The Role of Celebrity Endorsements in Intensifying Parent-child Conflicts: A Sri Lankan Study

Abstract

Scholarly attention is been paid to the impact of marketing on young children where literature has identified the influence of advertising as a potential means of creating conflicts between parents and children when parents refuse to purchase products that children demand. Among different techniques of advertising, celebrity endorsement is effective method in persuading children. However, the literature has hitherto paid no attention to the potential role played by celebrity endorsements in contributing to parent-child conflicts. This is the focus of the current research. The study utilised an interpretive qualitative approach where 18 in-depth interviews were conducted with 9 pairs of parent-child dyads in Colombo. The findings indicate that celebrity endorsements create purchase desires in children through a social learning process and that the resulting purchase demands lead to conflicts between parents and children. In these conflicts, both children and parents attempt to use coercive, reward and referent powers in order to gain the upper hand; however, such attempts rarely lead to resolving the conflicts.