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How Good A Shopper Am I? Conceptualizing Teenage Girls' Perceived Shopping Competence

Academy of Marketing Science Review, 2006 by Palan, Kay M

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Some shopping-related problems have already been documented within the teen segment. According to Debt Nation (2001), teens regularly overspend their cash, covering purchases with advances on next month's allowance. Credit card companies specifically target teens, with about 10% of teens owning credit cards in high school (Teenage Research Unlimited 2004). Ownership jumps to anywhere from 70% to 82% for college undergraduates (Debt Nation 2001; Ritzer 1995), with as many as 29% of undergraduates owning three or more credit cards (Roberts 1998). Various studies place credit card debt for 18-20 year olds between $2000 and $3000 (Henry, Weber and Yarbrough 2001; Pinto, Parente and Palmer 2001; Roberts and Jones 2001); the average credit card debt for undergraduate college students is $2,169, according to a 2005 report by the student lender Nellie Mae (Alsever 2005). Given these findings, do teens have the necessary skills to be competent shoppers?

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We propose that a competent shopper is ultimately seeking to achieve successful shopping outcomes and that in order to do so must utilize both environmental and knowledge-based resources and have the self-confidence to ensure that these resources are utilized effectively and the self-control to refrain from acting on undesired impulses and to regulate behavior in order to ensure a positive outcome. If teenage girls feel they do not utilize the resources available to them either because they lack self-confidence or self-control, this may be a contributing factor to rising debt and compulsive shopping, which could become a major problem for the current generation of teenagers given the manner in which retailers, advertisers, and credit card companies bombard teens with marketing designed to encourage them to spend even more. If, by better understanding how they perceive themselves as shoppers, we can better understand the shopping-related problems teenage girls face, there may be the possibility of developing certain interventions, e.g., legislation or educational programs, that from a public policy perspective might help teens avoid some of the potentially crippling financial and psychological issues that appear to be affecting this generation of shoppers.

In terms of studies that have examined teens' shopping and decision-making skills, there have only been a few, thus we do not know very much about these areas. Of the few studies on teens' shopping skills, Mallalieu (2001) found that teens (both boys and girls) understood basic shopping scripts and were able to list what they considered to be good and bad shopping habits. Moschis and Moore (1978) examined how teens acquire certain consumer skills contributing to their effectiveness in the marketplace. The skills related to knowledge are in four areas--the ability to match specific brands to product categories, the ability to price select products and services, knowledge about consumers' legal rights and consumer remedy strategies, and understanding of the consumer role. The study also found evidence that peers were the most significant influence on acquiring these consumer-related skills, yet are teens' peers likely to be competent shoppers?

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How Good A Shopper Am I? Conceptualizing Teenage Girls' Perceived Shopping Competence

Academy of Marketing Science Review, 2006 by Palan, Kay M

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