An Exploratory Investigation of the Dramatic Play of Preschool Children Within a Grocery Store Shopping Context

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine the consumer socialization of preschool age children in a peer‐to‐peer context as they participate in dramatic play in a grocery store setting. Design/methodology/approach – This research employs a case study approach as outlined by Yin. A preschool located within a major metropolitan area in the Southeastern USA was selected for investigation. Located within each of the three classrooms was a grocery store learning center. This learning center provided children the opportunity to engage in dramatic play while enacting grocery shopping scripts. A total of 55 children between the ages of three‐ and six‐years old were observed over a six‐week period. Observations were recorded via field notes and transcribed into an electronic data file. Emergent themes were compared with theoretical propositions, fleshing out an overall interpretation and description of the case context. Findings – Findings indicate that even very young children (ages three to six years) are able to successfully adopt and utilize adult shopping scripts within the grocery store shopping context. The children followed a common sequence of behaviors that mimicked adult shopping patterns. Furthermore, the children demonstrated peer‐to‐peer consumer socialization strategies, directing each other on how to perform appropriate shopping scripts. Originality/value – This study differs from previous research in that the data reveal that preschool age children do in fact exhibit peer‐to‐peer influence while enacting shopping scripts. Although research has examined children as consumers, no researchers have used dramatic play to study young children in a grocery store setting. The rich content obtained from observing children in dramatic play in a grocery store learning center is unique to the marketing literature and provides a better understanding of the consumer socialization of young children

Not Just a Party in the Parking Lot: An Exploratory Investigation of the Motives Underlying the Ritual Commitment of Football Tailgaters

This study examines the underlying motives within the ritual of football tailgating and the influence of these motives on ritual commitment. Employing an ethnographic approach, methods include participant observation, informal conversations, and formal interviews. Findings indicate that four basic motivations and the dual nature of these motives perpetuate the tailgating ritual: involvement (preparation and participation), social interaction (camaraderie and competition), inter-temporal sentiment (retrospection and prospection), and identity (collectivism and individualism). The data illustrate that the duality of these motives perpetuates consumers’ commitment to the ritual of tailgating and thus motivates participants to continue tailgating over time. Theoretical and sport marketing implications are discussed

Measurement error, time lag, unmeasured confounding: Considerations for longitudinal estimation of the effect of a mediator in randomised clinical trials.

Clinical trials are expensive and time-consuming and so should also be used to study how treatments work, allowing for the evaluation of theoretical treatment models and refinement and improvement of treatments. These treatment processes can be studied using mediation analysis. Randomised treatment makes some of the assumptions of mediation models plausible, but the mediator-outcome relationship could remain subject to bias. In addition, mediation is assumed to be a temporally ordered longitudinal process, but estimation in most mediation studies to date has been cross-sectional and unable to explore this assumption. This study used longitudinal structural equation modelling of mediator and outcome measurements from the PACE trial of rehabilitative treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome (ISRCTN 54285094) to address these issues. In particular, autoregressive and simplex models were used to study measurement error in the mediator, different time lags in the mediator-outcome relationship, unmeasured confounding of the mediator and outcome, and the assumption of a constant mediator-outcome relationship over time. Results showed that allowing for measurement error and unmeasured confounding were important. Contemporaneous rather than lagged mediator-outcome effects were more consistent with the data, possibly due to the wide spacing of measurements. Assuming a constant mediator-outcome relationship over time increased precision.Funding for the PACE trial was provided by the Medical Research Council, Department for Health for England, The Scottish Chief Scientist Office, and the Department for Work and Pensions. TC, AP and KG were in part supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre for Mental Health at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, Kings College London. KG was also funded by an NIHR Doctoral Fellowship, DRF-2011-04-06