Pre‐schoolers, parents and supermarkets: co‐shopping as a social practice

Abstract

The objective of this paper was to examine the co-shopping practices of children and parents in supermarkets, i.e. the practical enactment of grocery shopping. Our special focus is on how informal consumer training occurs during parent-child interaction. We use observational data collected in spring 2008 in different Estonian supermarkets, postshopping interviews with parents and focus group interviews with their children. Our analysis is informed by practice theory, which helps to look in detail at how the activities in a particular situation are coordinated by understandings and procedures, and are guided by the engagement in a particular shopping trip. Co-shopping interactions mostly revolve around particular material objects, although not exclusively. Product choice is a deeply contested area, where both parents and children face numerous pressures in this situation of two-way socialization. There are implications for consumer education more broadly. To accomplish lasting and meaningful effects on the everyday lives of families, there has to be a wider range of actors -supermarkets, producers, governmental bodies, schools and families -who care about both formal and informal consumer education.

Substituting sugar confectionery with fruit and healthy snacks at checkout – a win-win strategy for consumers and food stores? a study on consumer attitudes and sales effects of a healthy supermarket intervention

“…These findings are in agreement with our findings of the modest intervention awareness and the great belief in how the checkout intervention could be helpful to other consumers not least to those with children nagging for confectionery. However, qualitative studies examining the co-shopping practices of children and their parents [40, 41] indicate that child pestering might be an overrated phenomenon and that the relationship between the store environment and consumer practices is much more complex than our study and experimental studies are able to show. The related theme on ambivalent responsibility-participants stressing individual or parental responsibility for making healthy food choices on the one hand and the positive attitudes towards reducing store temptations on the other-was found across our qualitative data collected in different ways and across community and store settings.…”

Meet the good child. ‘Childing’ practices in family food co‐shopping

“…The fact that several parents prefer to leave their children at home when shopping food could be an indication of this (cf. Keller and Ruus, ) since bringing children to the supermarket demands negotiation work. Haselhoff et al .…”

“…Common to these examples of practices are that there are routines, recognizable standards and the individuals engaging in these practices understand the rules. Parenting has often been referred to as a practice (Halkier, ; Keller and Ruus, ) even though parenting is much broader and a less well‐defined activity compared to for example a game with rules or driving as a practice. Still, parenting is connected to certain routines, rules and recognizable standards and ideology – and morality as discussed by Cook (); thus parents are judged and are expected to want the best for their child, to exercise responsibility, self‐sacrifice, etc.—even though the content of these routines, rules and standards vary significantly across culture and class and even within these when it comes to the negotiation of for example food practices (O'Connell and Brannen, ).…”

Understanding co‐consumption between consumers and their pets

“…However, only a few studies (Coe et al ., ; Rötzmeier‐Keuper and Wünderlich, ) have paid attention to the relationship between pets and commercial actors; in particular, the question of how this relationship is interconnected with the pet owner's consumption experience has attracted only limited attention. It is fruitful to develop a novel theoretical understanding of co‐consumption in the context we use, where pet owners’ everyday consumption experiences are created in a triadic interaction with the pet and other actors (Keller and Ruus, ; Vänskä, ).…”

“…The prevailing theorizations on co‐consumption are grounded on two somewhat overlapping contextual and conceptual viewpoints. On the one hand, research on families has acknowledged that significant others are co‐consumers in consumption experiences and practices (Cook, ; Jennings and Brace‐Govan, ; Keller and Ruus, ). There are similarities between the concepts of co‐consumption and vicarious consumption by which Veblen () has referred to the ways a consumer can consume through one's dependents, such as a wife's consumption.…”