Relationship marketing is widely discussed in the fields of industry goods and services. Also, the theme of marketing to children owns an important part within the existing literature in the marketing field. Nevertheless, there is a lack of literature for relationship marketing in consumer markets towards children. But especially in consumer markets there are certain products, which accompany consumer during their whole life. Brand preferences and loyalty towards certain products are not unusual among consumer and often evolve in early ages. Hence, it seems to be reasonable that companies try to attract children within their marketing activities in order to acquire and keep these children as customer. Since candies and chocolate are everyday products, which are consumed irrespective of age, especially the sweets industry presented an interesting sample for our research.
The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate in which way companies in the sweets industry use relationship marketing to children or perhaps do not use a certain approach at all. Our dissertation was based upon a qualitative method. We conducted semi-structured interviews with sweets companies and marketing agencies, which worked in the field of advertisements for sweets.
When companies want to reach children as consumer it is necessary to approach not only the child itself but also its influence groups. Moreover, companies need to consider that marketing towards children requires certain children-friendly tools and approaches. Amongst others present incentives an often used way to establish customer loyalty. Since children start to be early responsive to marketing activities, companies can benefit when they are approaching children as soon as they start to participate (actively or passively) in the buying process. Nevertheless, due to the low-involvement characteristics of sweets products the degree of binding seems to be lower than for products that require high investments. Therefore, the focus of sweets companies remain the establishment of awareness and attraction amongst children. However, since the discussions are increasing if marketing to childr...
