1 - Murilo Lima Araújo Costa Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade da Universidade de São Paulo - FEA - Cidade Universitária
2 - Andres Rodriguez Veloso UNIVERSIDADE DE SÃO PAULO (USP) - Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade
Reumo
Reverse socialization, as the name implies, describes an opposite direction in which socialization is supposed to occur. Socialization is a process of learning behavior patterns through transactions with other people (Zigler and Child, 1969) in order to fit the needs of a group (Ross, 1896). Socialization has a greater impact early in an individual's life (Moschis and Churchill, 1978). The most recent generation of individuals is called Generation Alpha, born after 2010, who have high cognitive potential due to the high stimuli caused by the digital revolution.
Considering the evident distinction between Generation Alpha and their parents' generation, and because there is already evidence that reverse socialization can occur in the most diverse contexts, according to recent literature, the research question is addressed: in which categories of products and services the reverse socialization process occurs in Brazilian families? To answer this question, this study aims to identify in which categories of products and services the reverse socialization process occurs in Brazilian families.
Mead (1970) goes further by proposing that, at that time, society was going through a gap, that is, "a disparity between generations, thoughts, way of life, etc." (Michaelis, n.d., Definition 2), and calls this society prefigurative: a society in which parents learn from their children, as opposed to a post-figurative society in which children learned from their parents.
Following previous studies on consumer socialization (Hyatt, 2018; O’Neil et al, 2019; Carrigan, Wells and Athwal, 2023) a qualitative approach was adopted and in-depth interviews were conducted. Studies of child influence have been criticized for employing an individualistic or dyadic approach rather than exploring the family context as a whole (Kerrane et al., 2012). Therefore, this study chose to collectively interview the family, bringing a more dynamic view of the consumption process (Ekstrom et al, 1987).
The category of electronic goods was the category in which reverse socialization practices were most evident, confirming the suspicion of Generation Alpha having a higher technological mastery than past generations (Mccrindle, 2009, 2014; Borrul, 2019). Smart TV, Computer and Smartphone were the products that were most repeated.
We contribute to the literature on reverse socialization by gaining a deeper and richer look into the processes that occurs among families from emerging countries where disparities between generations are more pronounced than in more advanced countries were previous studies on this topic were conducted.
Although an exhaustive literature review on the two terms was not conducted, the present study contributes to the theoretical differentiation between these two constructs, facilitating future studies that intend to unravel greater nuances in other contexts