Interaction between adolescents and parents in the household consumption decision-making process

Application to the choice of tourist destination in the context of COVID-19

Abstract

This research tests the interaction between parents and adolescents from the perspective of the Palan and Wilkes family decision model, in the Cameroonian context and under the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic. The research methodology used is qualitative with the conduct of semi-structured interviews with 17 adolescents and their parents in 14 families, taking into account the objective of understanding the behaviors under study. The survey was conducted in Cameroon in the cities of Douala and Yaoundé from 2013 to 2020. Of the seven theoretical strategies of Palan and Wilkes, five seem to be commonly used in the interaction between these two subgroups to guide the family choice of the tourist destination, namely the strategy of a direct request, legitimacy one, expert one, recourse to emotions and directivity strategy. The strategies that are not used by either parents or adolescents are the strategy of bargaining and that of persuasion. However, the results also show that all parents take into account the opinions of their children in general, and that of adolescents in particular, with regard to the choice of a tourist destination. Finally, families express a mixed reservation regarding a negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their decision-making process for the choice of the tourist destination. The managerial implications of this study make it possible to no longer stop, in a process of communication or the design of a tourist offer, with the preferences of parents or single adults. It would therefore be wise, as several other industries and sectors are already doing with regard to the target of adolescents, to address either single children or family combinations. However, this research has some limitations, namely, that it was intended to understand the family decision-making process, and not to measure what proportion of the population obey the results obtained. This last possibility remains an interesting research perspective to enrich the results obtained. However, a methodological aspect to be highlighted in this study is the confrontation of the points of view of adolescents with those of their parents, separately in order to better triangulate information, and using a longitudinal study over a period of 07 years.