General News
Path to Purchase: The Power of Children in Determining Household Buying Decisions
By: Solafunmi Oyeneye, Senior Channels Manager, & Giuliana Dias, Senior Director, Research & Insight, VIACOMCBS Networks Africa (VCNA),
The collaborative process of purchase decisions within homes can no longer be denied. Long gone are the days when there was a top-down hierarchy in households, and the decision making was the sole preserve of parents. These days, especially in homes with millennial parent’s aged 25 to 35, children are more actively involved and have more influence on decisions made in households.
The research revealed four key drivers behind the shift to a more inclusive, collaborative decision making in households.
Giuliana Dias, Senior Director, Research & Insight, VIACOMCBS Networks Africa
Unprecedented Tech Access – In recent times, with nearly 12 devices per household, kids have unprecedented access to information and parents are no longer the gatekeepers of information in the home. In fact, parents are more likely to leverage their children’s knowledge in making more informed purchase decisions for the family; as children are likely to be more aware of brands and are able to filter that information into whether or not they want to purchase products from these brands.
Millennial Upbringing – This second key driver is attributed to the shift to a more inclusive, collaborative decision making within the home. Majority of millennials attended daycare, participated in playgroups, played organized sports, making them more accustomed to collaboration and teamwork. They infuse this into their style of parenting in their willingness to see their children as teammates in the success of the family. Young parents have reimagined the roles of kids in the family; as a result, decisions are made as a family, with kids playing a significant role in the outcome.
Financial Awareness – Millennial parents have also made it a priority to teach their kids about financial awareness, informing them on the financial situation of the family. Children are no longer shielded from the economic realities of their family. Research conducted by ViacomCBS on families with children aged 6 – 14 revealed that over 60% of the kids were aware of household budgets, and about 45% were aware of how much things cost.
With this knowledge, kids can balance the information they have of brands with the economic realities of their family in order to manage their expectations. With a collaborative effort of parents and kids, decisions can be made more easily acceptable by every member of the household.
Family Closeness – This last driver identified in the study indicates 78% of Nigerian parents saying they want to be best friends with their kids. Families are closer than ever, kids are no longer looking up to just athletes and celebrities, they’re also beginning to look up to their parents. Parents are able to better connect with their children, by having more conversations that are open and sharing more amongst themselves.
Sharing ranges from health, financial and even household purchase decisions. Family sharing has become automatic and unconscious. Do children however have opinions on all categories of purchase? Out of 25 categories tested in Nigeria, most kids are involved in at least 14 out of these 25 categories. Their greatest influence being over entertainment, food and groceries, restaurants, electronics, vacation and telecommunication. This means that in households with kids, they play a significant role in the final purchasing decisions that concern any of these six categories.
The path to purchase in households has become a collaborative process of negotiations between parents and children, who are influenced more by emotional than rational factors.
Solafunmi Oyeneye, Senior Channels Manager, VIACOMCBS Networks Africa
Parents are influenced by how happy a purchase makes their kids, while kids are influenced by how happy they will be with a product. Both parents and kids consider if a product will enable the family to spend more time together. Parents are also likely to spend 60% more when their kids are involved in decision making within the household.
Understanding these paths to purchase will enable brands to engage and provide for different members of the family. Therefore, brands in creating their messages must reach both parents and kids, as they both play critical roles in purchase decisions. Within the TV environment we know that the best place to find parents and kids simultaneously is children’s television.
Interestingly, for every one child watching any Nickelodeon channel, there are at least four females aged 25 and above watching at the same time. With over 245,000 kids (aged 7-14) on the Nickelodeon channels monthly, the majority of viewers per month are mums 25+ which are over a million viewers monthly.
Though parents (Mums) usually make the final purchase decisions within households, the role that children play in these decisions cannot be denied. These influential members of the home should be treated as important by brands in determining and communicating their message to target families.
Operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), has busted a Ponzi Scheme Academy and arrested 133 suspects in Abuja.
They were arrested at the Compensation Layout in Gwagwalada area of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Abuja, following actionable intelligence on the existence of the Academy.
The Academy, named Q University (a.k.a Q-Net) is in the business of recruiting gullible young Nigerians who are trained to recruit more gullible citizens into the scheme with the promise of getting unrealistic profit returns.
The suspects are enrolled into a training codenamed: “Special Training for New Generation Billionaire” and brainwashed to believe that they would graduate into the league of billionaires.
They got into the training by obtaining a form the promoters called “Independent Representative Application Form” with promotional slogans such as: “I’m a Champion” “I’m Unstoppable”, “I’m Infinity”, among others.
The EFCC carried out the operation in collaboration with officers and men of 176 Guards Battalion, Nigerian Army.
Items recovered from the suspects include phones, computers and other electronic gadgets.
They will be charged to court as soon as investigations are concluded.
Big companies are leaving Nigeria are leaving Nigeria because of what Heineken Lokpobiri, minister of state for petroleum resources described as “middlemanism”.
So called “middlemanism” is slack form of middleman, which is an intermediary who facilitates transactions between a buyer and a seller, often taking on roles like wholesaling, distribution, or brokering, and earning a commission or fee for their services.
The minister made this known during the opening of the Petroleum Technology Association of Nigeria’s Sub-Saharan Africa International Petroleum Conference.
Heineken Lokpobiri disclosed that a lot of intermediaries who entered the oil industry caused its damage.
According to the minister, due to middlemen and intermediaries, some big and multinational oil service giant such as Schlumberger, Halliburton, McDermott, and others left Nigeria.
“We have made mistakes. And I’m saying this specifically so that all African countries here today will not make the mistake that Nigeria made. When I became minister, one of the issues I was confronted with had to do with the multinational service companies all exiting Nigeria. They’ve all gone, except, maybe this Italian company, Saipem. That was the only one that was around. So we had a situation where there was a monopoly.
“The other big boys—the Schlumberger, Halliburton, the McDermotts—all of them have gone. All of you here in PETAN have your good days in these companies. That was where you started from. That was where you actually developed your capacity,” Lokpobiri said.
Authorities in seven African countries have arrested 306 suspects and seized 1842 devices in a sweeping international operation targeting cyber-enabled fraud and scams.
Dubbed Operation Red Card, the effort ran from November 2024 to February 2025, focusing on dismantling cybercrime networks that defrauded over 5000 victims through mobile banking fraud, investment scams and malicious messaging app schemes., according to infosecurity-magazine.com
In Nigeria, police arrested 130 suspects, including 113 foreign nationals, for running fraudulent investment schemes and online casinos.
Authorities found that criminals funneled illicit proceeds into digital assets to obscure their financial trails.
Investigations also uncovered signs of human trafficking, with some individuals coerced into participating in the scams.
Law enforcement seized: 26 vehicles; 16 houses; 39 plots of land; and 685 electronic devices
In Rwanda, 45 individuals were arrested for orchestrating a social engineering scam that defrauded victims of more than $305,000 in 2024.
Scammers posed as telecommunications employees and falsely claimed victims had won lotteries to extract sensitive information.
Others impersonated injured family members to request emergency financial assistance.
Authorities recovered $103,043 and seized 292 devices.
South African authorities arrested 40 individuals and confiscated over 1000 SIM cards, along with 53 desktop computers and towers linked to a sophisticated SIM box fraud scheme.
This setup allowed cybercriminals to disguise international calls as local ones, facilitating large-scale SMS phishing attacks.
In Zambia, law enforcement apprehended 14 members of a cyber syndicate specializing in malware attacks.
The criminals sent phishing messages containing malicious links, infecting victims’ devices and taking control of messaging and banking apps. This enabled them to access financial accounts and further spread fraudulent links.
The operation was carried out through INTERPOL’s African Joint Operation against Cybercrime (AFJOC) initiative, which supports law enforcement efforts in combating cyber-threats.
The United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office funded Operation Red Card under the AFJOC initiative, allocating £2.6m to enhance Africa’s law enforcement capabilities in detecting and preventing cybercrime.
The seven participating countries – Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, To and Zambia – continue to collaborate on intelligence-led cybercrime investigations.
“The success of Operation Red Card demonstrates the power of international cooperation in combating cybercrime, which knows no borders and can have devastating effects on individuals and communities,” commented Neal Jetton, Interpol’s director of the cybercrime directorate.
“The recovery of significant assets and devices, as well as the arrest of key suspects, sends a strong message to cyber-criminals that their activities will not go unpunished.”
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