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1. Introduction
We examine sibling relationships (“sibship”) within the context of consumer socialisation to further investigate the role siblings play within, and as part of, the broader family dynamic as consumer-socialisation agents. Consumer socialisation has been highlighted as an important topic for consumer researchers (John, 1999) and policymakers alike (Ekström, 2006) who seek to understand the significant role and spending power that children have within the family unit, and the many influences on their consumption.
The family has often been described as the consumer-socialisation agent (Caruana and Vassallo, 2003); yet existing studies of consumer socialisation within the family setting have tended to focus on “adult-initiated” (i.e. parental) socialisation behaviours. Although such studies have not discounted the role that other family members (e.g. siblings) may play as consumer-socialisation agents (Carlson et al., 2011), the horizontal movement of consumer insight, training and imitation among siblings is rather under-explored (Kerrane and Hogg, 2013). Given significant changes in how contemporary families are formed (e.g. the rise in dual income and single parent families), children are now suggested to spend more of their time with their siblings than anyone else (Sanders, 2004), and a “greater understanding of sibling relationships” is called for within the context of consumer socialisation (Tinson and Nuttall, 2007, p. 186).
Our contribution is thus twofold. First, we seek to explore the nature of sibling relationships as a much under-explored area of family life in consumer and marketing research (Kramer and Bank, 2005); second, we seek to theorise the role played by siblings as socialisation agents within the immediate family dynamic of relationships vis-à-vis their consumption activities and practices. We do this through placing primacy on the voices of children as siblings while conceptualising the family as a complex network of embedded relationships, utilising a family systems theory approach (Epp and Price, 2008; Minuchin, 1988). Family systems theory contends that it is inappropriate to explore sibling relationships in isolation from the broader family nexus in which they are embedded, and that elements of one family subsystem (e.g. sibling relations) are likely informed and influenced by relations that exist in another familial subsystem (e.g. parent–child relationships). We identify how multiple and simultaneous family relationships coalesce, shaping processes of consumer socialisation within the sibling group.
Informed by Festinger’s...