KidSense has revealed that today’s kids have evolved from being active influencers and participants in the purchase decisions of all project categories to becoming consultant to their parents. This is corroborated by a key finding that kids play the role of ‘information providers’ even for high end product categories such as cars.

The study further reveals that parents are endorsing this line of thinking by recognizing the role of kids as active participants in the buying decision process and taking them along for shopping for major big ticket items.

How involved are today’s kids with cars?

Kids love to discuss cars. 43% kids claimed to be involved with cars as a product category. When it comes to gender divide, boys (46%) display relatively higher involvement than girls (38%). Cars excite and involve Tier I kids (43%) as much as the Metro kids (43%).

Do kids play a role of consultants to their parents in case of cars?

One fourth of the parents contacted acknowledged the fact that their kids do research and express opinion about cars. This is further corroborated with significant number of parents turning to their kids for information on cars.

Role of commercials

Car commercials are popular among kids as 63% kids like to watch the car advertisements on television. These commercials also manage to trigger conversations among kids as one out of four kids discuss these advertisements with their parents after watching them.

Does the involvement translate into influence?

The involvement translates into a high level of influence as kids today are influencing their parents into listening to their views. A sizeable number of kids as well as parents of these kids state that kid’s opinion was followed frequently while buying cars.

Surprisingly, the influence is higher in case of Tier I kids as compared to their Metro counterparts and boys seem to exercise higher influence on their parents as compared to girls.

Kids in South India come across as more involved and influential in cars than Rest of India as can be seen in the following graph

Brand as an important car attribute scores equally among teens and tweens. Looking across town classes, Metro kids (83%) come across as more brand centric than Tier 1 town kids (74%)

Apart from brand, other important features in cars are looks and style (70%) and speed (66%). Tier I kids (76%) give higher importance to the looks and style of the car as compared to the Metro kids (66%).