them: housework, child-rearing, etc.
• Men still spend 15 hours more on leisure activities than their wives.

How are Buying Roles Changing in Households

• More participation in nontraditional areas (in US)
• Women: auto repair, home maintenance
• Men: childcare, pediatric care, cooking, housekeeping
• Changing intergenerational influence
• Purchasing power of younger children
• Changing gender roles - what do men do today that was traditionally “women’s work”?  What do women do today that was “men’s work”?
• What new roles are children taking on?

How Does the Changing US Household Impact marketing?

• Day care
• Meal preparation (or non-preparation)
• Need for information may differ
• Building skills in unfamiliar areas:  e.g. females learning how to feel comfortable with home repair; males learning to feel comfortable with child care purchases

Who controls household decisions?

• Issues on which spouse has influence”  Autonomic, husband dominant, wife dominant, joint (syncratic)
• This analysis is from a set of diagrams that depict how the influence changes as the household moves through steps in the decision process
• This shows that the person who initiates the search may or may not be the final decision maker
• Consider your business - which part of the decisions involve husbands, wives, or both?
• E.g. who selects which Cable programs to buy? Which cell provider to use?
• How do roles vary in buying homes?

Purchase Decisions within Families and Households

• Husband/wife decisions
• Husband-dominant
• Wife-dominant
• Autonomic—husband and wife independently make the same decision at different times
• Syncratic—both husband and wife share in  the decision

Sources of Power in Household Marketplace Decisions

• The power to make decisions in a household may come in a number of ways:
• Power may be earned
• A person may take the power
• Power is simply given to one of the members
• Society say’s so
• Marketplace value (the person who brings in the dough!) can be the source of power.
• Other factors:
• Product type
• Gender-role orientation
• Type of decision

Decisions Influenced by Children

• Children influence family decision to an alarming degree
• Children between the ages of 4 and 12 influence buying decisions to the tune of $70 billion a year ($6 billion in allowances per year)
• Children plead, whine, and bargain with their parents to get what they want