Development of a Multi-Item Scale to Measure Teenager Influence on Family Purchase Decisions: An Exploratory Study

The purpose of this study was to resolve two major conceptual and methodological problems in the literature on teenager influence in family purchase decisions by: (I) fully conceptualizing teenager influence on family purchases; and (2) developing a valid and reliable multi-item scale to measure such influence. Systematic scale development procedures were conducted, based on responses from two samples, 383 teenagers, and 120 mothers of these teenagers. Incoming freshmen students at a major university were the sampling frame for the teenagers, ninety-six percent of these respondents were therefore between 17-18 years of age. The data gathering instrument was a written questionnaire. Both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (LISREL) were used in developing the scale and in investigating the respondents' perceptual dimensions. The final scale consists of nine items measuring two perceived decision stages 'initiation' (5-items) and 'search/decision' (4-items), rather than the three stages of 'initiation','search/evaluation', and 'fmal decision', mentioned in the literature and included in most previous studies. This finding, which needs to be further investigated, would seem to indicate that either the respondents do not conceptually differentiate between the search/evaluation stage and the fmal decision stage, or that these stages occur simultaneously for many of these product decisions. The implications of this finding on family purchase decision making research and on marketing strategies are discussed.