Abstract
A rich body of research acknowledges the significance of the family as a unit of
consumption. This thesis investigates three areas within the over-arching domain of family
consumption: children’s influence, children’s sustainable behaviour and family responses to
resource scarcity. Each aspect is addressed via a stand-alone paper. The first paper adopts a
meta-analytic approach to understand the key factors driving children’s influence in family
consumption. The second paper investigates children from a more contemporary perspective
and conducts a systematic review of multi-disciplinary research on children’s sustainable
behaviour. The third paper considers the overall resource intensive nature of parenting and
assesses how families respond to time, money and space scarcity via in-depth interviews.
Papers one and two draw mainly on consumer socialisation theory; paper three’s theorisation
draws on the bargaining and unitary models of family decision-making. In understanding
children’s influence, children’s sustainable behaviour and resource scarcity at the family level,
this PhD adopts methodological pluralism to marketing scholarship in the form of metaanalysis (Paper I); systematic review (Paper II); and qualitative (Paper III) studies.
Sitting at the intersection of research on children’s influence, children’s sustainable
behaviour, resource scarcity and family consumption, this thesis offers three main
contributions to the literature. First, amalgamating research from multiple studies, Paper I
shows that the traditional consumer socialisation model is obsolete and proposes multiple areas
for future research to advance the theory forward. Second, Paper II offers a novel and
comprehensive perspective on consumer socialisation to include children and parent
psychological predispositions, family inter-generational transmission and resocialisation.
Finally, Paper III identifies that situational resource scarcity is triggered by life events, leading
to short term consumption adjustment, long-term resource investment and reliance on a support
network, depending on families’ chronic scarcity.