Interpersonal influence and consumer skills among teenagers. An empirical study in two Italian realities.

The study of consumer socialization among teens has been a core topic in consumer behaviour literature for the past decades. While the effects of gender, age and media exposition have been fairly well investigated by scholars, a little attention has been paid at the environment in which teens grow up. Does an adolescent from a big city act in the same way of his peer in a small town? Does he acquire information from the same sources? Does he react in the same way to the personal influence on his brand consumption? Results from a survey conducted in two urban realities in Italy suggest that teens from a small town declare themselves more independent than their peers in a large city. This trend is statistically significant if the place of residence is taken as an independent variable, but not with other factors like age or gender. Availability heuristic is implemented as a theoretical framework to explain this phenomenon, speculating a relationship between the number of personal connections and the perception of the effect of interpersonal influence on consumer behaviour.