Taiwanese Children as Consumers

Driven by the needs of global marketers, a new programme is assessing the beginnings of consumer behaviour among young people of all industrialised nations of the world. The initial effort reported here was a study conducted among Taiwanese children. It measured the children′s income, savings, expenditures, frequency of store visits for purchasing, and determined the objects of their spending. These data were compared with similar data for US children in order to provide global marketers with a relative measure of Taiwanese children′s consumer maturity. Overall, the study showed that children of Taiwan behave very much like American children as consumers. They spend less, save more, and shop as often as American youngsters. Differences in the two groups are explained by cultural differences that are centuries old. Global and domestic marketing implications of these findings are presented.