Deciding on Family Holidays – Role and Distribution of Strategies in Use

Deciding on Family Holidays – Role and Distribution of Strategies in Use

A remarkable study conducted by Therkelsen (2010) aimed to explore the role distributions as well as the strategies that were used by family members in the vacation decision-making process. More over, the article her article entited, “Deciding on Family Holidays – Role Distribution and Strategies in Use”, gave great interest and attention to the roles and level of influence of children. The study was substantiated with previous works of literature as well as qualitative interviews with 16 German families and 100 Danish families. Of these families, seven had young children (0–5 years), eight had older children (6–11 years), and eleven had a mixture of young and older children.

The results of her findings were in line with those of Thornton et al. (1997) where they illustrated that the level of influence children have depends on their age (Therkelsen, 2010). The study demonstrated that the young children mainly influence the decision-making by primary needs. These needs include security, hygiene, bedtimes, and food. Consequently, vacations with these children end up being focused on the children’s needs rather than the needs of the parents (Therkelsen, 2010). A finding such as this disproves the first hypothesis in the present study, which was “children under the age of 13 have less influence in the decision-making process”.

Further investigation and analysis allowed Therkelson (2012) to determine that children who are between the ages of six and eleven appear to influence their parents using the negotiation strategy. However, unlike the younger children, the older ones focus more on negotiating the activities that take place during the vacation as opposed to the destination (Therkelsen, 2010).

Therkelson’s (2010) final results suggested that as a child ages, the focused that dictate the variables of a vacation trip shifts from the child’s needs to both the child’s and the parents’....