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Tweens on Holidays. In-Situ Decision-making from Children's PerspectiveBodil Stilling Blichfeldt a , Bettina Møller Pedersen b , AndersJohansen c & Line Hansen da Aalborg University , Denmarkb Syddansk Turisme , Denmarkc Region Syddanmark , Denmarkd VisitKolding , DenmarkPublished online: 18 Jul 2011.

To cite this article: Bodil Stilling Blichfeldt , Bettina Møller Pedersen , Anders Johansen& Line Hansen (2011) Tweens on Holidays. In-Situ Decision-making from Children'sPerspective, Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 11:2, 135-149, DOI:10.1080/15022250.2011.588444

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Tweens on Holidays. In-Situ Decision-making from Children’s Perspective

BODIL STILLING BLICHFELDT*, BETTINA MØLLER PEDERSEN**,ANDERS JOHANSEN† & LINE HANSEN‡

*Aalborg University, **Syddansk Turisme, †Region Syddanmark, and ‡VisitKolding, Denmark

ABSTRACT Often the travel group is the nuclear family. However, in most decision-makingresearch the respondents are the adults; rarely the children. Furthermore, most research onvacation decision-making focuses on decision-making processes that take place prior to thevacation. Many decisions are made in situ though (i.e. after having arrived at thedestination). In order to contribute to the filling of these research gaps (i.e. that children arerarely given voice and that in-situ decision-making processes are under-investigated), thispaper draws on in-depth interviews with 89 tweens (age 8–12 years). The purpose is touncover tweens’ enactment of in-situ decision-making and thus, the paper accounts for suchdecision-making processes from a tween perspective. Accordingly, the title of this paperemphasizes the dual ambition of the study: To give voice to tweens and to uncover decision-making during (or on) holidays. A central finding is that tweens’ role in the making ofvacation choices is under-emphasized by extant theory. The second finding is that tweens donot align with traditional roles as passively submitting to whatever choices their parentsmake; nor do they resemble the stereotypic image of self-centered and pestering individualsin search of their own identity (or identities).

KEY WORDS: Children, tweens, families, vacation decision-making, in-situ decision-making

Introduction and Theoretical Background

In traditional models of vacation decision-making (e.g. Mansfeld, 1994; Um & Cromp-ton, 1990), the starting point of the vacation decision-making process is considered tobe the making of the generic decision to go or not to go on vacation. The (admittedlysomewhat stereotypic) vignette below describes a likely initiation of vacation decision-making processes in a nuclear family:

It’s February. It’s cold and it’s raining for the fifth day in a row. Furthermore, it’sSaturday and both of your children (8 years old Anne and 11 years old Benjamin)are almost done watching Saturday morning Kids TV. Enjoying the last cup of

Correspondence Address: Bodil Stilling Blichfeldt, Aalborg University, Fibigerstræde 2, 9220 Alborg,Denmark. Tel: +45 7547 0756. E-mail: blichfeldt@cgs.aau.dk

Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism,Vol. 11, No. 2, 135–149, 2011

1502-2250 Print/1502-2269 Online/11/020135–15 # 2011 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/15022250.2011.588444

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coffee before they will come and ask ‘what are we going to do today?’, you turn tothe last section of the newspaper, which contains one ad after the other on sunnybeaches, crystal blue water and fancy resorts. You turn to your husband, who isalmost done with the sports section and ask: ‘By the way, what are we doingabout the summer holidays?’

If the family in the vignette makes the generic decision “to go”, typically, this is fol-lowed by modal decisions (i.e. decisions pertaining to type of holiday) and morespecific decisions (i.e. choice of destination, transportation and accommodation)(Decrop, 2006). However, as shown by more elaborate models of vacation decision-making (e.g. Woodside & MacDonald, 1994), such decision-making processes differfrom other types of decision-making as vacation decision-making contains variouschoice sets and sub-decisions that can be dealt with before one (or in our case, afamily) arrives at the destination or during the vacation. The following vignette illus-trates one of the sub-decisions that occur after arrival at the destination (often referredto as in-situ decision-making):

It’s July and one week ago, your three weeks of summer holiday started. It’s beencold and raining for the first 5 days, but luckily, in February you booked a week’sholiday in Marmaris, Turkey. Having arrived two days ago, you, your husbandand your two children (Anne and Benjamin) are having a late breakfast, enjoyingthe hotel breakfast buffet’s wide variety of foods and beverages – stretching fromscrambled eggs and bacon over all kinds of bread and pastries to freshly madesmoothies. Anne is done with her breakfast and she turns to you and asks:‘What are we going to do today?’

As the two vignettes illustrate, vacation decision-making is comprised of decisions per-taining to a broad range of issues (according to Decrop, 2006, this includes issues suchas accommodation, activities, period, transportation, accompaniment, duration, tour,route, attractions, budget and expenses, meals, organization, purchases, formula andvacation style). Moreover, some of these decisions may be made months before oneactually goes on vacation (for summer holidays often in February) whereas otherdecisions are made spontaneously at the destination (for example when the familytalks about what to do on a specific day after they have finished breakfast). Unfortu-nately, at present we know far more about up-front decision-making than about in-situ decision-making processes (Blichfeldt, 2008) and consequently, a paucity ofresearch on these issues characterizes the literature on vacation decision-making. Inorder to make a contribution to enhance knowledge on in-situ decision-making inthe context of holidays, this paper seeks to further theoretical knowledge ondecision-making during the vacation.

More than 40 years ago, Davis (1976, p. 241) argued that “the number of productsthat an individual always buys for individual consumption must certainly represent avery small proportion of consumer expenditure”. As exemplified by the two vignettes,this, especially, seems to be true in regard to holidays as many, if not most, vacationsare taken not by individual tourists, but by groups of tourists and in particular, we go onvacation with our nuclear families (Blichfeldt, 2008). Nonetheless, the majority of

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vacation decision-making models focus on the individual decision-maker and thus, “therole of the travel party has been marginalized” (Sirakaya & Woodside, 2005, p. 829).However, if we look at other theories than the “grand” consumer (and more specificallyvacation) decision-making models, much has been said and written about family holi-days and especially about the vacation decision-making processes that families engagein (e.g. Blichfeldt, 2007b; Cosenza & Davis, 1981; Cullingford, 1995; Decrop, 2006;Fodness, 1992; Filiatrault & Ritchie, 1980; Gram, 2005, 2007; John, 1999; Johns &Gyimothy, 2002; Nestoras, 2007; Nickerson & Jurowski, 2001; Ryan, 1992;Shoham & Dalakas, 2005; van Raaij & Francken, 1984; van Raaij, 1986; Wanget al., 2004). However, research on families’ vacation decision-making emphasizessome issues and voices whereas other issues and voices are more marginalized. Inmost pieces of research on family decision-making the respondent is adult (andmostly the parent(s)) and accordingly, researchers, seldomly, give voice to children(Cullingford, 1995). This means that although researchers acknowledge that childreninfluence, or “have a say” in, vacation decision-making, researchers, traditionally,rely on parents’ accounts for such decisions and influence. As an example of children’sinfluence, Foxman et al. (1989) found that in around 60% of families, children influencetravel and vacation decisions. Furthermore, Shoham and Dalakas (2005) and Wanget al. (2004) claim children to influence problem recognition whereas Gram (2007)and Nestoras (2007) found that children take part in information search. Many research-ers (e.g. Gram, 2005, 2007; Johns & Gyimothy, 2002; McNeal, 1999) argue that chil-dren can influence decision-making processes both directly and indirectly. Finally,most researchers argue that children’s role in decision-making is a rather passive one(Fodness, 1992; Filiatrault & Ritchie, 1980; Ryan, 1992; Thornton et al. 1997) andthat the parents have the final say (Wang et al., 2004). Accordingly, out of the fiveroles (i.e. user, influencer, decider, buyer, and gatekeeper) that Webster and Wind(1972) argued that the buying center (or the decision-making unit) consists of childrenare traditionally seen as influencers and users and not as buyers, deciders or gate-keepers. Nonetheless, the rather passive role children are often ascribed duringdecision-making processes is – with very few exceptions – based on parents’ accounts.As a result, the travelling (in our case family) group is rarely disaggregated into separateindividuals (Mottiar & Quinn, 2004). The fact that children are not given voice intourist studies is problematic as Marshall (1963; i.e. nearly 50 years ago) reportedvery low correlations between children’s and parents’ consumption-related reports.In the same vein, Foxman et al. (1989) found that children and parents disagree on ado-lescent influence in family decision-making processes. Drawing on these findings, itseems that we need to give voice to children if we wish to fully understand familyvacation decision-making. In order to make a contribution to the filling of the tworesearch gaps within vacation decision-making theory (that children are rarely givenvoice and that in-situ decision-making processes are under-investigated), this paperdraws on a piece of qualitative research, a purpose of which was to uncover children’senactment of in situ decision-making. Accordingly, the title of this paper emphasizesthe dual ambition of the paper: To give voice to children (to tell their stories on holi-days) and to direct dialogues towards decision-making during (or on) holidays.

The term “children” is rather broad and may cover everything from toddlers to teen-agers. However, in regard to family holidays especially two stereotypic presentations of

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children stand out. The first stereotype relates to dependent children, who (are expectedto) enjoy sand, sea, ice cream and play (Blichfeldt, 2007a, 2007b). The other stereotyperelates to teenagers, who strive to be(come) individuals in their own rights and to detachthemselves from their parents (Blichfeldt, 2007a, 2007b). Obviously, these two stereo-types do not adequately describe all children and especially, it seems that neither ofthese stereotypes resemble the children, who are particularly likely to engage in in-situ vacation decision-making; i.e. children who in recent years have been labeled“tweens”. During the last decade or so, much attention has been directed at thesetweens (i.e. those caught in between childhood and the teenage years) (e.g. Lindstrom,2003, McNeal, 1999, Nestoras, 2007, Nicholls & Cullin, 2004). Apart from the fact thatwe know little about this group as tourists, in particular the choice to focus on this groupis grounded in the fact that they are likely to be more active in regard to vacationdecision-making than younger children while they may not, yet, wish to escape fromthe parents during the holidays – as teenagers may do. Furthermore, tweens areusually defined as children in the age groups 7–11 or 8–12. As such, the notion“tween” is highly concordant with Piaget and Inhelder’s (1971) concrete-operationalstage, during which 7–12-year-old children start to enact and understand social inter-actions, decision-making processes and ethical aspects hereof. Furthermore, at thisstage children’s egocentricity dramatically decreases and is substituted by increasinglevels of empathy and understanding of oneself as a part of a group such as, forexample, belonging to a group of friends or being a member of a nuclear family.Accordingly, tweens seem to qualify as especially valuable informants insofar as wewish to give voice to children.

Methodology

As mentioned in the introduction, almost 50 years ago, Marshall (1963) identified verylow correlations between children’s and parents’ reports on consumption. Ideally, astudy that seeks to give voice to tweens should also include parents’ accounts, thusenabling comparison of the various accounts offered by different family members.However, as the study accounted for in this paper is rather exploratory in nature andseeks to uncover tweens’ enactment of in-situ decision-making, parents are not includedin the empirical study. In practice this means, that this paper does not uncover howfamilies actually make decisions during the vacation. Instead, it (only) accounts fortweens’ enactment hereof and consequently, we cannot know whether the tweens’reports are “false” or whether they “objectively” account for in situ family decision-making processes. Kvale (1989, p. 80) argues that “a common critique of [both]research and therapeutic interviews is that their findings are not trustworthy becausethe interviewees’ or the patients’ reports may be false. This is no doubt correct insome cases”. Unfortunately, any discussion of quality of interviews that is based onthe premise of “false” reports is of relevance only to research adhering to (post)positi-vistic principles (Angen, 2000; Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Discussing this issue, Denzinand Girdina (2009, p. 32) argue that “we [interpretive and humanist researchers] need todevelop and work with our own conceptions of science, knowledge, and qualityinquiry. We need to remind the resurgent post-positivists that their criterion of goodwork applies only to work within their paradigm, not ours”. Hirschman (1986,

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p. 244) elaborates on this issue and argues that; “To the humanist, people really are asthey appear to be. Humanists believe that if people are approached with the sincereintent of genuinely understanding them (as opposed to the intent of manipulatingand testing them) they will extend to the researcher as much honesty and opennessas is possible between two or more human beings. If there is some intimate deceitthat an individual cannot share with another person, it will never be known to the huma-nist researcher”. Drawing on Hirschman’s (1986) lines of reasoning, although we doacknowledge that the accounts offered by the tweens included in our study may behighly subjective and may not correspond with parents’ perceptions of the sameissues, at the same time, as humanist researchers we fundamentally believe that the89 tweens included in our study are as honest and open as possible and consequently,that they “really are as they appear (or tell) to be”. Obviously, this is a major assumptionto base a study on. For example, when the tweens argue that they do not “pester”, we doacknowledge that they might be unwilling to admit to do so and if they do admit to suchbehaviour, they may seek to justify this behaviour. On the other hand, the purpose ofthis paper is to account for the tweens’ enactment of in-situ decision-making processesand concordantly, we believe that the tweens are as open and honest as possible whenthey explain their behaviours regarding pestering. Accordingly, when we subsequentlyaccount for our key findings and, for example, write that “the study shows that familiespostpone final decisions so that these decisions are made in situ” this does not mean thatall family members see the situation as such. Instead, as indicated by the title of thispaper it (only) means that, from the 89 tweens’ perspective, their families postponefinal decisions so that these decisions are made in situ.

As Flick (2006, p. 149) reminds us; “the interviewed subjects’ viewpoints are morelikely to be expressed in an openly designed interview situation than in a standardizedinterview or questionnaire” and consequently, a decision was made to do a qualitativestudy comprised of a series of in-depth and focus group interviews with tweens, thustrying to ensure that the tweens were actually given voice (Lawrence-Lightfoot &Davis, 1997). Although an issue not covered by extant literature on qualitative inter-views; nor by the literature on the interviewing of children, we feared that the inter-viewer(s) would be too “directive” and the tweens too passive if tweens had to“face” the interviewer(s) on their own. Very early in the process we made one in-depth interview with a single tween and this interview led us to conclude that individualinterviews led to tweens being “too passive” and that the quality of the interview washampered by inequality; findings that correspond with those of Spethmann (1992) andThomas and O’Kane (1998). As a result, all interviews were either done as focus groupinterviews or as “duo interviews” (i.e. with two tweens being present) that knew eachother before the interviews took place. This choice is perhaps problematic as it incor-porates the risk of tweens being influenced by the presence of their peers, potentiallyleading to “show off” effects (as experienced by Hyde et al., 2005). However,drawing on her extensive experience with focus group interviews with children,Raby (2010) concludes that there is no evidence that children are more likely to lieor “show off” in focus groups than are any other interviewees. As a result, wedecided to do interviews with more than one tween at a time because “inequalitiesbetween young people and adults support the focus group method by tipping thebalance of power away from the facilitator(s)” (Raby, 2010, p. 13).

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Docherty and Sandelowski (1999, p. 178) argue that “many of the concernsexpressed about the validity of data obtained through interviews with children aresimilar to those often expressed about the validity of qualitative research”. Forexample, the key advantage of duo and focus group interviews is that interviewees’interact with each other and consequently influence each other – regardless of intervie-wees being children or adults. Kitzinger (1994) as well as Wilkinson (1998) criticize thetendencies to (a) define individual interviews as more “accurate” than focus group inter-views, and (b) to see focus group interactions as behaviour that “contaminates” individ-ual views. Such tendencies, they argue, neglect the fact that individual interviews arealso produced within a social context; albeit a context that is dominated by inter-viewer-interviewee interactions instead of interactions amongst interviewees (e.g. agroup of tweens). As a result, the choice to rely on duo and focus group interviewsrelates not to a wish to eliminate the inevitable interaction and influence in interviewsituations, but to let these interactions be dominated by interactions amongst peersand thus to shift power relationships from the researcher to participants (Kitzinger &Barbour, 1999; Wilkinson, 1998) – particularly in research with children (Raby, 2010).

In order to get into contact with tweens, we contacted seven schools across Denmark.The reason why tweens were contacted through schools is a rather pragmatic one as thisapproach allowed us to use the schools as “intermediaries”, in regard to obtaining per-mission from parents and in regard to the practicalities of interviews (i.e. setting timeand space). All of the seven schools agreed to partake in the study, primarilybecause the teachers found that participation in interviews would qualify as a “learningexperience” for the tweens. Furthermore all parents gave permission to their children’sparticipation in interviews. The fact that all parents gave permission might relate to thefact that they were approached through the schools. Both private and public schools aswell as schools in both rural and urban areas were selected. Intentionally, schools in thecapital, Copenhagen, and other urban cities as well as small schools in rural areas wereselected to include tweens with different geographical background. The key reasonunderlying these choices was that we anticipated that geographical issues mightaffect the everyday life settings and life worlds of tweens. The tweens were selectedby the teachers based on criteria such as age, travel experience and extroversion; criteriaset by the researchers. This approach obviously made it difficult to “control” the selec-tion of tweens. However, in the dialogues with the teachers it was emphasized that thefocus groups should include a variety of tweens and that, under no circumstancesshould they be comprised of the most experienced travellers amongst the pupils. Asone of the reviewers pointed out, although schools are part of tweens’ everyday life,they are also places created and controlled by adults and thus, schools do not necess-arily qualify as “tween spaces”, i.e. places where the tweens feel safe and comfortable(Punch, 2002). In order to compensate (at least somewhat) for this deficit, we tried tomake the interview situation different from the teacher-pupil situations, that tweens nor-mally engage in at the schools. For example, teachers were not present during inter-views and the interviews were done by three “younger” researchers (25, 26 and 29years old); albeit a maximum of two researchers were present at each interview. Toovercome any adult-tween barriers the researchers opened the interviews with smalltalk and humour. Moreover, they carefully explained the purpose of the interviewsand the main themes and made it clear that the main purpose was for the researchers

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to learn from the tweens’ opinions and experiences. Particularly the researchersexplained that there would be no “right” or “wrong” answers. Concordantly, theresearchers tried to make the tweens feel as experts, so they would feel on “top ofthe situation”. During the first interviews a key consideration was the tweens’ abilityto concentrate and immerse into the interview situation. As a result of their ability toconcentrate, the interviews were somewhat shorter than in-depth interviews withadult interviewees (in accordance with Ottesen’s (2002) recommendations interviewslasted no longer than one hour). Furthermore, creative tasks (e.g. to draw pictures ofholidays) were included – both to reduce formality and to make it “more fun” to actas informants (Douglas, 1985; Greenbaum, 1998; Guber & Berry, 1993; Punch,2002; Thomas & O’Kane, 1998). As recommended by the specialized literature onthe interviewing of children (e.g. Greig & Taylor, 1999; Kampmann, 1998), eachfocus group was comprised of 4–6 tweens. All in all, 14 focus groups (65 informants)and 12 “duo” interviews (24 informants) were conducted.

All interviews were recorded and immediately after completion subject to analysis atthe ideographic level. Furthermore, the interviews were divided into four “streams ofresearch”. The separation of the empirical study into different “streams” was done toensure that quality of interviews increased during the study. For example, a keyissue during the first stream of research was to gain knowledge on how to “do” inter-views with tweens. After the first stream of research the researchers intensivelydiscussed whether we had actually given the tweens “voice”. A problem with ourresearch design is that each tween is only interviewed once, thus questioning boththe degree to which each tween is given sufficient voice and the extent to which wewere able to “grasp” the lifeworlds of the tweens included in the study. Unfortunately,the choice to only interview each tween once is a pragmatic one as we were not able togain access to each interviewee more than once. Although analysis occurred simul-taneously with data collection, the key part of analysis was a search for key themesthat took place after all interviews were completed. This search was done in accordancewith Miles and Huberman’s (1994) recommendations pertaining to the use of a meta-matrice. Finally, it ought to be mentioned that the qualitative interviews, upon whichthis paper draws, cover decision-making before, during and after the vacation as wellas the 89 informants’ lifeworlds and everyday contexts. However, in this paper wefocus on in-situ decision-making processes, albeit we take the liberty to draw uponother aspects (and especially those pertaining to lifeworlds and everyday contexts)insofar as these aspects are necessary in order to understand informants’ lines of reason-ing. If the reader wishes to know more about results pertaining to up front decision-making processes, accounts hereof are offered in Blichfeldt et al. (2010).

Results

One of the issues that emerges when interviewing tweens is the issue of asking ques-tions pertaining to socio-economic background and demographics. Particularly twoproblems emerge. Firstly, tweens might not know the answers to these questions andin particular, they might not know the household’s income. Secondly, whereas adultsanswer socio-economic questions on their own behalves (and possibly a spouse’s),we found that asking tweens about household income would not be ethical. As a

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result, we settled for asking more indirect questions pertaining to socio-economic vari-ables and in particular, we asked questions on family composition (nuclear families,one parent families, post-modern families etc.) and on housing conditions (rentalversus own housing, apartment, house, farm etcs.) The tweens’ answers to these ques-tions show that the study includes tweens from various social groups (9 lived on a farm,54 in their own housing, 18 in apartments and 8 in terrace houses. Two lived with afoster family, 23 in a single parent or divorced family and 62 in a nuclear family).Although the study is qualitative in nature, it ought to be mentioned that comparedto basic national statistics, the “sample” seems to somewhat resemble the populationof Danish tweens in terms of family composition and housing conditions.

Before going into details on in-situ decision-making, it ought to be mentioned thatour 89 informants have travelled much. For example, 12-year-old Peter and 11-year-old Nina told the following about their previous holidays:

I was on a trip around the world when I was around 1 year old. My cousins, uncleand aunt live in the US, so we’ve also been there – I think 3 or 4 times. I’ve alsobeen in Australia and Spain and Mallorca.I’ve travelled a lot; ever since I was 3 years old. When I was 3, we were in Thai-land for 2 weeks and I’ve been to Malaysia and the Philippines and I’ve also beenin South Africa and Paris and this winter I was in Austria.

As exemplified by these two quotes, our informants are experienced travellers and tour-ists, who – already at the age of 8–12 – have rather extensive travel careers (Pearce,1982). Furthermore, although the packaged tour qualifies as a very prominent part of all89 informants’ travel careers, most of them have had a series of other types of holidaysas well as travelling for a longer duration than the traditional packaged tour. Althoughthis paper draws on a qualitative study that does not generalize statistically it is worthmentioning that we did not “go” for informants, who are especially experienced touristsand thus, there seems to be no reason why our 89 informants should be different fromother Danish tweens in terms of extent and content of travel careers. Nonetheless, as thestudy (as all qualitative studies) only renders analytical (not statistical) generalization,quantitative studies are needed in order to test this assumption.

Having arrived at the destination, families’ vacation-decision making changes fromup front to in-situ decision-making. Accordingly, although the family might have con-sidered a series of sub-choices (such as e.g. what to see (or “gaze”); what to eat; what todrink; what to experience; and what souvenirs to buy) while preparing for (or even day-dreaming about) their vacation, not many of these considerations have led the family tomake decisions up front that they have to comply with during the holidays. On the con-trary, our study shows that – from the tweens’ perspective – the families postpone finaldecisions so that these final decisions are taken in situ – thus allowing them to be flex-ible and to draw on new pieces of information as well as “mood” in the decision-making processes. Our 89 tweens also suggest that, in particular, choice of activitiesis a critical part of the holidays and that they are both very active and highly involvedin these decisions. Furthermore, all of our informants argue that such decisions are theresponsibility of all family members. For example, 9-year-old Lea, 12-year-old Natasja,

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10-year-old Jeppe and 12-year-old Mikkel made the following comments on how theirfamilies make decisions pertaining to activities during the holiday:

To me it’s like . . .it’s like if we stay there for more days, one of the days I decideand the next day someone else decides.Sometimes you like to decide what to do and at other times it’s ok to go where theparents want to go.

If it’s, if we’re on holiday for four weeks then me, my kid brother, my mum andmy dad get to decide what we do for a week.

When we go on vacation it’s us (the kids) that decide the most.

Davis (1976) argues that decision-making within families is either consensual (i.e.families search for alternative solutions to a problem until they identify a decisionthat satisfies a minimum level of expectations of all family members) or accommoda-tive (i.e. as no alternative can satisfy all family members, the family will turn towardsbargaining, coercion and/or compromising strategies). As indicated by all four quotes,decisions pertaining to activities seem to be more accommodative than consensual innature. Hence, in most families, family members “take turns” deciding what to do;albeit the formalization of such “taking turns” differs profoundly across our informants.For example, in some families the heuristics qualify as “sometimes” whereas otherfamilies seem to apply stricter rules and allow various family members to decide fora day or even a week in a row. The fact that tweens are highly involved in (andhave a major say in relation to) choice of activities corresponds with extant literature(e.g. Gram, 2007; Thornton et al., 1997) – possibly due to the fact that tweens findactivities to be a very important part of the holidays.

Besides choice of activities, choices of food, beverages etc. are usually considered tobe a critical part of holidays (e.g. Quan & Wang, 2004). This was also the case in ourstudy. In regard to choice of restaurants, the following quotes (10-year-old Sander, 10-year-old Christina and 10-year-old Emma) illustrate this issue:

I: “Do you go out for dinner while on holiday?”S: “Yeah! [. . .] Sometimes I say that that place looks nice and then we simplydrive to that one”

I sometimes say “why don’t we go there?” because there are some, like, Danishrestaurants and it’s really nice when we go there.

Sometimes if I nag and ask if we shouldn’t go to a Chinese restaurant and if theydon’t want to do that then perhaps we’ll do it the next day.

As is the case for the vast majority of our informants, to Sander and Christina, diningout is an important part of the holiday experience. Furthermore, our informants arguethat they sometimes decide where the family goes for dinner. Hence, decisions pertain-ing to dining also seem to be accommodative. Lindstrøm (2003) argues that tweens are

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more impatient, demanding and independent than previous generations. However, asindicated by the quotes above, this is not a fair description of our informants. On thecontrary, our analysis suggests that tweens are highly aware of the fact that choicesthat are made during the vacation have to fulfill the needs, wants and desires of a (atleast somewhat) heterogeneous group of people. Henceforth, when Christina tellsthat she sometimes suggests a restaurant and that it is “really nice” when the familygoes there she does not resemble the tween that Lindstrøm (2003) describes; nordoes she resemble the passive child that extant vacation decision-making literaturedescribes. Instead, she seems to define herself as a member of the decision-makingunit (i.e. the family); a member on equal terms and a member that sometimes suggestswhere to go for dinner and who sometimes gets to decide where the family actuallygoes. In the same vein, although Emma acknowledges that she sometimes nags, shedoes not seem to get upset when nagging does not work. Instead, she acknowledgesthat her suggestion is no more but one of the alternatives that go into the family’sdining choice set.

In recent years, the term “pestering power” has become popular when focusing onchildren’s continued nagging and pestering in order to influence their parents’ con-sumption patterns and get the products and services they desire (Nicholls & Cullen,2004). Furthermore, more researchers (e.g. Gram, 2007; Gunter & Furnham, 1998;McNeal, 1999) suggest that pestering is the most direct and successful strategy usedby children. However, from our 89 informants’ perspective, they do not seem to“do” much pestering. On the contrary, in the few instances they admitted to use thisstrategy, it was always accompanied by a “sometimes” as well as more or less explicitconsiderations of this strategy being unethical. One reason, why our informants usepestering far less than one would expect them to, seems to be their awareness of thefamily being comprised of individuals with different needs, wants and desires, or, as9-year-old Sofie put it:

The others should also decide some things . . . It’s not only the kids that are to bespoiled, the grown ups should be so too.

In the same vein, 12-year-old Ludvig responded as follows when prompted as towhether he ever nags:

I might nag a bit, but I may give in. I think it is a big thing to go on holiday . . .You can’t always have it your way.

Our informants paint a picture of family vacation decision-making that differs pro-foundly from that painted by extant literature as they enact themselves as experienced,and empathic, members of the decision-making unit. A possible reason why the tweensin our study differ from extant studies might be the national (i.e. Danish) context of thestudy (an elaboration on this issue is offered in the conclusion).

Simon (2008) argues that it is quite easy to identify a tween, because a tween issimply a kid, who spends loads of time surfing the internet and who finds that (s)heis too cool to go on family holiday. Contradictive to Simon (2008), our informantsdid not find that they are “too cool” to go on a family holiday. For example, 12-

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year-old Hector and 11-year-old Nina related holidays to the concept of family time inthe following ways:

When I am on vacation I really prefer to spend time with my parents and siblings.You really want to spend time with your family when you are on holiday.

Hector and Nina prefer to spend time with their families and siblings when they areon vacation. Going on a family holiday appears to be “a big thing” and the infor-mants seem to appreciate this kind of “quality time” with their parents and siblings.Furthermore, our informants argue that they immerse themselves into the familyexperience when they are on vacation. For example, 12-year-old Ozge said thefollowing:

It’s like, I don’t call my friends [when on holiday] because at that point in time Idon’t want anything to do with my stressed life. Holidays are about being on yourown.

Albeit Ozge uses the words “being on your own”, ideographic analysis of this specificinterview revealed that what Ozge really refers to is that the family unit is on its own,i.e. away from friends etc. Traditionally, children are not perceived to be motivated bypush factors or wishes to escape from their everyday contexts (Johns & Gyimothy,2002). Nonetheless, tweens such as Ozge seem to resemble adult tourists insofar asholidays are perceived as a means to escape a hectic (or, in Ozge’s words, stressed)everyday life. As discussed elsewhere (Blichfeldt et al., 2010), in relation to travelmotivations the tweens given voice in our study do not resemble traditional conceptionsof children as tourists. In relation to in-situ decision-making processes, it seems that thetweens’ appreciation of holidays being “me, my siblings and parent(s) – alonetogether” is fundamental to such decision-making – and particularly in relation tochoices pertaining to activities and restaurants. As such, in-situ decision making ischaracterized more by the fact that it is “a big thing” to be on holiday “alone together”and to spend time together than by predispositions towards doing specific activitiesand/or visiting specific restaurants.

Discussion and Conclusion

A key finding is that the 89 Danish tweens, upon whom this paper draws, differ fromthe picture of children painted by extant theories on family vacation-decision makingbecause they are very active – and sometimes even proactive – as the families makedecisions in situ. They have thus little in common with conceptions of children as pre-dominantly influencers, who – in the end – submit to the decisions their parents make(Cullingford, 1995). One reason for the (pro)activeness of the tweens in our study couldbe that this paper focuses on decisions made in situ whereas extant theories emphasizedecisions made up front (e.g. decisions pertaining to whether to go on holiday; when togo; where to go; how much to spend in total; where to stay; and how to get there). Assuch, one might argue that decisions made up front are, generally, decisions incorpor-ating higher levels of risk and/or higher costs whereas decisions made in situ (e.g.

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choice of restaurant or activities) are decisions that are perceived as less risky (and lessexpensive) and thus, parents may be more willing to let children participate in in-situdecision-making processes. However, elsewhere (Blichfeldt et al., 2010) we accountedfor a series of findings that suggest that tweens are also (pro)active in relation todecisions taken before the families arrive at the holiday destination and thus, itseems that the lower levels of risk and cost that might characterize decisions made insitu are not the reason why these 89 tweens do not resemble tweens as accounted forin extant literature. A more plausible reason why these tweens differ from extant litera-ture might be the national context of the study as our 89 tweens do not resemble the“parentfobic” tweens that are typically presented in the literature (Simon, 2008).Most of the studies that present the “parentfobic, self-confident and pesteringtweens” draw upon American or Asian tweens and this might explain the differencesbetween our findings and extant knowledge. Accordingly, although tentative innature, our study indicates that significant cultural differences set tweens in differentparts of the world apart and as a consequence, it seems highly problematic to seetweens as “one” global segment. Moreover, the few studies that do draw on Danishtweens (predominantly Eriksson, 2007; Hatlehol et al., 2007; Rasmussen & Møller,2005) do not investigate vacation decision-making or vacation-related topics.Instead, these studies predominantly focus upon brand value and buying behaviourin relation to (mostly worldwide) brands. Hence we acknowledge the need forfurther studies – both in and beyond a Scandinavian context – in order to identifypotential cultural differences and thus to assess whether tweens qualify as a “globalsegment” or whether tweens across the globe differ to such an extent that it might bemeaningful to discriminate between – for example – Asian, American and Scandina-vian tweens?

As mentioned previously, a major weakness of the present study is that it onlygives voice to tweens and consequently, the study does not permit the comparisonof perceptions of in-situ decision-making processes across different members offamily units. Therefore, future national studies that include parents and siblingscould add tremendously to our knowledge on in-situ decision-making in families.Studies emphasizing behaviour and roles of both parents and siblings could behighly beneficial and especially the behaviour of younger siblings (i.e. 5–7-year-old – here referred to as younger children) and older siblings (13–15 years old –teenagers) are important to portray. Consequently, studies on families with all threegroups (younger children, tweens and teens) represented would be an ideal contextto further investigate, as both the power of children “working together” as well asthe internal relationship among the children when making decisions in-situ wouldbe highly valuable.

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