Role Perceptions in Adolescent Consumer Learning

Using the Thornton and Nardi model of role acquisition, adolescent consumer role perceptions were explored among 359 sixth through twelfth grade public school students. Demographic factors analyzed included socioeconomic status, personal spending and savings, age, sex, and consumer education, while dependent measures of consumer learning were slogan recall, product brand sa lience, consumer affairs knowledge, and consumer activism. Intervening role‐related perceptions included honesty evaluations of media and personal sources and consumer attributes. Media ex posure, parent‐child interaction, and peer communication were analyzed as sources of role conceptions. Results indicated consumer socialization is a complex process and lend support to the notion that middle‐school adolescents are generally experiencing the anticipatory stage and high school students are primarily at the formal stage of consumer role acquisition. Younger adolescents are apparently only beginning to adopt certain group values but older students have acquired them to a signifi cantly greater degree and show other evidence of conformity to role set expectations.