http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/2763/
http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1471-2458-14-1274.pdf
http://www.mastersinhealthcare.com/blog/2011/10-junk-food-marketing-tricks-that-target-your-kids/
Little consumers have big impact on food packaging
By Jenni Spinner, 09-Dec-2013
http://www.bakeryandsnacks.com/Technology/Packaging-Packing-Materials-Containers/Little-consumers-have-big-impact-on-food-packaging
"Effective packaging for kids must present the proper character, tone and story via visual messaging, to deliver on what we call the 5 E's: to engage, emote, entice, enhance and endure," he said. (Bill Goodwin)
McDonald's has a hold on preschoolers' taste buds
By Krista Conger, Stanford Report, August 8, 2007
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2007/august8/med-fastfood-080807.html
Asked to sample two identical foods from the fast-food giant McDonald's, children preferred the taste of the version branded with the restaurant's familiar "Golden Arches" to one extracted from unmarked paper packaging, say researchers at the School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital.
The study shows that even young children are swayed by brand preferences. The results are likely to fuel more debate over a growing movement to restrict marketing to kids under 8 years old.
The degree of preference expressed by the children correlated with the number of television sets they had in their homes and the frequency with which they ate at McDonald's.
Numerous studies have shown that young children are unable to understand that advertising, product placement and co-branding with popular toys are meant to get them to choose one product over another. For them, "truth in advertising" has a very literal meaning.
"It's really an unfair marketplace out there for young children," said Robinson, who is also a member of the Stanford Prevention Research Center. "It's very clear they cannot understand the persuasive nature of advertising."
The researchers studied the taste preferences of 63 children between the ages of 3 and 5 who were enrolled in six Head Start centers in San Mateo County.
Each food sample was divided into two identical portions, one placed in a McDonald's wrapper or in a McDonald's bag, and the other in similar wrapping without the McDonald's logo. The children were randomly asked to taste first one and then the other of the five identical, differently packaged, pairs of food samples and indicate whether they tasted the same or which they thought tasted better. With four out of the five foods—chicken nuggets, fries, carrots and milk—significantly more children pegged the McDonald's product as tastier, despite the fact that the foods were exactly the same
"The branding effect is very strong, even by only 3 to 5 years of age," said Robinson.
He and his colleagues also asked the children's parents to complete a questionnaire that asked, among other things, how many TVs they had in their house, how often they ate at McDonald's and whether they had any toys from McDonald's. The kids had an average of 2.4 televisions in their homes, and more than half the kids had a TV in their bedrooms. About one-third of the children ate at McDonald's more than once a week, and more than three-quarters had McDonald's toys at home.
"We found that kids with more TVs in their homes and those who eat at McDonald's more frequently were even more likely to prefer the food in the McDonald's wrapper," said Robinson. "This is a company that knows what they're doing. Nobody else spends as much to advertise their fast-food products to children." McDonald's is estimated to spend more than $1 billion dollars per year on U.S. advertising.
Robinson was quick to point out that marketing is more than just television advertisements, and that it's not restricted to McDonald's. An older sibling's co-branded toy or a parent's hankering for an Ultimate Double Whopper can amount to an implicit nod of approval in the eyes of an impressionable toddler. And although the parents hold the keys to the car that goes to the fast-food restaurant, they're not entirely to blame.
"Parents don't choose for their children to be exposed to this type of marketing," he said. "Parents have a very difficult job. It may seem easier to give in to their child's plea to go to McDonald's than to give in to the many other hundreds of requests they get during a day."
The growing concern is not falling on deaf ears. Last December, possibly in response to threatened regulations and lawsuits, McDonald's and nine other top food companies announced the Children's Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative. Participants agree to devote at least half their advertising messages to promoting healthier choices for children.
Eyes in the Aisles: Why Is Cap’n Crunch Looking Down at My Child?
Brian Wansink, John S. Dyson
http://eab.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/03/27/0013916514528793.abstract
Abstract
To what extent do cereal spokes-characters make eye contact with children versus adults, and does their eye contact influence choice? In study 1, the shelf placement and eye positioning of 86 cereal spokes-characters were evaluated in 10 grocery stores in the Eastern United States. We calculated the average height of cereal boxes on the shelf for adult- versus children-oriented cereals (48 in. vs. 23 in.) and the inflection angle of spokes-characters’ gaze (0.4° vs. −9.6°). We found that cereal characters on child- (adult-) oriented cereals make incidental eye contact at children’s (adults’) eye level. In Study 2, we showed that eye contact with cereal spokes-characters increased feelings of trust and connection to the brand, as well as choice of the brand over competitors. Currently, many of the cereals targeted toward children are of the heavily sugared, less healthy variety. One potential application of this finding would be to use eye contact with spokes-characters to promote healthy choices and healthier food consumption.
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Refunds issued: Kids' vitamins aren't as healthy as advertised
By Todd Sperry, CNN, 2012
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/08/14/health/childrens-vitamins-refund/
The marketer of a popular children's vitamin is refunding nearly $2.1 million to customers after acknowledging its pills contained only a fraction of a nutritional substance the packaging claimed.
The vitamins' packaging featured Disney princesses, Winnie the Pooh, Nemo and Spider-Man. ManufacturerNBTY and two of its subsidiaries, Rexall Sundown and NatureSmart, claimed in product advertising and on packaging that the vitamins contained a dose of DHA that would satisfy 100% of a child's daily requirement.
But in some cases the vitamins contained only minuscule amounts of DHA, the Federal Trade Commission said.
Kids pick healthy food with attractive packaging
2015
http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/healthy-living/news/a25653/kids-pick-healthy-food-with-attractive-packaging/
While it's common for parents to encourage their children to eat healthily, a new study has revealed that primary school-aged children will reach for healthy food on their own accord, if it comes in attractive packaging.
Working in cooperation with the Research Institute for Child Nutrition in Dortmund, a team of scientists at the University of Bonn, Germany, set out to investigate the relationship between marketing techniques and children's eagerness to choose healthy foods.
For the study, they recruited 179 children from primary schools in Dortmund, aged between eight and ten.
The children were asked to choose between three identical yoghurt, fruit and cereal snacks - but the only thing that differed was the packaging designs. The first packaging design was plain, the second displayed additional health information, and the third packaging design displayed cartoon characters and an attractive product name.
To determine the participants' motivation to choose a particular snack, the researchers used a device that measured hand grip strength. This allowed them to discover the strength with which the children squeezed their hand in order to receive their desired muesli snack.
It was found that the participants' motivation was greatest for the snack with the cartoon character packaging design. The plain packaging and the packaging detailing health information were less favoured by the children.
Mathilde Kersting, lead researcher of the study, said: 'Attractively designed food packaging can tempt children to pick unhealthy foods.
'However, marketing effects of this type can also be used to promote healthy food products to children.'
The next step in the research is to determine how the appeal of school milk or wholegrain sandwiches can be increased.
The study has been published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.
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Advertising to Children
by M. Carole Macklin and Les Carlson
1999 Sage Publications, California
[Through the Eyes of a Child: Children’s Knowledge and Understanding of Advertising – Deborah Roedder John]
pg 7
Although children can discriminate commercials from programs by the time they are five years old, as noted earlier, it takes a few more years before children expand their knowledge base to include an understanding of advertising’s persuasive intent. Prior to this, young children tend to view advertising as a form of entertainment (e.g., “commercials are funny”) or as a form of unbiased information (e.g., “commercials tell you about things you can buy”). Quite abruptly, around the age of 7 or 8 years, children begin to see the persuasive intent of commercials, coming to terms with the fact that advertisers are “trying to get people to buy something.”
Pg 10
Ward et al. (1977) (Children’s Reactions to Commercials – Journal of Advertising Research) report that the percentage of kindergartners, third graders, and sixth graders believing that advertising never or only sometimes tells the truth increases from 50% to 88% to 97%, respectively.
Bever et al. (1975)(Young Viewers’ Troubling Response to TV Ads – Harvard Business Review) report that most of the seven- to 10-year-olds in their study could not discriminate truthful from misleading advertising and admitted to their difficulties in evaluating advertising: “ ‘[Advertisers] can fake well,’ they said, and ‘you don’t really know what’s true until you’ve tried the product’"
Pg 14
Advertising knowledge of a more specific form, involving an understanding of what tactics and appeals are used by advertisers and why they are used, emerges much later in the developmental sequence as children approach early adolescence (11 to 14 years of age) (Boush, Friestad, and Rose 1994; Paget, Kritt, and Bergemann 1984). (Adolescent Skepticism Toward TV Advertising and Knowledge of Advertiser Tactics – Journal of Consumer Research)
Pg 19
Although eight- to 12-year-olds have a good deal of general knowledge about advertising, their ability to retrieve and use whatever knowledge they have acquired is still developing as cued processors.
[Youth, Advertising and Symbolic Meaning – Cindy Dell Clark]
pg 79
From Barbie’s to McDonald’s to Cheetos, products that succeed with children over time are rich reservoirs of meaning: that is, the product itself and its advertising symbols are meaningful and valued.
Pg 80
Children, from a very young age, are adept at imputing symbolic meanings. Even as babies, for example, tots use a possession such as a stuffed bear or blanket as a “transitional object” that comforts them in the absence of their mother (Winnicott 1971). The metaphorical comprehension involved in symbolism, experimental research shows, is an early emergent mental process (Goswami 1992; Marks, Hammeal, and Bornstein 1987; Winner 1988). Symbols encompass meaning at both the affective and the cognitive levels for children, as demonstrated by pretend play – a domain studied as a cognitive structure (e.g., Rubin, Fein, and Vandenberg 1983) and yet also studied and utilized for feeling-based therapy (e.g., Clark and Miller 1997; O’Connor 1991). Through the representative symbolism of play, children indirectly “practice” social and cultural behaviours (through toys and/or with companions) (Bretherton 1984; Haight and Miller 1993; Roopnarine, Johnson, and Hooper 1994). The domain of symbols, in children’s lives, traverses many sociocultural meanings as well a personal meanings, both affective and cognitive.
In practice, children are prone to symbolic transformation of everything from food (alphabet soup as a spelling toy, pancake syrup as an art material, etc.) to bed sheets (for which the pictured characters may serve as nighttime “companions”) to toys meant for symbolic play. A brand’s meaning to children is revealed by understanding how it is used, symbolically, in their lives.
Pg 81
Poetic or symbolic devices hold potential for adept multivocal communication. As already stated, children understand expressive symbolism, metaphor, and narrative from an early age and are able to relate these elements to a brand’s deep symbolic meaning.
Pg 82
Often, successful children’s advertising uses a symbol, such as a character that literally personifies the brand’s symbolic meaning, through appearance and behaviour. Such advertising demonstrates the effectiveness of both narrative and metaphor as means to convey higher order constructs through nonverbal means (Zaltman and Higie 1993) among youth.
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Consumer Kids
by Ed Mayo & Agnes Nairn
2009, Constable, London
pg xiii
Sarah also has a secret. Because she's a busy little girl with lots of contacts in lots of places, she has been recruited through a children's chat room site to work as a sales agent for the Barbie girls MP3 player but she must be sure that it accompanies her wherever she goes: to school, to gym, to Brownies, to training sessions, to dance - everywhere.
pg xiv
Well, in 2007, 7 to 11-year-old girls up and down the UK were recruited by Dubit on behalf of Mattel to market the Barbie Girl MP3 player, while primary school boys of the same age were signed up to sell their Hot Wheel brand.
pg xv
[...] all children are encouraged to want, to buy, to drink, to snack, to collect, to grow up fast and get spending.
This world of consumer kids is not just about shopping and advertising, but about playgrounds, streets, bedrooms, the friendships children make and the new technologies they embrace.
pg xvii
To be sure, there are upsides. Life as a consumer is a story of fun for kids, with all of the pleasures and joys that unfold from their engagement with film, foods, toys gadgets and games. By and large, children embrace these as opportunities, although as we shall see, they are not uncritical.
[...] These are businesses that are making calculated choices to target children at a younger and younger age. They play on their dreams and exploit their vulnerabilities. At the same time, they simultaneously re-sell nostalgic images of youth back to adults in a society that doesn't really want to grow up and can stay young by buying for its children.
The inner world of children is shaped by an outside world which promises happiness, freedom and fulfilment. These three wishes come not from a magic lamp but from being a consumer.
pg 12
The 'need for speed' captures perfectly the mindset of today's consumer kids. There is no question in our minds that, by and large, children enjoy and embrace consumer life as a thrill and a pleasure.
Children as young as 8-10 years old are often already keen consumer kids. As one girl, Becky, 10, from Oswestry put it with clear logic, 'the things in the shops need buying!'
pg 15
An increasing number of studies show that children have an astonishingly strong influence over parents' decisions in major household purchases such as cars, holidays, leisure and even loans.
Today, marketing to children is the way to sell products for parents.
pg 17
Children inhabit a seamless, branded world where celebrities, toys, tv shows and electronics are almost indistinguishable.
pg 18
Who is marketing to children? [...] It is the small agencies selling information about kids to big consumer corporations and it is the giant media conglomerates which profit from the space and time sold to the highest bidder. [...] It is the shopkeepers who put junk food at the check-out. As the profit motive seeps into all aspects of our lives, the number and nature of the child catchers continues to grow.
pg 20
Parents struggle hard to protect their children from shame - and to make sure that their children's lunchboxes are as full of branded items as their classmates. In this way, snacks like crisps or chocolates are not seen as luxuries but as a way for their children to participate in conventional behaviour. [...] It has long been recognized that not wearing the 'correct clothes' can lead children to embarrassment and bullying. In one UK study, children from poorer backgrounds said they would not talk to children who were not wearing the 'right' trainers.
pg 22
Even very young children have grown to expect disappointment, as one 7-year-old boy explained about Action Man: 'I think I was interested in them [Action Men] because when they advertised them they showed them really like, in places that suited them, but when you actually got them, you didn't actually like the setting . . . it was just your bedroom.'
Today, children's bedrooms have been transformed into hi-tech, intensive media bedsits with more gadgets and goods than would have been shared by a whole family a generation before. [...] Close to 90 per cent of teens have a personal TV but so do almost 60 per cent of the 5- and 6- year-olds just starting school.
pg 31
Laura, aged 9, signs up to a toy website so that she can make a Christmas list to send to all her friends and relatives. Already, she's made public the sorts of toys she likes. This information, along with her personal information, will be stored in a database. The host site now knows just what toys to advertise to Laura.
pg 91
The success of children's junk food in commercial terms is awesome. Of these, the most profitable 'big six' are sweets and chocolates; soft drinks; crisps and savoury snacks; fast food; convenience foods; and pre-sugared breakfast cereals. Well, overall, the confectionary category, for all the family, is now worth an estimated £6 billion per year (in the UK).
pg 92
Soft drinks are poured into children with multi-million pound aspirational marketing campaigns, using athletes, celebrities and the packaging of an 'active lifestyle'.
pg 93
For every £1 spent on advertising fruit and vegetables, the food of which we are supposed to eat at aleast five portions a day, £70 is spent advertising chocolates and snacks.
pg 94
A study by psychologists at the University of Liverpool in 2007 showed that children aged 5 to 7 ate 14-17 per cent more calories after seeing ten adverts for food during a cartoon show than children seeing ten adverts for toys.
Another, Emma from Chingford, commented that 'I get extremely annoyed with the yoghurt and cereals that are endorsed with cartoon characters. My three-year-old is becoming increasingly aware of these products and is starting to make a fuss when I choose the healthier (and probably cheaper) alternatives that of course don't have such appealing packaging.'
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