children attitude towards advertisement and buying behavior

CHAPTER 3

RESEARCH METHODLOGY

3.1 INTRODUCTION

The findings from the extensive literature review have brought the chapter into being and the kind of research design that has been commenced. The model for this study discusses the conceptual frameworks that contributed to the study.

Literature review which is the 2nd chapter reviews that the purpose of this study is to measure the factors that determine the outlook of the children towards television commercials.

3.2 RESEARCH PROBLEM

On the basis of the children’s attitude towards Television advertisement, there have been several studies conducted that try to explain the factors that create attitude in children. The Indian context provides few studies that give insight to the core factors that create the attitude of the children towards television advertising. The study was also focused on the understanding of the factors that had the best impact that could create the attitude of children towards television advertising.

3.3 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

1. To develop a profile of children on their attitude towards advertisement and buying behavior among different age groups.
2. To study the relationship between attitude towards TV advertisements and buying behavior among 3 groups of children.
3. To understand parent’s perception of influence of TV advertisements on their children.
4. Influence of family communication patterns on consumption decision making behavior of children.

3.4 HYPOTHESES

3.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS STUDY

This research will be focused on the impact of the children on the family purchase decisions in purchasing products and seek to establish the changes that lead the children becoming the major consumers of the product. The exploration will be advantageous to the marketers in the understanding of the various roles and in the analyzing of how the influence of children within a household varies on the basis of diversified range of products. The research will enable the marketers identify the stimulating factors that a certain commodity is associated with and in the identification of the levels of social-cultural that have been changing on daily basis in the purchase of the children in a family.

3.6 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS THAT INSPIRED THE MODEL IN THIS STUDY

Mochis & Churchill (1979)

Materials: The set of plans that is set on the basis of a high level of intake of materials as a lifestyle aim (Daun, 1983). It gives significance to life and provides the purpose for working on daily basis.

Materialism is also a value orientation with a status module that replicates the anticipated and the real use of the substantial possessions as the sign of gratitude for social recognition and as a sign of personal success. In this case, people believe that the acquisition of materials will lead to them having a happy life. It is the second order value that is set to include the essence of placed on some states and the ways believed to be truthful to accomplish these conditions (Richins and Dawson, 1990).

Materialism is said to be rested on the process of acquisition and possession. These two processes have the role of organizing and providing the guide for the materialistic plan. It has three themes; the first is the acquisition that is the center to the lives of materialistic which is a focal point and it enables them to organize the behavioral patterns. The second is that acquisition is path to achieving happiness and well-being in life. The last is that the materialists display their success and status using the possessions acquired. Their desired image is portrayed by the possession of products.

Family Communication and Materialism:

The content, the occurrence, and the landscape of family member dealings is found in the domain of family communication (Palan and Wilkes, 1998).

A study steered in partisan socialization that utilized extents from Newcomb’s (1953) general model of sentimental communication is applied in tracing the origins of domain of family communication (McLeod and Chaffee, 1972). Socio-orientation dimension involves the vertical communication that indicates hierarchy patterns in interactions that indicate the obsequiousness among family affiliates (McLeod and Chaffee, 1972). This is useful in the controlling and monitoring of the consumption of the children on the basis of their activities (Moschis, 1985). Concept-orientation is applicable in soliciting the input of a child in discussions and the evaluation of the issues basing on different perspectives (McLeod and Chaffee, 1972). The marketers are able to learn different skills of consumers and orientations among children using this type of communication (Moschis, 1985).

Pluralistic parents are the parents who inspire their children to participate in explicit communication and debates. The pattern of communication is beneficial to the children who are able to possess the independent perspectives and be consumers who are skilled. The parents who encourage their children in formulation of thoughts but sustain a class of supremacy surrounded by the household and display the consumption of their children are consensual parents. The parents who basically seem to have low ranks of parent to child communication are referred as Laissez-faire parents. The children in this kind of setting are prejudiced by the external socialization proxies like the mass media and the aristocrats. The protecting parentages are those who lay their emphasis on obedience. The communication in this kind of environment is vertical which does not focus on the issue related Higher levels of materialism is often linked with the children who come from families that encourage Harmony and avoidance of conflict. The more materialistic level is traced to the teenagers who communicate less about consumption to their parents. Despite this, it ought to be known that the socially-oriented and concept-oriented communications are not jointly limited.

Television Viewing and Materialism:

An instrument of customer socialization is the television which has impact from various crucial qualities it portrays. TV is a global in consideration of exposure where it outshines the traditional agents of socialization like church, schools and parents. The effects presented by the television are invisible as a large number of people watch the television. The television presents the viewers with images, accounts that are drawn from the daily life activities (O ‘Guinn and Shrum, 1997).

3.7 THE CONCEPTUAL MODEL FOR THIS STUDY

3.8 SAMPLING FRAME

Indian students that were representing different schools that were found in Visakhapatnam provided the data for the study. There was fair representation for both genders. The study employed the questionnaires that involved both boy and girls. Of all the sampling techniques, 2-stage sampling technique method was adopted. There were some considerations that were made before utilizing the samples of the students. These prerequisites indicated that the subjects must be relevant to the study, that only when a study is an exploratory research should the students sample be utilized and that the sample size has to be large enough for analytical purposes. The study is carried out to bring evaluate the attitude of children towards television advertisements by the use of exploratory factor analysis. The age that the study considered is 8-14. The people below 8 years have limited processing skills and those above 14 years use various strategies for storing and retrieving information like the adults (Selman, 1980).

3.9 SAMPLE SIZE

Half number of students cooperated in the study by filling in the questionnaires given. This could not have happened if the principal did not grant them the permission and the participation of the classroom teachers who helped in supervision and ensuring all the questionnaires is given back. Both boys and girls participated in this activity and they did this during their normal school days in their classrooms without being told to come another day that is not a school day. The children were given instructions on how to fill the questions and advised to concentrate on their work rather than discussing with each other. They were very cooperative and filled all the questions. When the questionnaires were submitted, they were satisfactory because they had 100 per cent response. These respondents size is 383 and in the age between 8 to 14 years and also their parents Participated in this study because they were given 220 questionnaires to fill them.

3.10 DATA COLLECTION INSTRUMENT

For a study to be valid, an effective method has to be used so that it can be successful and have a meaning. So primary data was used to gather the information through the research instrument. When it concerned descriptive research, it also involves the analyzing of the television ads in order to get its content so that it can help when assessing the different promotional appeals that are noted in the TV ads. This type of data collection is time consuming and covers large number of people but this does not hinder gathering of information and succeeds. The collection of primary data is done through observation and direct communication of the respondents to fill up the questionnaires. Survey method is also used for easier communication and enables marketing researches.

In addition, the present study relies on the primary data which is collected through the method of personal interview. There were two types of questionnaires that were made and one was for children and the other one for their parents. These questions were translated in telugu language since some parents were illiterate and everyone needs to understand the content before filling up. The children were given their questionnaires to fill up in the classroom while those for the parents were taken to home by their children. To make sure the questionnaires were returned to school, the children were rewarded with gifts when they return them within two days and this really motivated them to urge their parents in filling up the forms so that they can return them to school. They were able to bring the questionnaires back successfully and the parents too cooperated by filling them sincerely since efforts were used in making items that would avoid questions with false premises.

3.11 UNIVERSE AND SAMPLING

The study is on the background of the children attitudes TV advertisements and its influence on family purchase decisions with reference to city of Visakhapatnam. The study collected data from both the parents and children to procure information that was relevant to the study. The study selected the parents and children individually for the purpose of easing the process. Information that concerned the children was collected from the government managed schools, private managed national schools and private managed international schools which were classified.

Government managed school’s strength doubled the private managed schools which led to collection of data in one government managed school while two private managed and two private managed international schools were used. GVMC managed schools, one school was selected randomly Out of the private managed national schools and international schools, two schools each were selected randomly and they are Sri Venkateswara school (Madhurawada), Timpany school (Visakhapatnam) from national schools and Silver Oaks international school (Rushikonda), Ameya world school (Sanghivalasa) from international schools.

From each selected school on a particular day of visit by the researcher, students who are studying 3rd class to 10th class are identified and requested them to answer the questions in the questionnaire.

Out of the available students all the students are not responded positively and finally 110 students from GVMC managed School, Kancharapalem; 116 from Sri Venkateswara school, Madhurawada; 52 from Timpany school, Visakhapatnam; 28 from Silver Oaks international school, Rushikonda and 77 from Ameya world school, Sangivalasa are cooperated the researcher and team till the completion of the questionnaire. These became the sample and questionnaires filled by them are the base for this research.

In case of parents, selection was done for parents of the students studying in the above mentioned five schools studying 3rd class to 10th class. Researcher and her team personally visited school premises (all the 3 types of schools which are government managed school, private managed national school and private managed international school) and personally requested their parents for their responses to the structured questionnaire prepared by the researcher. This was done continuously for one week. Information from parents were selected from the parents of the children studying on 3rd standard to 10th standard in those 5 schools.

Ultimately the researcher could able to collect information from 42 parents of students studying in government maintained / GVMC school, 95 from private managed national schools and 83 from private managed international schools.

That is, in this thesis a 2-stage sampling technique method was adopted. In the first stage 5 schools belongs to 3 different categories were selected from the existing schools in Visakhapatnam city. In the second stage information was gathered from students belongs to those selected schools and parents of the students studying in those Schools.

3.12 CRONBACH’S ALPHA TEST:

The questionnaires were framed in consultation with the experts in the field of study and lot of care was taken in finalizing the questionnaires. The questionnaire was tested for its accuracy and reliability through test-retest method. The pilot study was conducted on a sample of 50. The ambiguous questions, irrelevant questions were identified and removed. Finally, the structured questionnaire was accepted for the study. The Researcher has conducted a pilot study and reliability test of the data to obtain accuracy of the results of the study. For that the Cronbach’s Alpha test was conducted on instrument to test the reliability.

Cronbach’s alpha, α (or coefficient alpha), developed by Lee Cronbach in 1951, measures reliability, or internal consistency. “Reliability” is how well a test measures what it should. For example, a company might give a job satisfaction survey to their employees. High reliability means it measures job satisfaction, while low reliability means it measures something else (or possibly nothing at all). Cronbach’s alpha tests to see if multiple-question Likert scale surveys are reliable. These questions measure latent variables — hidden or unobservable variables like: a person’s conscientiousness, neurosis or openness. These are very difficult to measure in real life. Cronbach’s alpha will tell you if the test you have designed is accurately measuring the variable of interest.

Cronbach’s Alpha Formula

The formula for Cronbach’s alpha is:

α =

Where:

N = the number of items.

c̄ = average covariance between item-pairs.

v̄ = average variance.

Rule of Thumb for Results

A rule of thumb for interpreting alpha for dichotomous questions (i.e. questions with two possible answers) or Likert scale questions is:

Cronbach’s Alpha value (α)	Internal Consistent
Α ≥ 0.9	Excellent
0.8 ≤ α <0.9	Good
0.7 ≤ α <0.8	Acceptable
0.6 ≤ α <0.7	Questionable
0.5 ≤ α <0.6	Poor
α < 0.5	Unacceptable

It is observed that there are three types of scales in Children questionnaire and two types of scales in Parents questionnaire. Therefor there will be five Cronbach’s Alpha values. In Children questionnaire one type of scale is contains Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neutral, Agree, Strongly Agree; another one is Not at all Important, Somewhat Important, Neutral, Important, Very Important; and the third one is Fully Decided by me, much decided by me, joint decision together, much decided by my parents, my parents fully decide. The Cronbach’s Alpha values for these three different scales under consideration respectively are .70, .810 and .921. It clearly shows that the Children questionnaire can be treated as Reliable and at least acceptable.

In Parents questionnaire, one type of scale contains Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neutral, Agree, Strongly Agree and second one contains Fully decided by me, much decided by me, joint decision together, much decided by my children’s, my children fully decide. The Cronbach’s Alpha values for these two different scales under consideration are .790 and .910 respectively. It clearly shows that the Children questionnaire can be treated as Reliable and atleast acceptable.

3.13 ETHICAL CONSIDERATION

The participants volunteer and they were not forced by anyone in taking part in the filing up of the questionnaires. Their details were confidential and not exposed thus giving them confidence. Before taking part in the questionnaires, interviews and survey, they were first explained as to why they are taking part and the reason of the study. These enabled the reporting findings to be accurate and also data collected not to be misinterpreted but valid.

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