The Finishing Touch!!!

So now I complete this blogging season by focusing on one of the important topics that we started with, The Pester Power. I have clearly expressed in all the blogs the importance of Pester power and how it helps all the marketers, product developers etc. However one of the important and necessary thing has not been so far discussed.

Is pester power good or not ?

As far as pester power does not create any mental agony and family tensions, it is always good from marketing perspective. However, one of the ethical discomfort is that of making the parent to shell out unwanted money due to this effect and thus feel bad, not for buying a product which they may not be using, but for this unwanted money drain.

So, how to avoid it ?

So it is quite important at this juncture, for me to suggest parents some aspects about the Pestering Power and how to avoid them from happening, so that parents don't fall in fight with sellers!

These are just some arbitrary suggestions which may or may not work well any particular individual, but is generic enough to suit for a wide range of audience.

• It is better to calmly explain the children "The value of money", rather than directly shouting at them for some pestering.
• When you say no, mean it. If your kids know that you will eventually cave in they will keep trying. This can be the hardest thing to do. But just remember you are saying no for a reason. :)
• Even in case of saying no, try to show your child you understand how they feel. This is important that as once the child knows that you understand for her/him, they may possibly not pester again.
• Get away from the habit of buying something every time you go out and If you know your child will start asking for a new toy, take one of their favourites in your bag to distract them. :)
• Ahem, Don’t say yes unless you mean it! Since, the word "Yes", is very precious, don't ever utter the word unless you are very confident of saying so.
• I think that no behavioral modifications are really necessary in changing this behavior which has existed in humanity for eons. Following only these simple points while going for shopping is sufficient!!!

Parenting in US

Now that we saw the parenting characteristics in India and about the developments and the changes that happen in India, let us now focus on the impact of parenting and its effects and affects for the young children in United States, to just understand the variation and similarity
with the global scenario.

In US, examining the impact of Parenting, developmental psychologists have found themselves on the defensive. It was a bit strange to find that the parents had little or absolutely no influence on the characteristics of their children. In particular in majority of the cases, parents lack to shape the children's personality and long-term development. Putting together evidence from several areas of psychology and sociology, an US Researcher Harris concluded that " Personality in US is shaped by the experiences children have outside the home--in particular, experiences with peers--and that any similarities between parents and children are due to shared genes and a shared culture". Her ideas garnered widespread media attention, including an oft-cited article in The New Yorker.

True, that is what the things that are actually happening in the United States. Children are more influenced by the peer activities and most of characteristics get molded only with the peers, while in contrast in India, children's behavior is influenced majorly by the activities done at home or the profession and occupation of the parents. In many cases in US, the children when they are mostly at home, their character gets molded by the activities of their parents and their occupation.

The major researches done to find the importance of parenting in US, came with the following reasoning :

• Along with parenting style and disciplinary approaches, parents influence the schools their children attend, the foods they eat and even the neighborhood--by choice or circumstances--in which they grow up, but this can be only until a very young age, much lesser than that of the Indian Scenario.
• Today, however, most researchers have become more sophisticated in their theories and studies and examine parenting as one of many factors influencing child development.
  

"We now see parenting less in terms of simple parent-to-child influence, and more as a set of interactive processes whereby parents and children react to each other and influence each other from the moment a child is born," writes Stanford University's Eleanor Maccoby, PhD.

• The behavioral genetics work finds that genes account for as much as 50 percent of the variance in certain behavioral traits and that siblings' shared environment--the home and parenting--has little influence on these traits.
• Maccoby, unlike other researchers, shows that a given parenting style can have different effects on children with different temperaments.
• The result is that parenting can function to make children in the same family different rather than alike.
  
  In terms of academics, some eminent research studies suggest that 50 percent of the variation between high-and low-functioning children results from influences that occur before children enter school. But even the half that results from influences after children start school may be mediated by family factors. For example, some prominent researchers find that social skills, including a child's ability to sit still and concentrate, have an effect on academic performance. So does it in anyway suggest that parenting has got to do with children's academics and obviously their career ? Research are yet to prove that!

SOURCES: Article "How do Parents Matter ? " in American Psychology Association website, www.apa.org

Parenting and Children

So far, I have been discussing on pestering and all activities that are in a way or more related to the pestering process.
Now we shall focus on the following topics:
1. Parenting from the traditional Indian Scenario.
2. Changing characteristics of parenting in the present scenario and to identify the causes and effects.
3. To identify if there is any similarity or paradigm shift in parenting culture of NRIs settled abroad.



Traditional Indian Parenting: Traditionally Indian parenting revolves around the fact that, parents take utmost interest in all decisions which the child makes. It was more towards Hyper-Parenting, but the area where such scenario prevailed were restricted to:

• Marriage
• Place of work
• Type of work
• Religious Ceremonies

These can be mainly attributed to the fact that, the society was quite conservative. In addition to this, the decision making of the children were controlled probably in their early adulthood where, the children meet a lot of people and increase their societal conduit.

Present Scenario:

In present day scenario the things look quite different. We find that, there has seriously been a paradigm shift. The children feel, they have a lot of freedom and independence and try to achieve whatever they admire.
Even here there are a few cases wherein, Hyper-Parenting works like:

• The school where the child joins.
• Arranging for tuition classes.

These two are only some of the illustrative reasons,there can be more too. As such, the point is Hyper-Parenting works perfectly during the early ages or the formative age of the children. The present generation majorly cannot be restricted by the parents on the bride/bridegroom to choose or the profession he/she wants to take and so on.

Let us now try to identify the causes and the effects of such paradigm shift in the behavior of the Indian parents. Firstly, the increasing awareness about everything in general through mass media has made the people to think in more broader sense. Secondly, the growing economy with higher growth potential in not one, but many sectors, increased the people's opportunity in any sector that they want to work with. For eg: the cliche of India people thinking that only Government jobs are lucrative has been demurred with the growing opportunity and pay of software jobs. Thirdly, in many houses both the parents themselves have started working, thereby the amount of time that they spend with their children is reduced and even if not both parents are working, the "quality time" spent has reduced for sure. One reason can be the growing proliferation of TV Serials!

Well, then what about the NRIs ? How are their parenting characteristics looking like ? We shall find out in the next post , the Behavior of Indian NRI parents and how that varies with the Present Indian Scenario and even with the present scenario in foreign countries.

Pester Power and Purchase

After so many discussions on identifying the types of marketing opportunities and substitutes for Pester Power, we now look at the most important which is nothing but the purchase process. As such it is very important for the marketers to identify the cross relation between the Product's involvement and the brand preferences for the product as specified by the customer.

Let us now understand it conceptually by focusing on the "Pester Power Influence Matrix" for all the product varities and understand how it affects the Pester Agents in finally concluding their purchase process.

The Matrix is specific to the Indian consumers and it is quite peculiar to find atleast some products in each of the quadrants for any of the product variety. Thus, we find that for the Pester Agents, i.e., the young children, the products having high brand preference and high brand influence includes, Gizmo's, Games, Movies etc. As such from the previous blogs also we find from the sales figures that these product ranges command maximum expenditure from the Indian children in general and Tweens in particular.

Some of the important inferences that one can infer from this Matrix includes:

1. Identifying the product tyes having the Lowest Brand Preference- Lowest Influence and thereby not wasting the advertsing expenditure on targeting the young children.
2. Identifying the High Brand Preference - High Influence category and thereby thereby targeting exclusively these children in order to make them like our brand and become loyal to our brand.
3. Identifying High Influence - Low Brand Preference criteria and positioning our new brand or re-positioning our already existing products thereby making the purchase process and long term loyalty also being developed.
4. Identifying the products or services with a low influence and high brand preference, so that the marketers can then keep working on making the product

More on Tweens and Marketing

We have tried and discussed some of the psycho graphic characteristics of Tweens at length in the previous blog itself. In this blog we will look at more marketing insights for the marketers as far as Tween market goes. TWEENS

In every segmentation, we may find that there will be sub-segmentation done, in order to understand the segment of people carefully, Similarly, many marketers have developed some psychograhic sub-segments for analysing the characteristics of the Tweens. Some of them are as follows:

1. Edges– Anti fashion, independent trendsetters, re-invent old products, thus the Edges are group who prefer to make their own independent decisions and make new trends.
2. Persuaders- New trends, cool, style conscious
3. Followers- Follow persuaders, low self esteem, not cool
4. Reflexives- Lack self esteem, seek social acceptance. Thus their purchase will be mostly towards what other people in their society buy or tend to buy.

Moving further, let us look at some of the core values that are very sacrosanct atleast as far as the modern growing Indian tween children are concerned. We have also briefly described some f their values in some previous blogs as well.

The characteristics exhibited by the Tweens include following six major attributes.

• Fear: Fear of monsters or the fear of going around in the dark, can lead the Tweens to make some decisions and not make some other decisions.
• Fantasy: Dream or the fantasy of attaining the power and spirit of any great super hero makes the children to behave in an entirely new way. For Eg: Children, jumping from the terraces saying that they have attained the power of Shaktimaan and trying to imitate all his characteristics.

• Stability: When there is some level of peace and sanctity at home, the behavior of children will be different from when there is always fight, minor tiffs at home.
• Love: Modern day children have started showing signs of love and likeliness for all products and people from from a very early age onwards. This value is the most crucial since, it helps to identify the values that are important for the Tweens and identify if it varies with short spans of time say, within a few years.
• Humour: As with this age, these children have a lot of humour and they enjoy and nourish all sorts of humour.
• Mastery: Rather than Jack of all trades, these children prefer to be Masters of all trade and would enjoy to master in all the expertise as they prefer to have. Having supreme power and the ability to control are highly important for these children

We will further discuss all the other characteristics and involvement levels of Tweens in various activities that they involve in the next posts . :)

SOURCES:

1. Tween Power, article from Business Today, January 1, 2006

2. Research Insights and Frameworks from www.insightory.com

Tween Marketing

It is now very important to understand the different age groups of children and to identify if there is some usual changes in the characteristics and lifetsyles habits and behaviors. Many researchers have found that such segmentations are possible and that majorly gives rise to age group segmentation as follows:

We shall now look specifically at the "Tweens" lifestage which is quite significant. Tweens are quite important for marketers in a sense they a mix of both Kids and Teens. They have a composite combination and as the people change with changing times, it is very much possible that the children directly go towards the Tweens segment even skipping a separate segment called Kids, since they want to experience the thrill of being a Teen even at Kid's Stage.

Specifically this term refers to the children of age group 7 - 14 years and this term was popularised by Limited Too and Justice Ltd. Now the following illustration makes the point clear on why Tweens must be the target market for marketers.

What and How Much Indian Tweens spent on (Rs. in crores)

Thus it really makes sense in the Indian context to view this separate market which can contribute a lot of sales. As the table shows, the expenditure on Gizmo's and other electronic substances like Sony PlayStation, etc. amount to a whooping figure of 4650 Crores!

The highest expenditure happens in the apparel industry and most of the Ready-made retailers have profited in such opportunities. Thus there are now separate range of dresses for young girls called "Barbie" dresses and more of aspirational clothing has also become the talk of the town!

An excellent illustration of this fact is that, Saravana Stores, one of the low cost Readymade Garments retail giant in Chennai, for marketing its Aishwaryam range of sarees has gone in for, including even "Tweens" as shown in the AD. Thus the Tween market importance is being identified by the Indian Majors and all the marketing opportunities have been clearly utilised. In addition to that, as this advertisement shows, a new emerging range of textiles with creative designs for the tweens has also come up. This is more often to meet the latent demand of the tweens, rather than creating a new market, because,

the basic characteristics of the Tweens includes being extraordinary, trying the new and latest flavors and designs and basically to experiment with all possible deviations from the ordinary!

Not alone Textiles, almost all branded snacks and other Food products have also gone in for such paradigm shift in their way of thinking after understanding the potential of Tweens. We shall discuss in the next post about the sub-segmentation of Tweens and analysing the Core values of Tweens, their level of high and low involvement in purchase criteria and the level of brand loyalty that they have. Basically, I mean In-depth marketing study of Tweens!!!
SOURCES:

1. Wikipedia.com

2. Business Today, article on "Tween Power", dated January 1, 2006.

Beyond Pester Power

We have so far focused on how marketers target young kids with Pester Power effects and we have also seen how this has a deep impact on the sales of the products advertised in such manner. Now it is very important to identify if, Pester Power is the only method of targeting children. If you ask me, I'd say, it is obviously not!! Yes, Pester Power may be sufficient for creating the purchase process but not for sustainable basis like creating a brand consumer base. So, let us look at all the other options available with the Marketers for targeting in Brief

1) Street Marketing: This is a type of buzz marketing wherein, the marketers try their stint at advertising their products on streets and try to reach the young audience. It can have a response, especially from the young audience, since they are most vulnerable to watching, rather observing with clear acumen what is happening in their surroundings and can respond quickly based on the needs and the necessities.

2) Building Brand "Name" Loyalty: This is very peculiar way of addressing the young customers. Care should be taken here to note that, it is not Building Brand Loyalty. It is building brand "Name" Loyalty. Thus the children must be influenced to have a clear understanding of the brand name and have higher recall and recognition about the product advertised. Though, it has some relevance to Pester Power, but since children can make a purchase on their own, having the brand loyalty, it is very important to have it. This is particularly more important for the product launches which the marketers want to create a lot of attention amongst the young audience. For eg: Airing the Bingo Ad, during the cricket world cup, a large number of times definitely has created a brand recall and Brand "Name" Loyalty among young audience, if not actually the "Brand Loyalty".

3) Complimentary Samples in Schools: It is very important to bring in complimentary samples in Schools, as during the course of their education children read a lot of stuff and come to know a varied levels of facts and information. So imparted the qualities and attributes of the target product in school itself will definitely make a leveraging chance for the marketers. For Eg: Milo usually gives a free sample of drink(With Cold Milk) to school children in most of the Schools in south India , at a rapid phase even in between the times when the classes are going on. This is a good alternative marketing strategy for reaching the children.

4) Internet Marketing: With a rapid proliferation of Internet and other high technology and mass media, marketers have started reaching these means of communication also. The advertisements like yahoo featured Ads saying that new mail ID can be created in your own name with name@ymail.com or name@rocketmail.com grabs the attention and aspiration of the young minds to create their own mail IDs.

5) Marketing through Adult Explicits (Pornography): Another important area of business is marketing through the adult explicits, since many a research suggests that sexual materials grab a lot of attention fro the kids and the teens equally. Thus launching or advertising any products with sexual contexts can make a huge business for the company. This may not be any ethical way of conducting business, but definitely makes the marketers churn huge revenues.

So, in the present generation, a careful selection of targeting strategies and way of approaching the kids is quintessential to reach the children in the most ethical ways.

More on Hyper-Parenting

Though Hyper Marketing involves parents to care too much for their kids, but it also has a lot of repercussive effects. Some parents may feel that they are overcaring for their children because their parents didn't care from them better during their childhood. Nobody wants their kid to be hurt or be sad. But the truth is, if your child is always saved from these situations, he's going to start to feel like there's something wrong with him like he's either not smart enough or strong enough to handle a situation on his own.

It's not only a problem for children, but for their parents, too. The reason why a lot of parents end up doing this is because they, from birth, a lot of parents feel like they have to orchestrate their child's life. A good example of hyper-parenting is the tendency to sign children up for multiple activities, expecting them to excel at them all. That's not the point in having your child do a lot of activities, so he'll be great at everything.

There are few kids that are great at everything. It's important to expose them to a lot of different activities so they can find out what they are passionate about and love. Those are the activities that they are going to try their hardest at and excel at. Actually it a truth that the Hyper-Parenting parents need to understand that not anyone can be great at all the things at the same time.

Avoiding Hyper-Parenting in the Indian Scenario:
Majorly, avoiding the Hyper-parenting attribute involves the following factors. Firstly the parents must make themselves free atleast during the weekends when the children are at home. Secondly, a healthy skepticism and advise must be given to the children to identify the rights and wrongs that the children are doing rather than completely, allowing the children to take all decisions by themselves. Though, giving a decision making power to children is good, but definitely not necessary in all the cases.

Tips for Hyper-Parenting Parents to improve their way of life and their Childrens':

Hyper Parenting

In the previous Blog, we discussed in detail the important Catalysts leading to Pester Power and in Particular we found one attribute called "Hyper Parenting". Now we shall discuss about Hyper Parenting in detail.
Its literary definition is as follows:
"A child-rearing style in which parents are intensely involved in managing, scheduling, and enriching all aspects of their children's lives"
Let us understand this concept better with the following example.
There are many Instances, wherein both the office going parents, who cannot really care anything for their children, try to provide all the facilities and amenities that the children require. This may include, sending for tutorial courses from even 7th Grade onwards and getting all the nutritional food that the child may require. But for these set of parents, it is something like an important feature that the child misses because of their absence.

Again talking about the marketing opportunity in this scenario, we find that these parents feel that they cannot satisfy all the requirements of the children and always tend to do something more for their children. Exactly, this is the Golden opportunity for Pestering Effect. Now a pestering of lesser magnitude by the children is sufficient to influence the parents.

Now talking about the effects of Pester Power, we can see that children may lose their touch with parents due to excessive pre-occupation.Also many children may not get enough sleep.
"Some of the consequences of over-scheduling are stress, burnout, anxiety and depression.
However talking on the positive effects of Hyper-Parenting, we find that making the child excessively pre-occupied and involving their children in more number of activities than is required leads to "Creative Thinking". This is because the children involve in many new tasks and activites and always keep trying for new ways of doing any task rather than asking their parents.

We live in an age of hyper-parenting, where a child is the ultimate validation of an adult's ego and the little time they have to spend with them must be "quality time". There is little room for deviance, boredom or unplanned curiosity in the modern child's routine, especially when the parents return home from long hours at work :)


SOURCES: "The Over-Scheduled-Child" by Alvin Rosenfeld, Stanford University.

Catalyst for Pester Power

Now that we have discussed the importance of pester power for marketers and how it helps them in churning revenues, we shall now discuss some of the aspects which acts as catalysts for Pester power to work and its significances:

Retail Sector Growth:
The growth of retail sector has led to the visibility of many products which did not or may not have happened with the Kirana stores. As the Independence felt by the children increases, so does their tendency to make purchase on self-based rationale and beliefs. Thus the increasing visibility that happened with retail sector growth made such dynamic changes.

Grand-parents’ Affinity:
In the Indian context, it is majorly found that, the Grandparents tend to care more for their grandchildren and try to satisfy their desires. In India people tend to save more and hence have higher pension amount and make heavy spending after they retire . This along with the fact that Grandparents have more emotional affinity for their grandchildren has been an important catalyst for the increasing level of Pester Power.

HDFC Standard Life Insurance Ad:

Working Mothers':
As we briefly discussed earlier, working women prefer to satisfy the needs of their children, since they feel that they are not able to satisfy most of the wants of their children. This however has aided in Pestering Effect, as such children slowly started to use such power for all their desires and in addition to their wants.

Hyper Parenting:
Generally parents want to satisfy all the desires in addition to the needs of their children, which has led to Hyper-parenting, by which the parents care excessively for their children. For example, giving the child Protinex, Complan and Horlicks in addition to giving good nutritional and natural food items to find them have a healthy body. Actually the parents want to care too much for their children. So what happens is, once the child even asks for a new food supplement, say Bournvita, they would be very much ready to make such expenditure.

Greater Exposure to Kids – Growth of Kids Channel:
In the Indian scenario, there has been an increasing trend of Kids getting to know all the products in market ranging from watch, spectacles to even contraception! The factors that led to such exposure have been the explosion of media particularly targeting children like Cartoon Network, Chutti TV etc.

The “Askable” Parent:
Due to various factors, it may happen that the parents have a soft corner for their children. This can be due to either that the children were born late, i.e., delayed birth or they have only single parent (other parent separated or not alive or may be other reasons). In such cases the Pester power can definitely work.

Children as Influencers: An Indepth Study

Children As Influencers: How and Why did that happen?
Traditionally, women were seen to be the purchasing agents for the family. Still women are the decision makers and influencers and in many cases, the buyers of the household substances. This is more so with the items related to Food and Housekeeping. However, with increasing participation of women in the workforce had prompted a shift in this role as children are increasingly the “buyers” for the entire family. In addition to that, the retro-effect of advertisers involving child artists in AD campaigns can also have an influence on the children becoming the Influencers for the purchase process as they are inspired by the advertisement and aspire to buy the product advertised. Also, the modern Teens and even Tweens have developed the perception of having attained a sense of "Independence and Self-Decision Making" which they try to convey through Personal Judgement and Purchase Processes.

"Purchase made to Innovate & use the Independence can be mostly found for products like Bingo!"

Can these be the only factors that has led to the School of thought of “Pester Power Effect”?
Absolutely not!!!!

Even in families where women do not work, children are observed to share this role with
their mothers. Children enjoy greater discretion not only in making routine consumption
decisions for the family but also in pestering their parents to buy other products desired by them. Contemporary researchers express that children constitute a major Consumer market, with direct purchasing power for snacks and sweets, and indirect purchase influence while shopping for big-ticket items. Indian children have recently attracted considerable attention from marketers since it provides tremendous potential (pegged at Rs. 5000 crore/$1110mn) and is rapidly growing. "Arokya Milk Campaign for "Smarter" Children"

Some of the Industrial research data explains everything in Detail:

1. The Chocolate and Confectionary market is estimated at Rs. 1300 crore/$290mn
2. The Apparel market at Rs. 480 crore/$110mn
3. Kids footwear at Rs. 1000 crore/$220mn.

In addition to this, 54% of Indian population is estimated to be under the age of 25. This clearly illustrates the market available for marketers to exploit the opportunities which "Pester Advertising" offers. There could be valid assumption that, knowing the growing size of this population and also the pestering behavior of the children, which may have been in a nascent and not so developed state, that the marketers started to exclusively target them. More understanding can be obtained once we understand the psychology of children and in specific the behavior of Adolescents and in particular the "Tweens and Teens"
"Bicycle Industry strives heavily on Pester Power"

Sources: Article by Kauro, Academy of Marketing Science Review, Volume 2006 - No. 8

Marketing Research Reports by Halan in 2002 and Singh in 1998.

http://www.indiastat.com/

Effect of Pester Power on Advertisers and Media Behavior of "Pester Agents"

Kid's Channels have Cartoon Network, Pogo TV have another reason to pull up their collars. THE slow upturn in advertising revenue in the broadcasting space is seen as good news for kids' channels in the backdrop of children's pester power in buying decisions in Indian homes.
Kids' channels have possibly not lost as much advertising revenue as other genres would have in a slowing market.

The estimated ad sales, which stood at Rs 54 crore in January 2004 has risen to Rs 140 crore in January 2005. In three years this number is seen rising to Rs 500 crore. Despite the slow down in Revenue levels in many sports channels in recent times, the channels targeted at Children still show an increasing curve.
According to Mr Purnendu Bose, Chief Operating Officer, Hungama TV, the fact that Indian cable and satellite homes are largely single television homes explains the children's power on the buying decisions.
This has prompted a number of non-traditional advertisers to come aboard kids' channels. Cartoon Network, which has been around for nine years, has had a run of a wide range of advertisers including the unusual ones such as BPCL, Samsung, Citibank,Maruti Esteem, All Out and Haldirams.
Financial services company and a feminine hygiene brand are some of the atypical advertisers on children's channel indicating that this genre of broadcasters space has gone beyond children. This is a clear indicative of the fact that the children have a great influence on the products that they don't even use. Among those unusual advertisers on Hungama TV include Ad Pens, Linc Pens, D'Damas, ICICI Pru Life, HPCL,Santoor Soaps and Asian Paints.

Majorly products irrelevant to our pester agents, but having some promotional offers such as these definitely leads them to influence the purchase of such items, basically for the gift items.

Some of the Reasons that lead to such purchases could be:

1. The products that get the visibility among the children and favorably accepted in their deeper conscience have a lot of recall and definitely will lead to repeat purchase.
2. Parents majorly want to keep their children happy and tend to buy the products the children, pester for, provided atleast the products has some basic utility score.
3. Given a choice between a range of products for the same use, parents would choose the product that the children prefer, since there are no great differences between the products in its uses.

As this Santoor soap advertisement shows, the child wants her mother to have a glowing and shining skin and since the marketers target this message of glowing skin through the Mother, it has greater chances of making an impact.

At Animax Channel, the process of advertising sales has just commenced. Having allowed its target audience to sample the channel, Animax is now creating an awareness of its own brand by organising workshops on animation for children.
While most channels continue to look at day parts for advertising sales, Cartoon Network has restructured it around programming strength. Instead of day part sales, it has four main blocks - blockbuster toons, prime toons, super toons and wonder toons. Programmes with the highest TVRs fall under the blockbuster category.

These segmentation of the Channel programs has a lot of financial impact, since the Blockbuster toons refer to the prime timing of these channels and hence the TV channel charges higher rent for broadcast of the advertisement and so on.

Pester Power and Advertising – An Indian Context Illustration

With changing times, in whatever the type of media, say print or TV or Radio, even SMS, one point is very clear, the marketers are moving more towards the children but are more than targeting them with the products that they actually consume.

From "Arjun Amma Yaaru?"
à A Tamil AD Slogan meaning "Who is Arjun's Mother?" to "My Daddy's Strongest", they widely cover all the aspects of consumer products — be it Sports Utility Vehicle or Milk Powder , vacuum cleaners or water purifiers, tooth pastes or floor cleansers, Soaps or even home appliances. Children are no longer being treated as passive viewers, but are targeted as 'Influencers' in household buying rather than looked down as initiators for only products which they consume.

    "Arjun Amma Yaaru" Campaign In Tamil Nadu"

Not only have children become a significant support for product ads, but varieties of merchandise aimed at them have expanded a great deal as well. Now, there are entire TV networks exclusive for kids which really made this paradigm shift in the marketer's way of AD making.

Children's channels have now emerged as a new phenomenon. Before 2001, there was only one channel for kids in India — Cartoon Network. But in 2004 alone, four new channels were launched — UTV's Hungama, Sony's Animax, Turner's Pogo, Disney's Toon Disney. In addition Regional Channels targeting Kids like Chutti TV(Tamil), have made their chances of targeting much more favorable.

A recent global survey conducted by Synovate, a global market research firm, concluded 42 per cent kids in India influence their parent's decision in buying high-priced goods like cars.

Marketing High Involvement Products

A Cartoon Network study showed 31 per cent of parents take their kids along to buy refrigerators and washing machines. This phenomenon, no doubt, has opened the eyes of brand marketers and TV heads towards a new segment that for long remained unexplored in India. No wonder, every second ad features a child J

Cartoon Network, which started with 5 million households, has reached 22 million households today. Purnendu Bose, COO, Hungama TV, which launched in September, says: "With 315 million kids around, it's time to bring in these channels that may become a bigger phenomenon than the news segment in this country."

But experts say so many more channels means that winning over Indian kids is not going to be easy. With millions of them suddenly having a plethora of channels to surf, finding 'sticky eyeballs' is going to be a big challenge.

So, channels are trying to differentiate programming, either by churning out more local content or by customising events. Added challenge here is that unless the marketers change their ideas with market dynamics, they'd be left out.
Exerts confirm that as more players enter they will only help expand, penetrate and educate the market. Clearly, more channels will lead to different genres developing their own USPs, which is only a positive win-win strategy.

According to an Ernst & Young study of 2004, one-third of the total AD making expenditure in India goes primarily towards targeting children and causing them to use their elusive power for the purchase process to happen. But as TV networks battle it out for little hearts, Indian kids have never had it so good. This clearly the impact of Pester Power on Advertising in the Indian Scenario J

 

REFERENCES:

1. Ernst & Young Study report – 2004
   
2. Times of India Edition – 5^th Feb, 2005
   

More on Pester Power, "Agents" and the Parents

It is true that Pester Power targets the earning adults ready to spend their money wherein the main Influencer, Initiator and probably the "Consumer" are only the pestering agents , ie., the Kids. But, then it is very important to Identify the Markets where our Initiators are basically adamant and forceful with their pestering power. With respect to the Indian context, it may be Kids are interested in Toys, Electronic Games, TV, Music Systems, Chocolate, Biscuits, Cakes and other Snacks. Cricket Bats, balls and other tyes of outdoor/indoor playing utilies or in present context even iPods or Mobile Phones!!! This is only a illustrative list and not a conclusive one.
But we need to understand if there is a similarity in their liking for and hence the pestering process to happen.

The fact is that for majority of the products that the child does the pestering, a common theme lies in the fact that:

• Usage of the Product does not require the Parental Guidance or Control.
• In addition the parent has the least involvement with these product purchased.
• The usage is majorly restricted to young or young at Heart.

However, there are also widespread paradigm shifts in the products for which pester power works itself! We shall discuss about them later. As far the marketing goes, this is a huge oppportunity targetting a specific set of Influencers.

One has to look at the success of the electronic games market to understand the importance of kids’ influence on their parents’ spending.Last year games marketers, dominated by the likes of Sony, Nintendo and most recently Microsoft, made more money than the film industry.With the success of markets such as these, kids’ products are today recognised as being big business, and the role children play in purchasing decisions has similarly increased in importance to marketers.

“A quarter of parents in their thirties take their children shopping with them and more than half of this age group take their kids shopping with them at least every second time, so there is a big opportunity for kids to influence brand choices there.”Ingenuity Research’s “Australians Today Consumer Insights” report is based on interviews with Australian kids aged six to 13 and their parents.

This year the report stated kids are most likely to influence the buying of snack foods: chips (56% of parents agreed), biscuits (48%) and other savoury snacks.Almost 30% of parents also said they buy the toothpaste their kids choose and 44% will buy a brand of spread, such as peanut butter, their children select.
But whether kids want a particular brand of peanut butter, or the latest game release, Einsteinz Toy Box MD Steve Quinlan says pester power is as much about the environment children are brought up in, as the kind of advertising to which they are exposed. He says it should not surprise anyone that kids will throw groceries into a shopping trolley, considering they have watched their parents and other shoppers do just that since their first trip to the supermarket. As we see Pester power doesn’t just come from the children—they are being influenced by their parents and their environment. From a marketing perspective, that’s a powerful tool. Researchers say that marketing aimed at children should not be interpreted as a means of forcing kids to drive their parents crazy to buy them a particular product—it is not brainwashing.

There will be trends and fads and things that kids get excited about, but that’s the same as anybody, we all have our cravings. It’s just basic marketing—you have to make a product appeal to kids, else your product will end up on the toy scrap heap. One has got to make the kids want what he is selling.”The same rules can apply to fast-moving consumer goods(FMCG) where kids might have a say in the choice of a particular product.The best way to market for the pestering kids, according to The Marketing Store MD Asia Pacific Christian Roth, is to provide a “rational or emotional benefit” that the parent can see.

Pester Power and Marketing

One of the important aspect of marketing involves understanding thought process of pestering agents, identifying the products that can be targeted for them and reaching them by proper means and ensuring that the purchase process does happen. Still if you are not certain of who these "Pestering Agents" let me explain some of the concepts that will make the things clear.

Pester Power: "The power children have, by repeated nagging, of influencing their parents to buy advertised or fashionable items".

It has been observed in many societies over a long period of time that children always have the power to influence their parent's purchase process. This is quite significant as usually the parents give up their stands for the relentless pestering of children for the substances they like. More often than not, the parents tend to buy items that they find to be trivial and have low involvement, but usually it happens that, they are the costliest item on their purchase list.

From a marketing perspective, we can look at various aspects of the "Pestering Agents" behaviors:

• The way in which the pestering differs between a girl and a boy and how they approach the "Pestering process"
• The difference in pestering mechanism of children of different age groups, like "KIDS", "TWEENS" and "TEENS".
• Impact of the promotions and offers in their decision for pestering.
• Impact of size, colour, appearance and taste(INDULGENCE) for the pestering to happen.
• The changing times and societal influences on pestering for the products.

I will also explain in detail the purchase process and emotional state of the parents during and after the purchase process and "Strategies" that the parents devise to avoid the pestering effect. In addition we will also look at the To understand the buying behavior of the children, we will also look at how "Visibility" matters for the children for the purchase they make on their own and their unplanned purchase process and the scope it allows for the marketers to target them.

Importantly, the pestering mechanism of the children need not be restricted only to the products that they consume, It can be even the products that their parents use and their siblings and peers use. I will further discuss on the aspects that make them to "pester" for these products which they would not use, but feel-good buying those for their siblings or parents or friends.

"What does this display name mean????!"

The Nimhsa Logic:
Let me start with clearing the common query. Many people have asked me what does my display name "nimhsa" represent. Some thoughtfuls have partly identified a relation between ASHWIN and NIMHSA. They inquisitively told me that I have written my name in reverse, but instead of writing NIWHSA (which could be the exact reverse), I have replaced 'W' with 'M'. I am happy that some had better observational skills, though the logic doesn't end there!!

Carefully follow the instructions:

• Take a piece of paper, a 'bit' sized one used for examination is sufficient.
• Write ASHWIN on the piece of paper.
• Now turn the paper through 180 degrees, i.e., turn the paper upside down.
• Now a bit of imagination is required. Imagine that 'A inverted' at the end is alone turned through 180 degrees.
• Hurray! This is how the name is obtained.

Rules for the Logic:

1. The alphabet is symmetrical about either horizontal or vertical axes.
2. If condition 1 is not satisfied, the split part of the alphabet must be the inverted image of the other split part of the alphabet about the axis. eg:'N', 'S'
3. The alphabet must be symmetrical about both the axis. eg: 'H', 'I', 'O', 'X'
4. If condition 1 is satisfied and condition 3 is violated, the alphabet must be some other alphabet when inverted. eg: 'M', 'W'
5. The comprehensive list includes the alphabets H, I, M, N, O, S, W, X.

Disclaimer:

All copyrights reserved for the usage of this logic. Restrain from using "The Nimhsa Logic".