Advertising to Children – Concepts and Controversies

Citation

Lawlor, M. (2000), "Advertising to Children – Concepts and Controversies", European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 34 No. 11/12, pp. 1414-1417. https://doi.org/10.1108/ejm.2000.34.11_12.1414.1

The economic and social significance of the children’s market has long garnered the attention of a diverse group of interests, comprising marketers, educators, parents and policy‐makers. Researchers have recognised that children can act as both a mediating force or a trigger of household purchasing decisions as well as acting as customers and consumers in their own right. From a marketing perspective, an illuminating statistic from Datamonitor’s Worldwide Innovations Network indicated that, in the year to July 1999, 179 new products were launched in the UK marketplace which targeted the child market, while a relatively paltry 92 products were launched in the adult market.

This book, edited by M. Carole Macklin and Les Carlson, draws on the experience, research and reflections of a number of leading US advertisers and academics who share an interest in the subject of advertising to children. The editors specify in their introduction that the raison d’étre of the book is not to revisit previous research studies in the area but alternatively to present current research and also to offer future research directions for consideration. This approach is to be welcomed given that the field of advertising to children is arguably in a state of transition due to a host of new and emerging factors such as the increasing penetration of Internet and computer games among young consumers, the “age compression” phenomenon whereby children are growing up faster as well as the blurring of boundaries between advertising and other marketing communication tools such as sponsorship and product placement. Hence, this text provides academics and practitioners with a snapshot of these and other current issues in the area as well as offering a looking glass into future research considerations.

The book is divided into four sections which address children’s knowledge and understanding of advertising, societal impacts and concerns, cigarette and alcohol‐related advertising, and suggested directions for research. These four sections house 16 chapters and, due only to space constraints, the reviewer has singled out the following chapters for attention.

Deborah Roedder John’s Chapter 1 makes a crucial distinction between the various age groups and advertising consumption patterns. For example, a five‐year old child tends to regard advertising as a form of entertainment or information, while a child of seven or eight years of age may be aware of a persuasive element therein. The age aspect is a crucial consideration because it follows that children of different ages exhibit different reactions to advertising. Unfortunately, it is a distinction which is often lost in the broad marketing classifications of the “children’s market” or the “youth market”.

Chapter 2, written by Tamara F. Mangleburg and Terry Bristol, offers some interesting research findings from a study of children’s scepticism towards advertising based on interaction with parents, peers and television. The authors suggest that a greater exposure to television appeared to generate an increased scepticism of advertising and that, accordingly, television can play a positive part in the consumer socialisation process. This is in stark contrast to a previously held contention that television advertising has a negative effect on children. The authors’ research proposition is very timely given the ongoing debate over Sweden’s proposal to introduce an EU‐wide ban on television advertising to children aged 12 years and under because of the apparently negative effects on young children.

In Chapter 10, Laura A. Perracchio and David Luna presented the research findings arising from a study of young people’s attitudes towards smoking. They suggest that, by the relatively young age of 12 or 13, both smokers and non‐smokers have arrived at long‐term smoking decisions and no longer process anti‐smoking advertising messages. The teenagers sampled suggested that smoking prevention advertising should therefore target children at a much earlier age. Also, the research suggested that young smokers are more concerned with the short‐term effects of smoking (e.g. smell and effect on eyes) than the long‐term effects. This conclusion reflects the approach of advertising agency creative teams who have frequently used stronger and more intense fear appeals in anti‐smoking advertising because young smokers tend to screen out the long‐term effects of smoking while often having an exaggerated view of their longevity.

Chapter 14 is devoted to the Internet and children but it is disappointingly only four pages in length. Given that children in Europe and the USA are now including the Internet in their leisure and entertainment repertoire, and are also in many cases re‐evaluating their consumption of other alternatives such as television, one would have thought that this subject would have received a more thorough treatment. Children are now being exposed to Web sites in the classroom and/or in the home from an early age and the Internet’s interactive facility is arguably leading to a change from the individual acting as passive information receiver to active information processor.

The final chapter, written by Jeffrey J. Stoltman is a very useful guide for future research considerations in the area of advertising to children and should be of interest to active researchers in this field as well as to those who are new to the field. One observation is the lack of variation used in research to date on children and advertising. The author notes that research has tended to focus on experimental and survey methods and he advocates a quasi‐experimental approach, which will facilitate longitudinal research.

Another key research consideration is the requirement to address “misdirected” communications, i.e. those messages which are intended for an adult audience (e.g. alcohol‐sponsored sports programming) and which are received by a younger market. Stoltman poses the question as to whether young people process these messages differently because they are destined for an adult audience.

In conclusion, this book is a well‐structured text and offers a largely comprehensive overview of current issues in advertising to children. It will be particularly attractive to a researcher or educator who seeks a stimulating discussion of current US‐based research in the area and will also act as a useful reference book for educators and policy‐makers. While it is not a definitive text on the area, nor does it claim to be, this is a book which is both enjoyable and interesting to read and one which the reviewer would recommend to anybody seeking an exploration of the current debates in advertising to children.