ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to tracing the changing role of children as consumers in society. It also aims to trace the history and journey of consumer socialisation and to understand the major factors affecting consumer socialisation. The chapter discuses the counter view of reverse socialisation and analyzes the two theories of consumer socialisation and reverse socialisation as complementary to each other and propose a theoretical model combining the two theories. It highlights the ethical issues in marketing to children and identifies areas of future research related to learning and consumer socialisation in children. The socialisation process incorporates both the socialisation agent and type of learning actually operating. The acquiring of cognitive and behavioural properties are often referred to as consumer skills. Over the years researchers and academicians have proposed a number of theories to describe the process of learning. Broadly speaking, these theories can be grouped as follows: Behaviourism; Cognitivism; Constructivism.
