Roma Capitale, Italia
The research aims to verify if the choice of young consumers depends on the brand of products.
In particular, we studied the children’s preferences referred to four kinds of products (brand and non-brand names): toys, school items, snacks and clothing. Our hypothesis is that children choose brand-name products and, they especially prefer games and clothes while they show less interest in school items and snacks. We carried out a study on a sample of 106 children between 6 and 11 years of age; the questionnaire was designed to understand the children’s economic choices and preferences.
We analysed the data through Thurstone’s method of paired comparison (Pedon, 2005) that allowed the creation of an interval scale on a continuum which represents the degree of preference of the given stimuli. The results confirm that young consumers prefer brand-name products and, in particular, they chose games. The research demonstrates the usefulness of the method that has allowed us to describe accurately the level of preference of the various stimuli.
Although many studies had already shown that young consumers prefer branded products, the results of this study showed that some products, like games and clothes, are chosen over other regardless of brand.