Socio-cultural factors shaping the attitude of Generation Z and Generation Alpha youth towards quality

: Purpose : The primary objective of this paper is to analyze the socio-cultural factors that shape the attitudes of Generation Z and Generation Alpha towards quality in products and services. Methodology : The paper employs a multi-disciplinary approach, integrating insights from sociology, cultural studies, and consumer behavior. It examines the influence of media, family, and social groups on forming quality-conscious attitudes among young people. Results : The research reveals that media can both promote and undermine quality consciousness, depending on the nature and quality of the content. Family background, particularly parents’ education level, significantly influences young people’s awareness and understanding of quality. Social groups can reinforce or challenge family values and set high-quality standards if linked to shared hobbies, activities, or goals. Theoretical Contribution : This paper contributes to the literature on consumer behavior and quality consciousness by comprehensively analysing the socio-cultu ral factors influencing young people’s attitudes towards quality. It introduces the concept of quality-conscious attitudes as a three-component model encompassing knowledge about quality, feelings of desirability and legitimacy, and developed habits. Practical Implications : The findings of this research have practical implications for marketers, educators, and policy-makers. They highlight the need for quality education and awareness campaigns targeting young people and underscore the role of media, family, and social groups in shaping attitudes towards quality.


Introduction
Due to the dynamically changing demands of customers, the increasing awareness of the rational use of natural goods and energy resources, as well as the growing competition in almost all branches of the economy, the concept of quality is growing in popularity and importance -also for the ‹ 300 › based environmental management system.At the same time, it should be noted that the ISO 9001 quality management system usually provides the foundation for them.
Particular emphasis on shaping a pro-quality attitude should be directed at people from the Z and Alpha generations, i.e., current participants of the education system and, in the case of the first group, also partly participants of the labor market.People whose attitudes towards various phenomena and objects are intensively shaped both at school and at their first job.

Media participation in shaping the pro-quality attitude of young people
Nowadays, the media plays a critical task in shaping attitudes, including those of young people (Pop et al., 2020;Kneafsey & Regan, 2020;Hoewe & Peacock, 2020;El-Far Cardo et al., 2021).Concerning quality, their role should be in two areas: promoting quality in society and educating about it.
In terms of the promotion of quality, R. R. Dorel (2008) points to, among other things, broadcasting advertisements that sensitize the public to the issue of quality seen in all its complexity, promoting a special label awarded to quality products, or emphasizing the importance and need for widespread public involvement.An essential place in the discussion on this topic is the issue of advertising, discussed in more detail later in the work, which, due to its nature, has a substantial impact on consumer decisions.
While this role is based on activities that are rather subtle and allusive, often integrated into a standard message, activities aimed at fulfilling the second role are already associated with a message directly aimed at promoting quality knowledge, thus referring to the educational role of the media (Karasneh et al., 2021).As J. Izdebska (2001) points out, television can assist parents in the process of raising a child in as many as three different ways: 1) by performing certain educational functions in the child's life: cognitive, entertainment and recreation, 2) by initiating parenting knowledge and supporting parenting activities undertaken by parents, 3) by inspiring parents to do specific educational work with their children and to use the knowledge gained in specific educational activities.However, this is still only an example of the advantages of television related to upbringing.And although they apply to children on an appropriate scale, they also translate to other age groups.
The educational role of the media in the area of quality should refer to imparting knowledge to their audiences on a variety of quality-related topics, such as quality assurance systems operating in the economy, quality awards established around the world or quality tools that can be used in both professional and personal life (Bamford & Greatbanks, 2005).This role is all the more difficult to accomplish because it involves issues that, like knowledge in any area, must be conveyed skillfully to arouse interest rather than discouragement in the recipient.In the history of quality development efforts, there are well-known cases of television joining in its promotion -the most famous example in the world is the broadcast of the program "If Japan Can... Why Can't We?" in the US, which the NBC station aired on June 24, 1980, as part of its "NBC White Paper" series.It showcased quality improvement practices in Japan.The program caused a flurry of interest in quality issues in the US and started a quality revolution in that country.However, this is not an entirely isolated case.However, it is not easy to compare the final reach and impact of the two.A similar program -"The Good Work Club" -aired on Polish television in the second half of the 20th century.Its authors aimed to "widely popularize modern quality control methods through lectures from relevant specialists" (Chojecki, 1974).
Creating a message aimed at persuading audiences to adopt a pro-quality attitude should also be done effectively, considering quality criteria and current trends.Executed without careful thought and considering these factors -and therefore likely to be perceived as a low-quality message in itselfit can be counterproductive (Ali, 2021).A similar situation can occur when attempting to copy a message produced in another language without correctly translating it into the target language or adapting it to the culture of the audience (Guerrout & Berrekbia, 2023).This element, moreover, is directly related to the issue of quality.Indeed, it is precise because of the cultural conditioning of society and the organization's culture, which has been shaped over many years, that attempts to ‹ 301 › unthinkingly copy the culture of Toyota (Liker & Convis, 2021) -for many companies, a role model for their approach to quality and the concept of Lean Management -fail.
The relationship of forming a pro-quality attitude through advertising appears to be an even more problematic issue.According to its definition, advertising is "the business of trying to persuade people to buy products or services" (Cambridge English Dictionary, 2023).Therefore, it would be somewhat naïve to expect an advertiser to promote only high-quality products or to encourage a consumer to choose higher-quality products if it means directing him or her to buy a competing good.This boils down to a situation in which the advertising message can be very differently oriented to the issue of quality -either positively, neutrally, or negatively, misleading the customer or, for their gain, deliberately encouraging them to buy low-quality products.
Buying space for advertising will cease to make sense when it is ineffective.In this regard, much depends on the customers themselves.Conscious consumers, guided primarily by quality by their attitude, will require manufacturers to pay special attention precisely to high quality.In turn, manufacturers aware of this will strive to deliver products of the right quality and at the agreed time (Horváth & Szabó, 2019).At the same time, this will be directly reflected in advertising the products offered.This is a matter of such importance that the advertising market is not only growing and finding more niches and expansion opportunities but is also forecast to continue its dynamic growth in the coming years (Table 1) (Dentsu, 2023).It is also worth noting that despite the growing importance of the digital world and the decline in advertising expenditures in print media, this channel should not be overlooked when conducting a broad-quality communication campaign.This is primarily due to the trust that this form of advertising enjoys.As indicated by the results of surveys, it is trusted by as many as 82% of consumers when making purchasing decisions (Linemark, 2023), and, contrary to popular opinion, print media are also very popular among young people -in the group of people under the age of 25, 94% of people read them (Zimmer Communications, 2020), which is particularly relevant from the point of view of the subject of this article.Given the issue of the influence of the family on young people raised later in the paper, it is worth noting that as many as 73% of all adults prefer to read print sources (Zimmer Communications, 2020).
When considering the issue of media, however, it would be an unacceptable mistake to overlook the medium that is the youngest but growing by far the fastest, i.e. the Internet -a medium that is at once an indispensable element for young people to both entertain themselves and learn and derive knowledge about the world (Szymkowiak et al., 2021), and for those in Generation Z even a world in which they function on a par with the real world (Dolot, 2018).The potential of the Internet as an advertising medium is constantly and dynamically growing.As in the case of television, it is a fertile ground for both pro-quality messages and the spread of low-quality ones.Importantly, it is impossible not to emphasize the role of the Internet in enhancing the quality of many spheres of life.For example -easy and widespread access to numerous professional sources of knowledge transfers significantly to the quality of academic papers, access to online training increases the quality of the duties performed by employees, and access to expert advice and instruction transfers to the quality of everyday life.Unfortunately, a characteristic feature of the Internet is also the popularization of mediocrity.In addition to the previously mentioned problems with advertisements promoting low-quality products (which, moreover, on the Internet are not subject to as many restrictions and controls as in the case of ‹ 302 › other media), in this medium, one can encounter numerous other phenomena having a negative impact on the spread of pro-quality culture.One of the most blatant examples of this is the prevalent disregard of basic spelling rules by Internet users, for example, in the placement of punctuation marks, the use of capital letters, or the formation of sentences (Mayuuf & Al-Ghizzy, 2022).
Meanwhile, it should be stated that even the absence of a single comma can completely change the meaning of a statement.Equally common is the making of spelling mistakes, made and left in the text even despite the dictionary present in word processors and web browsers, continuously marking the resulting errors.Attaching importance to correct syntax is also not supported by the widespread use of forums and instant messaging via smartphones -not only prone to making mistakes more easily when writing but also using word prompts, often inappropriate in a given context.The impact of this phenomenon on Internet users ignoring spelling rules seems worthy of closer examination.However, this is certainly not the only reason.No less important is the sheer prevalence of such sloppiness and the general acquiescence to it by other Internet users, as well as their relative anonymity and associated lack of concern about identification and ridicule.
Looking at the necessity of a comprehensive impact on attitude, at least controversial is the approach encountered in the scientific space, followed by a kind of acquiescence to this kind of action, according to which the language used on the Internet is not written language, but "it might be classified as a special variety of language interfacing between spoken and written language" (Sun, 2019).While it is essential to keep in mind the characteristics of online communication, such as the use of numerous abbreviations or emoticons, the acquiescence to skip spelling and grammar rules -as an action of convenience and a shortcut -can easily be directly transferred to everyday life offline as well.And although moderators of some online forums require their users to spell correctly, spelling and grammatical errors, as Bylieva et al. (2019) note, are a typical feature of online communication.
From the perspective of pro-quality impact, the issue of whisper marketing deserves attention.Although in itself, as a phenomenon involving the free, spontaneous expression of opinions about a specific product, it can be considered a pro-quality activity, allowing to gain objective information about the product and save time (Gildin, 2002), whisper marketing is also used increasingly as a marketing tool, in addition to being practical (Rashmi & Tripathi, 2020;Permata & Hoev, 2023), and sometimes used as a scam (He et al., 2021;Lu, 2023).The effects of its use are usually interspersed with genuine reviews; however, in reality, it is camouflaged advertising of a specific product or discouraging the purchase of a competing product.They appear in in-store reviews, social media, or discussion forums, including industry forums, where users expect to find professional and objective opinions or help.Unlike whisper marketing, as a marketing tool, it can intentionally mislead audiences by providing false information about a product's quality, functionality or popularity.The issue is further complicated by the manipulation of displayed content by its providers so that the recipient may encounter, for example, personalized ads for specific products displayed between the statements of other real users or the display of sponsored products among reviews of similar products (Chen & Yuan, 2020).When considering the issue of information flow and a medium such as the Internet, attention should also be paid to the much faster than traditional -and therefore fraught with fartherreaching consequences -spreading of rumors (Akora & Ali, 2020), as opposed to intentional whisper marketing involving the dissemination of sometimes untrue information in an unintentional manner.
Influencers are currently leading the way in affecting young people's consumer decisions.And while their influence on reality is very serious and undeniable (Goanta & Ranchordás, 2020), they also lack sufficient regulation of their work.From the point of view of the problem addressed in this article, it is necessary, for example, to inform audiences about the reason for their comments on a particular product or service.While there are known cases of a fair assessment of quality and a real attempt to influence informed consumer decisions (Polish Radio, 2023), the flattering reviews of a large number of them are due to the fact of receiving a given product or the opportunity to use a given service, for free.The need for appropriate regulation is all the more important because influencers are already seen as another marketing tool (Ioanid & Militaru, 2015).
Another issue, but no less important, is the substantive content of online resources.The cost of placing new content on the Internet, incomparably lower than such costs in other media, significantly affects the amount of information.Unfortunately, this does not directly translate into their quality, as the authors of numerous publications pointed out, mainly in the medical areas (Kanner et al., 2023;Martinez et al., 2023;Fan et al., 2023).

ISSN 2520-2979
Journal of Sustainable Development of Transport and Logistics,8(2), 2023 ‹ 303 › One of the main characteristics of the Internet is the ability of any interested party to influence its content.Regardless of whether a person is a specialist in a particular area or merely considers and claims to be one, he or she can easily create his or her own website, posting specialized advice and information of dubious quality -useless or even deceitful information.While disinformation is not socially new, thanks to the Internet, its importance is magnified by its greater accessibility and ability to spread quickly (Price et al., 2021).And it is with this medium that the fake news that has been gaining strength in recent years (Molina et al., 2021) is primarily associated with direct implications for issues in various areas of individual and societal life, such as health (Daraz et al., 2019;Freeman et al., 2020), politics (Sindermann et al., 2020) or national security (Khaldarova & Pantti, 2018).This, in turn, can affect reduced trust in online content (Tandoc, 2019), leading to even more difficulty in reaching interested parties with reliable information and negating fake news.
It would be a mistake to overlook the significant advantages of the Internet in the area of proquality impact.One of the most important of these is the ability to publicly rate and comment on individual products and vendors on its pages.This significantly impacts improving the quality of the products offered and raising awareness of the essence of quality -both among consumers and manufacturers and sellers.Representatives of the first group, not guided exclusively by price, thus have the opportunity to become thoroughly familiar not only with the advertising description of the product prepared by the supplier but also with the opinions of its users.This forces the following two groups to pay attention to meeting appropriate quality requirements in customer service and products offered.After all, the hallmark of a free and competitive market is the difficulty of gaining a customer and the ease of losing one once a reasonable opinion is lost.Meanwhile, customer opinions significantly impact purchasing decisions (Sudirjo et al., 2023).
Importantly, emotions also often come to the fore in online reviews.Using the Internet and individual sales sites at any time of the day also makes it possible to issue an opinion immediately after the situation that led to the customer's agitation.Through this, he can "throw off his anger", formulating his comment in a way that he would not have been able to do after thinking about it for a long time.The situation can also be reversed and involve posting a flattering comment after positive emotions about the purchased product have occurred, even before it has been fully tested and verified.Emotionally charged reviews, meanwhile, have a positive impact on the perceived quality of the product, according to research by Wang et al. (2019).

The influence of the family home on the development of a pro-quality attitude
As mentioned earlier, from the point of view of influencing young people's attitude toward quality, family and peers (social groups) should also be considered as equally important factors as the media.This is confirmed, among other things, by the results of research related to consumer behavior, conducted by I. Andersone and E. Gaile-Sarkane (2010), according to which family (60%) and colleagues and friends (30%) are the most influential when buying various products.
The family is the basic cell of social life (Nosek-Kozłowska, 2020).Although it is supplemented in subsequent stages of a person's life by other groups and institutions, including but not limited to the school, from the very birth of the child, it contributes through intentional care and nurturing interactions and actions resulting from interactions between family members and personal role models, to the child's physical, mental, moral, spiritual, religious and social development (Mółka, 2010).In her article, F. Walsh (2016)  Considering the influence of trust on the proper formation of attitudes, the family should play a major role in forming pro-quality attitudes of children and young people.Significant in the family is the acquisition of attitudes from others, carried out through empathy, imitation, modeling and identification.Significantly, much depends on the attitude toward the quality of older family members, including parents and grandparents, with whom children spend the most time and on whom they model the most in their behavior and attitudes.The family strongly influences the transmission of values to young people, and these values can be both good and bad (Mingfeng, 2018).Thus, due to the frequent low-quality culture and habituation to mediocrity, the family can often act the opposite of what it should.Accustomed to mediocrity, members of students' families may even unknowingly form an attitude of indifference or even negativity toward quality in young people (Farid & Shaukat, 2022).
The education of parents is also not insignificant (Okwara, 2022).As noted by M. E. H. Creusen (2010), attaching importance to quality increases as the level of education increases.A similar relationship was pointed out by A. Kusinskaya ( 2005), based on the example of consumers from young people's families.According to the data she presented, the level of education influences the rationale for purchasing decisions -as the level of education increases, quality, health features and modernity, among other things, become more critical when making consumer decisions, and less important is the price of the product and habitual use.At the same time, this confirms the importance of the universal spread of a pro-quality culture in society.Unlike at the secondary education stage, where pro-quality education is almost completely ignored, it is gaining wider recognition at the higher education level, and its popularity is growing.The result is university graduates who are not only quality-conscious but can also serve as correct models for young people's attitudes toward quality.
On the other hand, however, it is essential to remember those without a university education.Unlike the aforementioned group, most have not had the opportunity to participate in quality-related classes or other activities that shape a pro-quality attitude.Thus, they constitute a group of people who are less quality-conscious when making consumer decisions and, at the same time, are bad role models in terms of quality attitude for young people.
A common current phenomenon is shifting responsibility for raising a child to the school (Mississippi Center for Public Policy).The problem in such a situation is not only the lack of cooperation and joint action for educational and upbringing success but even the lack of support for the actions taken by the school and the values it communicates.This, in turn, can result in commenting on a given situation in the presence of the child in a critical manner, undermining the authority of the school and the teacher, and giving (even unconsciously) permission to the child to ignore school duties.

The influence of social groups on the formation of pro-quality attitude
Social groups influence a person's attitude, especially in adolescence.A social group, following F. Znaniecki (2001), can be called "any association of people, which in the consciousness of these people themselves constitutes a kind of separate entity, that is, according to terminology taken from the pattern of other sciences, a certain isolated system".At the same time, the author of the definition stipulates that this association can be more or less numerous, with the smallest number of its members being three.Although a social group can already be spoken of in a family context (Kane, 2019), the term is most often used in a larger group, often of unrelated people but connected by other relationships.
As a rule, the group's most significant influence is seen in children and adolescents.D. Ekiert-Grabowska (1982) even states: "The individual lives the life of the group.What the peer group decides is the law for the child.His clothing, hairstyle, language, and interests are under the authority and direction of the group.He or she will do almost anything to gain recognition in the group".The first bright tendencies of group life are already manifested in six-year-old children.Instead of their parents, other older people or children younger than themselves, such children begin to prefer their peers as companions for playing together.Over the next four years, until the age of ten, the peer group is bound together by a relatively loose bond.At this age, however, the absolute need to belong to a group already begins, along with the need to be accepted and recognized by peers (Lobocki, 1999).This is indicated by C. Nipedal et al. (2010), with their research involving children between the ages of seven and ten.According to their findings, already children of this age, as a result of certain norms of the group, may even increase their readiness to be aggressive towards other children.As adolescents grow up, the importance of the peer group increases (Kokocinski, 2011).
As he leaves the dominant influence of the family, the young person intensifies his contact with the peer group, which is a kind of bridge between the family and life in it as a ward and life in adult society.The peer group is formed by people of similar age and social status who share common interests (Griffiths, 2012).One of the characteristics of young people -which is also their natural right -is that they feel less responsible than adults.When considering the formation of a pro-quality attitude, this characteristic seems to be one of the key ones -unlike adults, young people can ignore the topic of quality already in their subconscious, not feeling the responsibility of having to follow it, let alone pass it on as a value to others in their peer group.On the contrary, it is much more characteristic of this group (although, of course, not for every young person) to rebel or reject family values and conflict with parents, among other things (Zhang & Li, 2022).The issue, then, is not opposition to quality per se (since the group not only usually knows little about the issue but also does not necessarily oppose it as such) but to the essential elements whose consideration translates to some extent into the culture of quality presented by the individual.While parents are not always the best role models for quality, even isolated issues indicative of any recognition of quality by adults can be ignored by young people in rebellion to the values and behavioral patterns they convey.It is also difficult to imagine a situation where quality becomes a tribute topic for the group.While this would undoubtedly be an edifying and valuable phenomenon, it would be more akin to a science club, even possessing some characteristics of Japanese quality circles, which can hardly be demanded of young people in their free time.
However, there are also positive cases in the group of young people, in which they place high demands on the quality of their activities.Such a situation can be spoken of, for example, in the case of issues that are particularly important to them: -those that they treat as their hobbies, such as a particular sport, modeling, programming or photography (Back et al., 2022), -those related to working for a common cause, such as environmental protection or sustainable development (Thompson et al., 2022), -related to a common goal (Clark et al., 2019).Although a young person may ignore the importance of quality daily, he may approach activities related to the areas he is occupied with quite differently -entirely devoted to them, he performs related activities meticulously.When making necessary purchases for it, the price is usually pushed to the background while reinforcing the importance of the products' quality, i.e. durability, functionality, careful quality, etc.In these cases, the young person may even look unfavorably upon those who do not attach sufficient importance to the activities involved while convincing their peers to be passionate about their passion and take it just as seriously.This seems to coincide with the conclusions presented by Do et al. (2020), according to which adolescents are more attuned to the attitudes of their peers regarding constructive rather than non-constructive behavior.Cases of peer tutoring (Worker et al., 2019;Slawinska, 2015) involve teaching young people by non-teachers: their peers or only slightly older than them are also encountered among young people -but usually with supportive adult participation.

Conclusions
The attitude of individuals toward the issue of quality is determined by a number of factors, which include the influence of school, the media, family, and social groups, among others.Due to the varying nature of the influence of each of these, the non-uniform regulations found around the world, or, finally, the varying susceptibility of the individual to influence, it seems complicated to create a universal way of forming a pro-quality attitude in a young person.
It is essential to note the intertwining of these factors.For example, the impact of the school is significantly influenced by mutually influential students.The strength of the latter's influence can be moderated in specific ways by the parents who take care of them, while the media message significantly impacts how a student behaves at school, participates in the peer group and coexists in the family.
The impact of different sources of influence varies in terms of the strength of the message and its type.Given the low awareness of the essence of the quality issue in most societies, it would be naive to expect only a positive impact.Indeed, as indicated above, the opposite is often the case.It is also worth noting at this point the fact that the proper formation of young people's attitude towards quality is not often seen even in the educational system (Spychalski, 2023), which, as individual examples show, seems to be the best platform for this (Spychalski, 2014).
Of all the sources of influence, the so-called screen triad (Internet, television and telephone) is currently gaining strength, which, as B. Krupa (2014), is replacing direct cognition, experience and intellectual effort in gaining knowledge about the world.From the point of view of the problem addressed in this article, this is all the more important because this area should be considered not only the most influential but also the least regulated and extremely difficult to regulate.Therefore, it can be a source of false information and opinions, influencing young people not pro-quality but the opposite.
In order to outweigh these disadvantages, it seems reasonable and urgent to make societies aware of the advantages of a correct approach to quality at various levels.This is the case with the formation of pro-environmental attitudes, which is realized by increasingly far-reaching legal regulations, including this issue in the education system, sensitizing and educating societies through the media, or numerous grassroots initiatives.Given the strong connection cited earlier between the issue of pro-quality attitudes and pro-environmental attitudes and sustainable development, shaping the former can be much easier and more effective if pro-environmental messages also focus on promoting higher-quality products as less harmful to the environment.Regardless, it seems advisable to use the media to shape pro-quality attitudes directly, for example, by promoting nationwide proquality programs that can, in their expression, both sensitize the public to the issue of quality and educate about it.For obvious reasons, however, this would be feasible only after establishing such a program, and given the comprehensive nature of this solution, it seems necessary to include government institutions in this activity or even to establish and coordinate it.However, activities carried out in an incompetent and ineffective manner, failing to reach the young people of Generation Z and Generation Alpha, can be counterproductive.The program may become a source of ridicule, and any identification with it may be the cause of ostracization by peers.This is all the more so because one can find evidence that young people are not always enthusiastic about the pro-quality approach (Moisă, 2010;Chadwick & Piartrini, 2019).

Table 1 : Ad spend per media in 2022-2026 2022 2023* 2024* 2025* 2026* Total advertising spends ($B)
highlights as many as nine key processes that translate into increased family resilience, grouped into three dimensions of family functioning.Collaborative problem solving This list, supplemented by thirty-one processes in the cited article, shows many areas of family influence on the individual.