Family

As I’m sure you have gathered by now, this week’s class focused on family! I found this class extremely interesting as it was easy to relate many aspects which we discussed, to my own family. The topics covered in this week’s class included; Family values, family as consumers, family life cycle, family roles and decision making, husband and wife roles and children’s influence on household purchases.

Definitions:
· Nuclear Family: Father, mother and children who live together.
· Extended Family: Nuclear family plus other relatives such as grandparents, aunts, uncles etc
· Family of orientation: The family you are born into.
· Family of Procreation: The family founded through marriage.

Background
In the last decade, family structures have changed significantly and we are seeing an increase in the number of births out of marriage as well as an increase in one parent families with 7% of families in 2001 being single parented. In addition to this there is also an increase in step families with the nuclear family being challenged by the “horizontal family” or step parents and step children. The average household size in 2001 was 2.4 people however, more than 6.8 million people live alone which may be due to the fact that 1 in 3 marriages end in divorce. (Statistics from: www.statistics.gov.uk)

Family roles, who decides?
The roles within families have also changed as women now account for over 44% of the working population and one quarter of married women work over 30 hours per week. Field (1968) identified three dimensions to determine relative influences of husband, wife and child:
· Discernment or technical know how
· Price à Expenses (who pays?)
· Satisfaction à Who uses?

In the traditional family, the man earns the money and the woman spends it. This is not the case for the majority of modern families (well, maybe the second bit hasn’t changed!), however there is definitely more shared participation.

Family as consumers
Every family is individual thus; the needs and life styles of each family are different and are usually affected by issues including:
· The number of children
· Their ages
· Whether one or two adults are employed outside of the home
· Income
· Changing demands on income

Now that there is more shared participation between husband and wife when buying items, we must question who the marketer should target. Who has the final say? Who is most influential?

From research, it seems that family decisions depend very much on the item in question. Women seem to have them most influence when it comes to ‘boring’ things such as food processers and choosing a dishwasher, where as men have a more significant say in electrical items such as choosing a video camera. Not surprisingly, children have a lot of influence when it comes to items such as video games and men and children seem to make an equal decision when purchasing a PC. Research shows that many family purchases other than toys are influenced by children. It is for this reason that so many advertisements are aimed at children, even if the product is not specifically for children.