• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, August 31, 2007

Add online shopping to kids’ lists of household chores.  As a result of parents’ busy schedules and their offspring’s tech-savvy, kids are acting as “cyber-assistants,” placing online orders for themselves and their families. More than three-quarters of children ages 8 to 14 have completed online transactions, with 56 percent saying they do Web shopping chores to help their moms, according to a recent study by youth market research firm Stars for Kidz.

“It is increasingly apparent that the new marketing equation is mom plus child equals one consumer entity,” says Adele Schwartz, research director at Stars for Kidz. Since they can’t use cash and are too young to have credit cards, older children in the age group studied typically use gift cards or their parents’ credit cards to make online purchases.

When it comes to shopping for Mom, kids are looking at everything from cars to doctors to ordering food and buying gifts. Because of their influence on family purchases via the Web, Schwartz says building brand loyalty among children is something marketers should be rethinking. “It pays for someone to give as much thought to how kids might approach a Web site as adults,” she says. After all, those young fingers will be flexing their own plastic soon enough.