How Does Materialism Affect Children

Youth Attitudes in Response to Materialism that is Promoted by Mass Marketing The age group of 9 to 15, also referred to as tweens, has been highly targeted by companies as a market segment (Goldberg, Gorn, Peracchio, & Bamossy, 2003). As this shift in audience is made, it is important to recognize the psychological effects of mass marketing and consumerism on children. This paper is a summary of a study done that is an demonstration of how materialism influences youth consumer attitudes.
Research Question Goldberg, Gorn, Peracchio, and Bamossy (2003) want to see if materialism has a significant effect on 9 to 14 year old children. They want to determine how negatively materialism affects the behaviors and attitudes of tweens, and whether …show more content…
According to the data, youths that scored in the upper materialism quartile were more susceptible to advertisements and promotions (Goldberg et al., 2003). As anticipated by Goldberg et al. (2003), these youths perceived commercials as useful tools when making purchases. Granted, the youths that scored in the upper materialism quartile had a tendency to shop more and save less than when compared with those that scored in the lower materialism quartile (Goldberg et al., 2003). Additionally, Goldberg et al. (2003) were accurate to hypothesize that more materialistic youths have more purchase influence on their parents. The data collected is an illustration of how parents view their highly materialistic children as being more knowledgeable about consumer products (Goldberg et al., 2003). Thus they depend, to an extent, on their children’s opinions of what to buy. Notably, youths that scored in the upper materialism quartile were consistently more interested in new merchandise (Goldberg et al., 2003). With the impulse to buy they eagerly seek out new goods. Consequently, Goldberg et al. (2003) expected these youths to perform poorly in school, because they are distracted by the media and consumerism. However, the data collected did not conclusively show a negative relation between materialism and academic performance. This is also the case when regarding the relationship between materialism and happiness. The inability to find these distinct correlations is because of the intricacy of parent-child communication and varying parenting styles (Goldberg et al., 2003). Coupled with the possible bias survey answers of what parents believe to be their children’s states of happiness, a distinct conclusion cannot be made about these criterions (Goldberg et al., 2003). Ultimately, Goldberg et al. (2003) were able to support some of their hypotheses and others