Abstract

Consumer socialization has been investigated in the literature of various fields, including consumer behavior, marketing strategy, advertising, law, child education, medicine, and nutrition. While the importance of consumer socialization in the study of economics may be self-evident, there are few academic contributions on the topic. Thus, using orthodox microeconomic theory, in particular, game theory, we aim to analyze the interaction between parents as consumer socialization agents and food companies advertising to children through media (e.g., television commercials).

This paper emphasizes that parental concern, or parental style, has a significant effect on food companies’ marketing strategies toward children as well as on children’s consumer socialization. From a game theoretical perspective, we find that the marketing behaviors of food companies are greatly influenced by the extent of parental concern for consumer socialization. In contrast, we find that parents do not alter their behaviors based on their awareness of the importance to food companies of their parental concern for consumer socialization. This paper asserts that parents, as agents, should consider how the volume of advertisements food companies supply is affected by the extent of parental concern for consumer socialization.

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