Children’s Engagement with Brands: From Social Media Consumption to Brand Preference and Loyalty

Patricia Núñez-Gómez, Joaquín Sánchez-Herrera and Teresa Pintado-Blanco
Additional contact information
Patricia Núñez-Gómez: Department of Applied Communication Sciences, Faculty of Communication Science, Complutense University, 28040 Madrid, Spain
Joaquín Sánchez-Herrera: Management and Marketing Department, Faculty of Economics & Business, Complutense University, 28040 Madrid, Spain
Teresa Pintado-Blanco: Management and Marketing Department, Faculty of Economics & Business, Complutense University, 28040 Madrid, Spain

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 22, 1-16

Abstract: Digital content consumption provides a new scenario for children’s relationships with brands. The objective of this research is to study the process by which children interact with social media networks and the effect on brand preference and loyalty generated by this interaction. Specifically, the objectives of this research are focused on empirically verifying the process of consumption, contribution, and creation of children in social networks, and confirm the effect they can have on the relationship between children and brands. A great amount of research has focused on adult consumers and has projected the methodology onto children. This paper will take into account the particularities of children who are one of the most important groups in the purchase decision process of many categories (travel, food, toys, technology, fashion, etc.). For this reason, a theoretical model was built and validated with a sample of boys and girls between the ages of 8 and 14. The results show that the interaction of children with digital media (social networks) has a very important effect on increasing and generating brand preferences and loyalty. Although the effect is general and is not dependent on the age of the child, a more intense effect was observed in children between the ages of 12 and 14.

Keywords: social media; children online behavior; brand preference; brand loyalty; CESBC scale (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/22/9337/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/22/9337/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:22:p:9337-:d:442799

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().