Refine
Year of publication
- 2015 (3) (remove)
Document type
- Bachelor Thesis (3)
Has full text
- No (3)
Is part of the Bibliography
- No (3)
Keywords
- Marketing (3) (remove)
Course of studies
Mobile internet and smartphones have experienced a strong growth in the past years.
Teenagers and increasingly younger children consume the mobile internet via mobile end devices, especially smartphones. Such technical innovations are commonly
accompanied by social changes that affect societal as well as individual behaviours.
For this reason, the question of how mobile internet influences and changes children’s behaviour arises. Therefore, the topic being treated in this thesis is about
“Marketing to children: Do smartphones change children’s behaviour? – An approach to children’s consumer behaviour and the ethical perspective of the economy.” The objective is to find out whether children’s behaviour is changed by mobile internet and smartphones and which marketing opportunities arise due to these changes as well as observing which marketing practices are conducted. Firstly, general consumer behaviour, its theories and tendencies as well as the consumer behaviour of children is studied. Following that, the examination of the ethical perspective of the economy including general ethics and theories are treated and marketing ethics as well as answers to ethical issues that arise in business are scrutinised. Basic facts of marketing aimed at children practiced by the media as well as the neurological perspective and ethics of marketing directly to children is investigated. To get more
evidence of changes in children’s behaviour due to mobile internet and smartphones a practical experiment in the sports field is conducted to find out whether
smartphones lead to a lack of concentration during training.
As a result, the literature review confirms that mobile internet and smartphones lead to social changes and to changes in children’s behaviour such as variances in their
communicative, consummative and social behaviour which present new opportunities for modern mobile marketing practices. The hypotheses of the experiment that
smartphones lead to a lack of concentration could not be validated. Relating to the measurements, concentration under smartphone presence was higher than without it.
From an ethical perspective it is critical to use (mobile) marketing opportunities for targeting children as their brains are still in development and they are not able to
identify the intentions of marketing.
In times of globalization Country Images and Country of Origin Effects have increasingly gained importance.
More informed consumers are able to purchase goods from around the globe and are no longer restricted to buying only goods produced in one’s home country. This has led to a rise in competition in the international market place, not only in the fashion industry. Managers are increasingly concerned with how brand’s Country of Origin is perceived and what effects it might have to relocate production to a developing country. While previous research was mainly focused on cross-sector investigations and studies of countries in Europe and North America, this paper’s focus was put on the perception of German consumers in regards to the countries New Zealand, Australia and China. The overall question to be answered in this study is “how do German fashion customers perceive the labels “Made in China”, “Made in New Zealand” and “Designed in Australia” and how do these perceptions affect the buying decision and price sensitivity? The results of this paper add value to the Australian brand Unreal Fur and the New Zealand brand PIA NAERA. It analyses their situations in the marketplace and gives suggestions of which marketing methods can be used in order to guide the customer’s perceptions and help support a positive image.