ABSTRACT

There have been signifi cant interests shown by marketers and researchers in family as a consumption unit in the society. The roles that children, as members of their families, play in this system have also attracted huge attention among stakeholders. Nevertheless, this phenomenon in an African context has attracted relatively little attention when compared to what has been documented in the literature about the topic in Western countries. Accordingly, this chapter pinpoints this lacuna and extends the discourse on the subject with specifi c reference to Africa. The overriding contention in this chapter is that, while the traditional view on African culture revolves around values such as tribal loyalty, group orientation, and obedience to elders, it will be misleading to assume that children in this cultural context are passive members in the family consumption systems. This is because globalization and socialization agents like peers, and marketing communications tools such as television and the internet, are exposing them to foreign cultural values and gradually strengthening them to be more involved in their families’ marketing transactions. So, they are involved in acculturation even on their own soil. Hence, African children are becoming involved in all the stages of the family decision-making process and as initiators of ideas to buy certain offerings, infl uencers of purchase ideas, buyers and users of products and services bought in their families, and even deciders of which products/brands to buy and how to buy them. There are implications and opportunities from this development for various businesses, from SMEs to multinationals, that provide offerings targeted at children and their families in Africa.