Consumo de telefone celular: significados e influências na vida cotidiana dos adolescentes

• Autor(a) principal: Luiz, Gilberto Venâncio
• Data de Publicação: 2008
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: LOCUS Repositório Institucional da UFV
• Texto Completo: http://locus.ufv.br/handle/123456789/3296
• topic: Comportamento do consumidor; Adolescentes; Telefone celular; Tecnologia e família; Consumers behavior; Adolescents; Cell phone; Technology and family; CNPQ::CIENCIAS SOCIAIS APLICADAS::ECONOMIA DOMESTICA

This work aimed to analyze the behavior of consumption of cell phone among the students adolescents, among 12 to 17 years old, in the city of Viçosa, as well as the meanings of that product in their daily life and the impacts of that type of consumption in their family relationships, in their family extra and in their family budget. The study was accomplished in three stages. The first stage consisted in application of questionnaires to a sample of 392 adolescents using the cluster analysis technique. It was defined profiles of adolescent's groupings based on how long they have and how long they use their cell phone, income, expenses and existence of family conflicts regarding the use of the apparel. The grouping analysis demonstrated that there are four differentiated profiles of adolescents. In the second stage, an interview was accomplished with 40 adolescents, who had already more than one year cell phone and had changed their cell phone at least once. The objectives were to analyze the factors motivators of the acquisition and change of the apparel, the symbolic meanings of it and the changes in the family relationships and the adolescents' extra relatives. The third stage was an interview with the responsible for the adolescents who were researched in the second stage, in order to verify the family profile, the responsible and the changes happened in the family after the kids acquired the cell phone and the impact of the expenses with the kid's telephone in the monthly income of the family. The obtained data showed that, in a general way, the adolescents suffer influences of their reference group and their actions of consumption of cell phone. This apparel, for being always present in the individuals' life that they are closer of the adolescents, takes them to want and to acquire it without measuring efforts, everything to be in the fashion and to stay a member of their reference group. In other words, the youth adolescent, regarding the consumption of cell phone, lives in a constant looking for an identity before their reference group and for a better understanding of their world around. Like this, the adolescent identifies itself with certain group and since then start to adopt the rules of this reference group, for instance of this study, in relation to the use of the cell phone. The need to be always updated with the new technologies is the main motivator that takes the adolescents to a constant process of change of their cell phone. On average they change of cell phone once a year. That fact also happens because of the need to be in the fashion what leads them to buy new apparels at the market as the members of their reference group are using. The changes regarding improvement in the communication among the same ones, the largest freedom and trust that the adolescents get from their parents and the largest peacefulness and safety that the parents acquire for being able to maintain whole time contact with their kids. Those facts transformed the cell phone into indispensable apparel in the life of the families. It could also be verified, that same tends groupings with differentiated profiles, in terms of time and use, expenses, changes and conflicts regarding the consumption of cell phone, any difference was not evidenced regarding the reasons of purchase and change of the apparel, meanings and transformations in the family relationship and the adolescents' extra relative, among those groups that leads to affirm that one of those elements were more present in an interviewees' group answers than in other. As for the influence of the expenses with cell phone in the family income, this device has a larger impact in the families that have a smaller income, as the measure that income increases the percentile destined to payment of the expenses decreases and as the measure that income reduces the percentile destined to payment of the expenses increases.