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Karunya School of Management

1 | A Study on Advertising Message Processing amongst Rural Children

INTRODUCTION

Advertising has become so integral part of our life & society that we cannot imagine any

event, newspaper, magazine, TV serial, Cinema etc. without advertising. Advertising is a vital

marketing tool as well as powerful communication medium. The basic objective of any advertisement

is to stimulate sales, direct or indirect by trying to make tall claims about product performance.

Advertising is a form of communication intended to persuade its viewers, readers or

listeners to take some action. It usually includes the name of a product or service and how that product

or service could benefit the consumer, to persuade potential customers to purchase or to consume that

particular brand. Modern advertising developed with the rise of mass production in the late 19th and

early 20th centuries.

Commercial advertisers often seek to generate increased consumption of their products or

services through branding, which involves the repetition of an image or product name in an effort to

associate related qualities with the brand in the minds of consumers.

TYPES OF ADVERTISING

Virtually any medium can be used for advertising. Commercial advertising media caninclude wall paintings, billboards, street furniture components, printed flyers and rack cards, radio,

cinema and television adverts, web banners, mobile telephone screens, shopping carts, web popup,

skywriting, bus stop benches, human billboards, magazines, newspapers, town criers, sides of buses,

banners attached to or sides of airplanes ("logo jets"), in-flight advertisements on seatback tray tables

or overhead storage bins, taxicab doors, roof mounts and passenger screens, musical stage shows,

subway platforms and trains, elastic bands on disposable diapers, doors of bathroom stalls, stickers on

apples in supermarkets, shopping cart handles (grabertising), the opening section of streaming audio

and video, posters, and the backs of event tickets and supermarket receipts. Any place an "identified"

sponsor pays to deliver their message through a medium is advertising.





TELEVISION

The TV commercial is generally considered the most effective mass-market advertising

format, as is reflected by the high prices TV networks charge for commercial airtime during popular

TV events. The annual Super Bowl football game in the United States is known as the most prominentadvertising event on television. The average cost of a single thirty-second TV spot during this game

has reached US$3 million (as of 2009).

The majorities of television commercials feature a song or jingle that listeners soon relate

to the product.

Virtual advertisements may be inserted into regular television programming through

computer graphics. It is typically inserted into otherwise blank backdrops or used to replace local billboards that are not relevant to the remote broadcast audience. More controversially, virtual

billboards may be inserted into the background where none exist in real-life. Virtual product

placement is also possible.

INFOMERCIALS

An infomercial is a long-format television commercial, typically five minutes or longer.

The word "infomercial" is a portmanteau of the words "information" and "commercial". The mainobjective in an infomercial is to create an impulse purchase, so that the consumer sees the presentation

and then immediately buys the product through the advertised toll-free telephone number or website.

Infomercials describe, display, and often demonstrate products and their features, and commonly have

testimonials from consumers and industry professionals.

RADIO ADVERTISING

Radio advertising is a form of advertising via the medium of radio. Radio advertisementsare broadcasted as radio waves to the air from a transmitter to an antenna and a thus to a receiving

device. Airtime is purchased from a station or network in exchange for airing the commercials. While

radio has the obvious limitation of being restricted to sound, proponents of radio advertising often cite

this as an advantage.





PRINT ADVERTISING

Print advertising describes advertising in a printed medium such as a newspaper,

magazine, or trade journal. This encompasses everything from media with a very broad readership

base, such as a major national newspaper or magazine, to more narrowly targeted media such as localnewspapers and trade journals on very specialized topics. A form of print advertising is classified

advertising, which allows private individuals or companies to purchase a small, narrowly targeted ad

for a low fee advertising a product or service.

ONLINE ADVERTISING

Online advertising is a form of promotion that uses the Internet and World Wide Web for

the expressed purpose of delivering marketing messages to attract customers. Examples of onlineadvertising include contextual ads that appear on search engine results pages, banner ads, in text ads,

Rich Media Ads, Social network advertising, online classified advertising, advertising networks and e-

mail marketing, including e-mail spam.

BILLBOARD ADVERTISING

Billboards are large structures located in public places which display advertisements to

passing pedestrians and motorists. Most often, they are located on main roads with a large amount of passing motor and pedestrian traffic; however, they can be placed in any location with large amounts

of viewers, such as on mass transit vehicles and in stations, in shopping malls or office buildings, and

in stadiums.

MOBILE BILLBOARD ADVERTISING

Mobile billboards are truck- or blimp-mounted billboards or digital screens. These can be

dedicated vehicles built solely for carrying advertisements along routes preselected by clients, or theycan be specially-equipped cargo trucks. The billboards are often lighted; some being backlit, and

others employing spotlights. Some billboard displays are static, while others change; for example,

continuously or periodically rotating among a set of advertisements.





Mobile displays are used for various situations in metropolitan areas throughout the world, including:

y Target advertising

y One-day, and long-term campaigns

y Conventions

y Sporting events

y Store openings and similar promotional events

y Big advertisements from smaller companies

y Others

IN-STORE ADVERTISING

In-store advertising is any advertisement placed in a retail store. It includes placement of

a product in visible locations in a store, such as at eye level, at the ends of aisles and near checkout

counters, eye-catching displays promoting a specific product, and advertisements in such places as

shopping carts and in-store video displays.

COVERT ADVERTISING

Covert advertising, also known as guerrilla advertising, is when a product or brand is

embedded in entertainment and media. For example, in a film, the main character can use an item or

other of a definite brand, as in the movie Minority Report , where Tom Cruise's character John

Anderton owns a phone with the Nokia logo clearly written in the top corner, or his watch engraved

with the Bulgari logo. Another example of advertising in film is in I, Robot , where main character

played by Will Smith mentions his Converse shoes several times, calling them "classics," because the

film is set far in the future. I, Robot and Spaceballs also showcase futuristic cars with the Audi and

Mercedes-Benz logos clearly displayed on the front of the vehicles. Cadillac chose to advertise in the

movie The Matrix Reloaded , which as a result contained many scenes in which Cadillac cars were

used. Similarly, product placement for Omega Watches, Ford, VAIO, BMW and Aston Martin cars are

featured in recent James Bond films, most notably Casino Royale . In "Fantastic Four 2: Rise of the

Silver Surfer", the main transport vehicle shows a large Dodge logo on the front. Blade Runner





includes some of the most obvious product placement; the whole film stops to show a Coca-Cola

billboard.

CELEBRITIES

This type of advertising focuses upon using celebrity power, fame, money, popularity to

gain recognition for their products and promote specific stores or products. Advertisers often advertise

their products, for example, when celebrities share their favorite products or wear clothes by specific

brands or designers. Celebrities are often involved in advertising campaigns such as television or print

adverts to advertise specific or general products.

The use of celebrities to endorse a brand can have its downsides, however. One mistake

by a celebrity can be detrimental to the public relations of a brand. For example, following his performance of eight gold medals at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China, swimmer Michael

Phelps' contract with Kellogg's was terminated, as Kellogg's did not want to associate with him after

he was photographed smoking marijuana.

Informative advertising is when advertising is carried out in an informative manner. The

idea is to give the ad the look of an official article to give it more credibility. Also, informative ads

tend to help generate a good reputation.

In some circumstances a business might be required to run informative advertising as part

of resolving a law suit. Tobacco companies are one of the more notable examples of this.

Alcohol producers have been running advertisements with the general message being

don't drive drunk .

Some unions and trade organizations have run informative advertisements to promote

public awareness of what they see as the value of their organization.

Government¶s agencies use this form of advertising. California State Highway Patrol ran

a "click-it or ticket" campaign explaining the risks involved in not using a seat belt.





CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS AS TARGET GROUPS

The children¶s market, where resistance to advertising is weakest, is the ³pioneer for ad

creep´. ³Kids are among the most sophisticated observers of ads. They can sing the jingles and

identify the logos, and they often have strong feelings about products. What they generally don't

understand, however, are the issues that underlie how advertising works. Mass media are used not only

to sell goods but also ideas: how we should behave, what rules are important, who we should respect

and what we should value.´ Youth is increasingly reduced to the role of a consumer. Not only the

makers of toys, sweets, ice cream, breakfast food and sport articles prefer to aim their promotion at

children and adolescents. For example, an ad for a breakfast cereal on a channel aimed at adults will

have music that is a soft ballad, whereas on a channel aimed at children, the same ad will use a catchy

rock jingle of the same song to aim at kids. Advertising for other products preferably uses media withwhich they can also reach the next generation of consumers. ³Key advertising messages exploit the

emerging independence of young people´. Cigarettes, for example, ³are used as a fashion accessory

and appeal to young women. Other influences on young people include the linking of sporting heroes

and smoking through sports sponsorship, the use of cigarettes by popular characters in television

programmes and cigarette promotions. Research suggests that young people are aware of the most

heavily advertised cigarette brands.´

³Product placements show up everywhere, and children aren't exempt. Far from it, the

animated film, Food fight, had µthousands of products and character icons from the familiar (items) in

a grocery store.¶ Children's books also feature branded items and characters, and millions of them have

snack foods as lead characters³Business is interested in children and adolescents because of their

buying power and because of their influence on the shopping habits of their parents. As they are easier

to influence they are especially targeted by the advertising business. ³The marketing industry is facing

increased pressure over claimed links between exposure to food advertising and a range of social

problems, especially growing obesity levels.´ In 2001, children¶s programming accounted for over 20% of all U.S. television watching. The global market for children¶s licensed products was some 132

billion U.S. dollars in 2002.





Advertisers target children because, e. g. in Canada, they ³represent three distinct markets:

y Primary Purchasers ($2.9 billion annually)

y Future Consumers (Brand-loyal adults)

y Purchase Influencers ($20 billion annually)

Kids will carry forward brand expectations, whether positive, negative, or indifferent.

Kids are already accustomed to being catered to as consumers. The long term prize: Loyalty of the kid

translates into a brand loyal adult customer´

The average Canadian child sees 350,000 TV commercials before graduating from high

school, spends nearly as much time watching TV as attending classes. In 1980 the Canadian province

of Québec banned advertising for children under age 13. ³In upholding the constitutional validity of

the Quebec Consumer Protection Act restrictions on advertising to children under age 13 (in the case

of a challenge by a toy company) the Court held: µ...advertising directed at young children is per se

manipulative. Such advertising aims to promote products by convincing those who will always

believe.¶´ Norway (ads directed at children under age 12), and Sweden (television ads aimed at

children under age 12) also have legislated broad bans on advertising to children, during child

programmes any kind of advertising is forbidden in Sweden, Denmark, Austria and Flemish Belgium.

In Greece there is no advertising for kid¶s products from 7 to 22 h. An attempt to restrict advertisingdirected at children in the USA failed with reference to the First Amendment. In Spain bans are also

considered undemocratic.





ROLE OF INDIAN ADVERTISING

Just a few decades ago, Indian advertising was headed by expatriates. Agencies that held

sway were mostly foreign owned. Like JWT, D. J. Keymer (now O&M), Grant Advertising (Contract)

& L. A. Stronachs. With a long list of 'Brits' as heads. Like Fielden & Greg Baton to name a few. (It isinteresting to note that the first few ad agencies were part of a network that was British in origin - and

Madison Avenue had yet to come into its own.) The first Indian-owned agency was National

Advertising, followed by B. Dattaram and Sistas. Then there was the stalwart national effort of setting

up Everest Advertising by Ibrahim Patel (until then the Advertising Manager of The Times of India).

Advertising in India is a highly competitive business. Today with the increasing

consumer awareness no business can survive for long without advertising. With growing business

competition it has become necessary to ensure right media mix to each target audience. Today,advertising agencies are precisely taking care of consumer needs and provide creative designs with

concept & ideas.

Advertisers in India reach about 75 per cent of the population through television, and

almost the entire population through radio. Certain televised programs enjoy a viewership of more

than 100 million. The Indian viewership exhibits brand name recognition of both foreign and domestic

products and services.

With value added information such as television rating points, audience profiles, and

opinion polls available to marketers, the sophistication of advertising in India is at par with world

standards. The world's leading advertising agencies - Ogilvy & Mather, J W Thompson, BBDO,

Young & Rubican, Lintas, McCann Ericsson, Leo Burnett and a host of others - all have a major

presence in the Indian market.





ADVERTISING TO CHILDREN IN INDIA

Advertising to children is the act of marketing or advertising products or services to

children, as defined by national legislation and advertising standards. Advertising to children is often

the subject of debate, relating to the alleged influence on children¶s consumption. Rules on advertising

to children have largely evolved in recent years. In most countries, advertising for children is now

framed by a mix of legislation and advertising self-regulation.

Advertisers target children because of their high disposable income, their influence on

parental purchases, their early establishment of loyalty to certain brands, and a conventional wisdom

that they buy p roducts on im p ulse.

Children are a key target for advertisers, as brand preferences often remain unchanged

throughout life. Increasingly considered as potential consumers, children have ever-larger allowances

and have a significant influence on their parents¶ spending habits. French advertisers have spent as

much as 150 million a year on advertising to children under the age of 12 and this figure is rising,

particularly for food advertising.

Children¶s segment is now being target by many consumers¶ product companies, because

children are important potential customers as they not only decide about their own buying as they can

influence the buying decisions of their parents. A greater percentage of parent¶s income is spent on

purchase of products only because of children¶s influence.

In India, advertising agencies understand the role of children in buying process of parents

and their own. Most advertising agencies now target children through advertisement. If consumer

products especially when advertising children¶s toys, chocolates, candy bars like milk (Nestle), tooth

paste (Colgate, Aqua Fresh).

The degree of impact of advertising on adults may be problematic but the outcome is devastating

for children. Advertisers of children's television used to appeal to the parents earlier but now they

appeal directly to children -- who do not have the emotional or cognitive tools to evaluate what's being





sold to them. Television is no more just a source of entertainment for children. They showcase the

must haves for a kid making them a consumer even before they have reached the age of 3.

Thus the influence of the media on the psychosocial development of children is profound.

Thus, it is important for the parents to know their child¶s exposure to media and to provide guidance

on age-a pp ro p riate use of all media, including television, radio, music, video games and the Internet.

Attractive Advertisement makes a deep influence on children¶s attitudes and behavior,

which especially leads to purchase behavior as well as purchase request. Children can be categorized

into positive and negative attitudes, while children who have positive attitudes toward advertisement,

their behavior remain consistent with their attitudes and they tend to make purchasing of that particular

product whose advertisement they have seen. Vice versa, children who have negative attitude towardadvertisement they do not take any step to purchase that particular advertised product. Older children¶s

negative attitudes is not seen in their purchase behavior, they usually pay less attention to the ad,

which leads to less awareness about the products, not better feeling about ad, therefore due to their

negative attitudes towards the p roduct, sales deteriorates. (Evra, 1990).

Television is an important socialization agent because of its massive presence in

children¶s lives. Television Advertisement is the important tool of diffusing the communication. It

plays an important role in the development of young people¶s consumer behavior. Winick and Winick

(1979) refer to television as a member of the family , suggesting that TV constitutes a very significant

component of a child¶s development. There has been a phenomenal increase in the TV options due to

the availability of multiple channels (Chawla 1987). This has resulted in an increase in the number of

advertisements coming on television. In our opinion, many ads broadcast on TV are the creations of

brilliant minds, who want to persuade people to purchase the products advertised .

Most of these messages get across to the children. Television advertising has an impact

on parent-child interaction. The im p act can be p ositive or negative.





RURAL

The word "rural" consists of all territory, population, and housing units located outside of

UAs and UCs. The rural component contains both place and non- place territory. Geographic entities,

such as census tracts, counties, metropolitan areas, and the territory outside metropolitan areas, often

are "split" between urban and rural territory, and the population and housing units they contain often

are partly classified as urban and partly classified as rural.

Since India has large number of rural areas it is necessary to segment the people who

from the rural India. This Research study covers the primary focus of Rural Children in India. It is

necessary to identify these rural children as respondents for this research such that the ability of the

rural children in understanding the Advertising intent, message processing of those children with

respect to advertising and the parental control they receive towards the media can be analysed.





REVIEW OF LITERATURE

Age differences in Children's Choice Behavior: the impact of available alternatives

By DEBORAH ROEDDER JOHN and RAMNATH LAKSHMI-RATAN

Published in Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. XXIX (May 1992), 216-26

Competition in the children's market has resulted in an unprecedented wave of new

product introductions. The surge of new products has been fueled not only by the introduction of new

products and extensions of existing products in long-established categories such as cereals and toys,

but also by the introduction of new products in relatively new categories such as electronic equipmentand personal care products for young children. Representing a market with $6.2 billion in direct

purchasing power, as well as an estimated $128 billion in indirect purchase influence, children now

have a greater breadth and depth of products to choose from than ever before (see McNeal 1987).

Despite this level of activity, virtually no attention has been directed toward

understanding how the introduction of new products alters children's choice behavior. A critical issue

in this regard is the extent to which new products will be chosen over existing ones in the marketplace.

Inquiry along these lines is essential if one is to predict the success of new products and understand the

factors likely to influence their eventual market position. A second, and equally important, issue is the

extent to which particular types or classes of established products will be affected by new products.

Inquiry along these lines is essential if one is to predict how the introduction of new products will

affect the market position of existing product offerings and to understand the factors likely to influence

the continued success of established products or classes of products in the face of new product

entrants.





To date, the only available evidence on either of these two issues is from a single study,

reported by Roedder, Stemthal, and Calder (1983), addressing children's responses to advertising for a

new product. Though the focus of the study was advertising rather than new product introductions, the

authors found, as part of their investigation, that age was a determining factor in children's selection of

new products. After viewing an advertisement that elicited a positive predisposition toward a new

product, younger children chose the new product more frequently than did older children, even though

both age groups had similar affective reactions to the new item. This finding suggests that younger

children may be more likely to try new products, leading perhaps to an enhanced market position for

new products among this age segment. Still at issue, however, is how children's receptivity to new

products ultimately affects choices of existing products or classes of products. Evidence about how

established products may fare once new products have been introduced into the marketplace has yet to

emerge.

Attitude toward the Ad: a reviewBy DARREL D. MUEHLING and MICHELLE MCCANN

Published in Journal of Current Issues and Research in Advertsing

Volume 15, November 2 (Fall 1993)

In examining the literature, the first issue were faced with was that of determining what

constitutes ³attitude toward the ad´. For example, should studies that focus on ³feelings´ and/or

³emotions´ towards an advertising stimulus ( or a particular portion of the stimulus, e.g,. its visual

elements) be included in our review? And, what about studies of viewer ³perceptions´ of advertising

(reactions profiles, commercial ratings, etc.) ±should they be included? Our approach to this problem

was relatively simple: if a study made reference to attitude toward the ad, either conceptually ( by the

definitions offered, or the way the study was positioned in light of past Aad work) or operationally (

by including a relevant measure of the construct), it was considered; otherwise, it was excluded.

While this decision rule might appear to have eliminated a number of studies whose

findings may be relevant to our understanding of Aad (e.g., Aaker, Stayman, and Hagerty¶s (1986)





study of ³warmth´ in advertising; Batra and Ray¶s (1986) examination of ³affective responses´

mediating acceptance of advertising; or burke and Edell¶s (1989) investigation of ad-influenced

feelings), a closer look reveals that these and many other studies investigated theoretical issues/

relationships within context of Aad research. For example, Aakerr, Stayman, and Hagerty (1986)

explored the relationship between warmth in advertising and Aad; Batra and Ray (1986) investigated

both affective responses to advertising and Aad; and Burke and Edell(1989), while focusing on

feelings, nonetheless, included measures of Aad as well. As a result, most studies considered relevant

to the discussion of Aad are likely included in this review.

Attitude-behavior consistency in children's responses to television

advertisingBy DEBORAH L. ROEDDER, BRIAN STERNTHAL, and BOBBY J. CALDER

Published in Journal of Marketing Research

Vol. XX (November 1983), 337-49

The continuing controversy over television advertising to children has stimulated a large

body of research (Adler et al. 1980). In an attempt to assess the fairness of advertising to children,researchers have examined children's processing of television advertising. The results of this inquiry

suggest that young children have certain limitations in their processing abilities. Younger children are

less ahle to discriminate between commercials and programs, are less aware of advertising's persuasive

intent, and pay more attention to commercials than older children (Blatt, Spencer, and Ward 1972;

Robertson and Rossiter 1974; Ward, Levlnson, and Wackman 1972; Ward, Reale, and Levinson 1972;

Ward, Wackman, and Wartella 1977). The available evidence also indicates that children can be

persuaded by advertising and that advertising exposure can affect product choice (Galst and White

1976; Goldberg and Gom 1974, 1978; Robertson and Rossiter 1976).

This research provides a starting point for assessing the impact of television advertising

on children. It demonstrates that children may change their attitudes and behavior as a consequence of

commercial information, and that there are age-related differences in information processing. We

contend, however, that a major issue has been neglected in previous research. The issue is how





attitudes induced by commercials affect the decisions children make when choosing among alternative

products. This issue is of considerable theoretical and practical interest because of the possibility that

attitudes produced by commercial information could cause children to act inconsistently with other

attitudes they hold. As an illustration of this possibility, consider a situation in which a child sees a

commercial for a product. Suppose the child forms a positive attitude toward that product and in fact

chooses that product when faced with a set of alternatives. One might view this situation as an instance

of attitude-consistent behavior, but it may not be so simple. Suppose further that the child holds an

even more positive attitude toward one of the other products in the choice set, but has not recently

viewed a commercial for that product. The choice in this case actually reflects behavior that is

inconsistent with previously held attitudes. Our hypothesis is that commercials can cause just this sort

of inconsistency. The potential impact of advertising is not only to persuade children but possibly to

make them act inconsistently with attitudes they held previously.





Children¶s responses toward gender role stereotyped advertisementBy AYSEN BAKIR, GREGORY M. ROSE and JEFFREY G. BLODGETT

Published in Advances in Consumer Research

Volume 32, © 2005

There has been a great deal of controversy surrounding the use of sex role stereotypes in

advertising directed to children. Critics claim that marketers encourage sex role stereotyping by

creating gender specific products, such as Mattel's Barbie and Hasbro's G.I. Joe. Toy makers, on tbe

other hand, claim that their products reflect rather than create existing societal conceptions of gender

roles.

Previous research has utilized content analysis to document the existence of gender stereotyping in advertising (Hoek and Sheppard 1990; Hoek and Laurence 1993), but has not directly

examined the effectiveness of sex-role-specific advenising directed toward children.

This study examines the effectiveness of agentic (stereotypically masculine) versus

communal (stereotypically feminine) advertising targeted to children between the ages of 5 and 6 and

9 and 10. These age groups represent two different stages of sex role development, rigidity and

flexibility, respectively (Trautner 1992), and should differ in their reaction to stereotypically

masculine and feminine advertising appeals. Agentic appeals are stereotypically masculine and focus

on competition, instrumental control over the environment, and winning. Communal appeals are

relationship oriented and focus on cooperation, verbal communication, and nurturance. The

effectiveness of these appeals has not been examined in marketing among children, despite a long

tradition of gender role research in consumer behavior and a substantial conceptual foundation

examining the development of children's gender role orientations in psychology. Advertising

preferences were measured with children's attitudes toward the advertisement. Items from MacKenzie

and Lutz (1989) and Mitchell and Olson (1981) were modified.





Children, advertising, and product experiences: a multi-method

inquiryBy ELIZABETH S. MOORE and RICHARD J. LUTZ

Published in JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Int. Vol. 27 June 2000

Television advertising is a pervasive presence in the lives of most American children.

Recent estimates suggest that, children between the ages of 6 and 14 watch about 25 hours of

television per week and are exposed to as many as 20,000 commercials in a single year (Leonhardt and

Kerwin 1997). Concern about children's ability to comprehend and evaluate these messages has

stimulated substantial research and heated debate since the early 1970s (see McNeal [1987]; Young

[1990] for reviews). Hundreds of studies have been conducted in the children's advertising area(Meringoff 1980). However, while there is compelling evidence that a well-crafted advertisement can

persuade children that a product is desirable (e.g., Goldberg, Gorn, and Gibson 1978; Roedder,

Sternthal, and Calder 1983), we know little about how these perceptions may be altered once the

product leaves the retailer's shelf.

The Interaction of Advertising and Consumption:

Beyond advertisements, children gain marketplace information from the products they

encounter, advice from friends and relatives, and their own consumption experiences. Through

consumption, children learn what products are good and bad, whether advertising claims are truthful,

what brands they prefer, and even that, products convey social meanings apart from their functional

properties. To a child, these experiences take on a heightened importance because many commercial

sources that an adult might consult for additional information are simply in-accessible.

For example, until they are functionally literate, children do not access the writteninformation available through print advertising, packaging, and labels. Children also often lack

information about price, a primary consideration in adult decisions. Further, children's product uses are

oriented less toward the weighing of options and more toward the enjoyment each new snack, toy, or

cereal offers. Over time, a child encounters advertisements in a fashion that is interwoven with product





experience. Thus, the actual impact of advertising is difficult to study. The research literature has not

yet explored the relationship between advertising and children's usage experience. In reality, however,

children's ads are being interpreted within an ongoing stream of experience. This fact has been

recognized as an important issue by commentators on children's advertising. For example, critics have

expressed concern that if ads present information different from a child's actual experience, confusion

may result and trust in advertising may be undermined. Conversely, others have suggested that until

children actually experience discrepancies between products as advertised and as consumed, they are

unable fully to comprehend advertising's persuasive intent (e.g., Robertson and Rossiter 1974).

Concern about advertising's capacity to foster unrealistic expectations has long been an issue for

advertisers charged with self-regulation: industry guidelines include specific provisions discouraging

the use of portrayals that might explicitly or implicitly foster unreasonable expectations (Children's

Advertising Review Unit 1999). Without question, this code is based on the assumption that childrenhave difficulty recognizing and discounting exaggeration in the context of persuasive messages. Thus,

marketing managers have displayed a keen interest in better understanding children's abilities and

limitations, so as to communicate in an appropriate manner with this special audience. Children's

Receptivity to Advertising Research investigating children's receptivity to television advertising has

studied what children understand, under what circumstances they are persuaded, and how their

responses evolve as they mature (e.g., Macklin 1987; Roedder 1981). Drawing extensively on

information- processing and stage models, researchers have gained substantial insight into the

development of children's cognitive skills and their deployment during ad processing. Among the most

basic tenets of this research is that younger and older children differ in their understanding of

advertising's essential purpose, as well as how they draw upon this knowledge in responding to

specific advertisements.

As children mature, they gradually develop more sophisticated information-processing

skills, as well as the ability to direct or control their learning (Roedder 1981). Three prototypical

processing types have been identified along this developmental dimension. "Limited processors"

(younger than eight years) have not yet acquired efficient information processing strategies, a fact that

may be reflected in their inability to distinguish between central and peripheral content in message

learning. At the other extreme, "strategic processors" (over 12 years old) spontaneously employ

efficient information storage and retrieval strategies. The more difficult issues arise with the "cued





processors" (8-12-yearolds), for whom organized retrieval and use of available information is possible

when processing a stimulus, but who tend to invoke this only when triggered by appropriate cues.

Unless their knowledge of advertising is expressly activated by such a cue, these children tend not to

think critically or generate counterarguments spontaneously. They may also neglect to differentiate

between centra] and peripheral content when leaming new infonnation. When there is an appropriate

cue in their environment, however, they are likely to retrieve and use relevant infonnation (Brucks,

Armstrong, and Goldberg 1988; Roedder 1981).'

A child's recognition of advertising's persuasive intent is viewed as a developmental

milestone by both researchers and policy makers. Although not established with certainty, there is

substantial evidence that by approximately eight years of age, most children have at least a preliminary

understanding of this intent (e.g., Donohue, Henke, and Donohue 1980; Macklin 1987). Traditionally,it has been assumed that once children understand the persuasive purpose of advertising they become

more skeptical and are then capable of resisting its appeal (Federal Trade Commission 1978; Rossiter

and Robertson 1974). Advertising is thus implicitly accorded substantial power to shape children's

thinking until they acquire sufficient "cognitive and attitudinal defenses." However, as noted earlier,

the potential role played by actual product experience in interacting with advertising has simply not

been studied with children. This article reports the findings of a multimethod inquiry into this topic. In

an effort to gain complementary insights, both experimental and interpretive approaches were

employed. Data-gathering efforts extended over eight months and involved 395 sessions with

individual children.




2 0 | A Study on Advertising Message Processing amongst Rural Children

Children's consumer information processing: representation of

information from television advertisements

By Ellen Wartella, Daniel B. Wackasan and Scott Ward

Models of adult consumer information processing have tended to distinguish those

processes involved in viewer reactions to television advertising from those mental processes involved

in product choice situations (Hughes and Ray, 1974). The activities of selecting, interpreting and

making sense of advertising information are referred to here as representational processes since they

concern how advertising information is represented in the child's cognitive system. This paper will

focus on several conceptual and methodological issues surrounding the way investigators model

children's representation of information from television advertising stimuli.

The notions presented here are ar. extension of previous work adopting a cognitive

developmental perspective, on children's consumer information processing by Ward, Mackman and

Warteila (1977). The basic model of information processing outlined in this previous research has

relied .heavily on Piaget's theory of cognitive development to suggest major dimensions along which

children younger and older than middle childhood vary. Perhaps best²known of these dimensions is

that of perceptual boundedness: younger children's tendency to focus on the perceptual and surfacecharacteristics of products and advertisements (Wartella and Etteoa, 1974; Ward and Wac'Kman,

1973). We have viewed these dimensions of cognitive growth and the general cognitive abilities

available to children as "rules for processing information" at various levels of cognitive development

(Kohlberg, 1969).

This initial conceptual model followed rather strictly Piaget's theory and was useful in

isolating the general distinctions among grade school children's knowledge about TV advertising and

products. For instance, between kindergarten and sixth grade, children acquire greater understanding

of the purpose of advertising; they tend to select both more and varied kinds of information when

recalling a television commercial and describing a product, and gradually use multiple attributes when

comparing brands of a product group (Ward, Wactaiaa and Wartella, 1977; chapters 3- and 4).





In our current research, our interest is to go beyond these general dimensions of children's

consumer information processing and elaborate more fully various aspectsof how children represent

infcrication from specific TV advertisements. Our research is still strongly cognitive developmental in

perspective but less closely aligned to strict Piagetian formulation. Watching Television as an

Information Processing Task Ir. our previous research we examined children's information processing

transituationally; i.e., the same mental processes intervening between the input of a stimulus and the

child's output of a response were assumed to occur both in the television viewing situation and in

product choice situations. Consequently, we tended to focus on information, processing activities

which were similar in both task situations. For example, information selection from an advertisement

was operationally defined as recall of elements is a commercial; and information selection about

products was operationally defined as the kind of attributes children focus upon when they are asked

to consider buying a new product (Ward, Wackman and Hart&lia, iS77). For purposes of describinggeneral characteristics of children's thought about the consumer environment, this conceptual and

methodological approach proved useful, as suggested above. However, in order to increase conceptual

clarity of those activities involved in consumer information processing, it seems advisable to examine

these two task situations independently. In this way, more specificity in points of divergence and

similarity between the two processing tasks can be examined.

Furthermore, as Dawes (1975) points out, any model of information processing is

necessarily circumscribed by the task being modeled. In particular, problem-solving tasks might best

be viewed as conceptually distinct from non-problem solving tasks (Beriyne, 1970). While many of

the same mental activities are involved in both situations, the tasks posed for the third information

processor are probably much different. For instance, a major distinction between the television

viewing situation and the product choice situation is the degree to which each task is problem-

oriented, wherein the child is seeking information to reach some solution or decision, such as a

product choice. It would seems reasonable to assume that in most Instances when young, grade-school

children sit down in front of a TV set and watch a commercial there is little "painfulness" involved in

how they select information and little "intention" to seek information to use in a purchase decision.

This assumption is based on the evidence of relatively low comprehension of the purpose of

advertising by grade school children and only moderate awareness of TV advertising as a source of

new product information across a wide range of products (Ward, Wackman and Warteila, 1977). Such





directed and planful use of television advertising probably occurs only rarely, and most likely at

particular times during the year, such as Christmas time when children are seeking gift ideas (Caron

and Ward, 1975). On the other hand, when children are asked to "choose" a cereal at the store or are

given money to spend on a product of their choice, the information processing task at hand involves

directed thinking activities and intentional use of information to solve a problem, i.e., to "buy" the

product that best satisfies the child's needs or desires. This is not to say that children don't use

information which they have learned from television commercials to reach a purchase decision;

indeed, there is evidence that television viewing influences product requests at Christmas time

(Robertson and Rossiter, 1977). This suggests that viewing TV advertising may directly affect product

choice by influencing the child to buy a particular product, i.e., by raising the salience of product X

above all other brands of a product group. Alternatively.TV advertising may influence the child's

strategy for approaching a product decision, by suggesting certain attributes of brands in a productclass to be considered, i.e., suggesting that the child buy the brand of a product class that has the most

of attribute X (Wright and Barbour, 1975). However, the crucial point is that television advertising

most likely enters product decision-making tasks sometime after viewing the television advertisement

even if during TV commercial viewing the child's desire for a product is raised. This suggests that we

should examine children's memory of what they have seen and heard from television commercials

since it is what they have stored and retrieved from memory which will influence their processing

activities at the time of product decision-making.

We are interested here, then, in exploring how the information presented on the television screen is

stored and retrieved from the child's memory system. Rather than focus on models of information

processing which are directly problem-solving task-oriented, such as Newell and Simon (1972) and

Pascal-Leone (1969, 197C), we have chosen to examine models of memory development for further

conceptualization of how children select, interpret and comprehend TV advertising information.





Representation of Information in Memory:

The view of memory adopted here distinguishes between two types of memory episodic

memory, or memory for s specific event which occurred at s specific time and place; and semantic

memory, or the accumulated knowledge one has acquired about the world (Brown, 1975). Piaget and

Inhelder (1973) refer to the former as "memory in the strict sense" and the latter as "memory in the

wider sense." Episodic memory involves memory for directly experienced occurrences, the actual

input or verbatim recollection of experience and "for discrete perceptual instances that are distinct and

separable from; the larger unit in which they occur" (Brown, 1975; p, 136).

Thus, episodic memory is usually what is referred to as verbatim memory for a television

commercial or program, as it involves remembering the elements of the television commercial. On theother hand, Brown (1975) notes that semantic memory involves "memory for meaningful systems of

units in context." Such memory is constructive and holistic, and it is memory for the gist of a narrative

or story, such as the overall "message" a viewer constructs from TV commercial. Further, as Brown

(1975) points out, no particular interaction with an environmental stimulus is totally one type of

memory experience or the other for a child; aspects of both episodic and semantic memory are

involved whenever a child interacts with the environment. Children's semantic memory system, in the

broadest sense their acquired knowledge about the world and their attendant cognitive abilities, skills

and language, helps determine what they will "remember" about any specific episode or occurrence,

i.e., it influences children's episodic memory: "what the head knows has enormous effect on what the

head learns and remembers. . . Older individuals will presumable store, retain and retrieve a great

many inputs better or differently than younger ones, for example, simply because developmental

advances in the content and structure of their semantic or conceptual systems render these inputs more

familiar, meaningful, subject to gap filling or otherwise more memorable for them.. (Fiaveil, 1977; p.

189)





This perspective maintains that memory is a constructive process. Memory "involves at

imaginative reconstruction;. or construction built on extant" knowledge" (Brown, 1975). Both at the

point of storing and retrieving information from memory, the subject is constructing and

reconstructing an internal representation of that information to be remembered (Paris, 1975).

One result of this constructive aspect of memory is that children attempt to integrate

information they remember to comprehend the "gist" of the stimuli presented. Paris (1975) reviews

several studies in which children in second and fifth grade were presented with a series of sentences

which told a story. Later the subjects were given a series cf sentences co read, some of which they had

actually read earlier, some of which were new but preserved the meaning of what they had read, and

some of which were new sentences that did not preserve the meaning. Paris reports that the children

consistently confused the original sentences with those new sentences which preserved the correctmeaning of the narrative. This finding (which has also been found for memory of pictorial stimuli)

suggests chat children integrate semantic information co- construct a holistic meaning of that

information. They go beyond the information given to integrate ideas and form inferences. Further,

this research points out, children's Integration of information is sometimes at the expense of correct

recognition of information they had actually seen or heard.

The perspective on memory outlined above has a very basic replication for research on children's

information processing of television advertisements: researchers should examine more than verbatim

or episodic memory for particular elements of commercials, such as brand name or product attributes

mentioned. Examination must be made of the kinds of inferences and connections children make when

integrating the advertised information into their semantic memory system, i.e., what overall message

do the children take away from the commercial? As Paris' (1975) work suggests, even in the absence

of children's faithful and accurate retrieval of specific elements from an advertised message, these

children may still 'remember" some constructed or integrated meaning from the message. It may be

this "constructed meaning" from the message which children recollect from the advertisement during

product decision-making situations.

In our current research, we are exploring several ways in which children might go beyond the

information given in the TV commercial, including: (1) by drawing connections between the product

and themselves, such as how they can use the product or what will happen to them after buying the

product; (2) by making comparisons between the product advertised and other brands of that product





class, such as how game X is the same as different from other games the child has played; (3) by

making inferences about the people and activities shown in the commercial to arrive at inferred

attributes of the product. Researcher attention to such connections and inference-making should

further elucidate cognitive characteristics of children's representation of TV advertising information.

This is particularly the case since past research on information processing of advertisements has

primarily examined children's selection and recall of commercial elements (Ward, Wackman and

Warteiia, 1577), A second implication of memory research for consumer information processing

studies concerns the kind of developmental differences in processing activities which may be

observed. Verbatim memory of commercial elements and constructed memory for the commercial's

meaning may not show the same type of developmental effects. Brown (is 75a, in 75b) argues that

where memory tasks involve primarily episodic memory, the researcher should expect a 'levels

difference" on the measure of memory retrieval For instance, various research studies have indicatedthat as children grow older they recall a greater number of elements (Ward, Kackman and Warteiia,

1977); thus the level of recall performance increases with age. However, where memory retrieval tasks

engage primarily the semantic memory system, Brown predicts that the researcher will find 3 pattern

differences, some interaction of developmental level with the task variables. For instance, one might

predict ³patterns difference" in the type of Inferences children in grade school make about the

television commercial message. Considering that children younger than middle childhood have been

shown to have difficulty making comparative judgments about objects (Cellerler, 19 72) , such

children might be less likely than older children to make connections between the product advertised

and other brands of that product class. Older children might be more likely to make multiple kinds of

connections and inferences about the advertising information.

This discussion of the kinds of constructed meanings children might make of advertising

information and the types of developmental effects which might be hypothesized for children's

representation of advertising information should serve to illustrate the relevance of memory research

for conceptualizing children's consumer information processing.





Children's purchase requests and parental responses

By LESLIE ISLER, EDWARD T. POPPER AND SCOTT WARD

Published in Journal of Advertising research - October/ November 1987

One central and recurring argument against television advertising directed at child

audiences is that advertising so stimulates children's wants that they frequently ask parents to buy

advertised products and services. It is argued that such recurrent asking can lead to dysfunctional

parent child conflict, since parents must continually say "no," and that this kind of parent-child

dynamic may lead to frustrated and disappointed children and exacerbated parents.

On the other hand, defenders of advertising argue that children have relatively little

disposable income and infrequent opportunities for independent shopping or for buying products that

interest them. Consequently, it is necessary for children to express their desires to parents, and it is the

parents' responsibility to mediate advertising's influence by filtering children's requests for products. It

would not seem possible to "resolve" this issue with any finality for two basic reasons: (1) it is not

possible to isolate the influence of television advertising in stores and in friends' homes, and (2) the

criterion for what constitutes "frequent" or "excessive" asking by children depends upon one's personal

values. A related issue concerns the definition of "dysfunctional parent child conflict." Clearly,

children cannot have everything they want, and parental refusal to accede to every request willsometimes lead to parent-child conflict. But is this ultimately harmful to the family unit, or is it simply

a part of normal family life? Some empirical data can be brought to bear on these values added issues,

however, and the central objective of the research reported in this article is to describe the intra family

dynamics associated with children's requests for products and services. More specifically, we

examined the frequency with which children ask for things, the nature of products and services they

request, how and where they make requests, and how they respond if their mothers do not accede to

the product request. We also examined the nature of mothers' responses to children's requests and their perceptions of the key reasons for children's specific requests.





Conceptualizing and assessing young children's knowledge of

television advertising within a framework of implicit and

explicit knowledgeBy Karen T Pine and Tina Veasey

Published in Journal of Marketing Management, 2003, 19, 459-473

Attempts to explain how children's understanding of television develops have been

dominated by one theoretical approach. This approach, drawing largely on the work of Piaget, assumes

a one-to-one matching between a child's age and stage of cognitive development. Thus, as a child

develops, age-related increases in cognitive ability are posited to occur. This has led to attempts to

identify the cognitive abilities required to understand the medium of television and then to state the

age at which these emerge. Consequently we are told that at four years old children can distinguish

between advertisements and programmes (Levin, Petros and Petrella 1982). Some eight years-olds,

understand the persuasive intent in advertising (Macklin 1987; Doubleday and Droege 1993, Oates et

al. 2002) and by 12 years old children have lower trust of advertisers and can become discriminating

and sceptical consumers of persuasive messages (Bjurstrom 1994; Edling 1999). One can appreciate

the need for an age-related model if the aim is to set a cut-off point, such as one below which

advertisements cannot be aimed at children. In Sweden, for example, a decision to ban adverts aimedat children under 12 was based on research by Bjurstrom (1994) and there is now a debate in the UK

about adopting a similar ban.

Other researchers (Kline 1995; Kunkel and Roberts 1991), however, have shown that

many children understand the selling purpose of advertisements before they are twelve. This is not

unusual. Studies that try to ascertain the age at which a child has a certain understanding frequently

arrive at different conclusions. This is often due to individual differences and also the use of different

methodologies; one method might reveal a lack of knowledge in children of a certain age, whilst a

different task seems to show the opposite.

This paper addresses the ways in which different methodologies 'tap' different kinds of knowledge in

children, and the importance of finding ways to access all that the child knows.





Why Ages and Stages?

Apart from the contradictory findings produced by many studies, one must also question

the theoretical foundations of studies that aim to reveal age related cognitions. Can knowledge be

absent at one age and suddenly appear at the next? Stage theories are based on the notion that

development is discontinuous and that there are sudden age-related shifts in knowledge.

Alternative theories view development as a gradual restructuring of earlier knowledge

and emphasise the continuity of the underlying process of change. Thus the second aim of this paper is

to deal with children's 'ways of knowing' and the notion of cognitive variability. Siegler (1996)

criticises the way many depictions of children's development rely upon the staircase metaphor. These

approaches (most closely identified with Piagetian and neo-Piagetian approaches) describe children as

thinking in a particular way for a given period (a 'tread' on the staircase in the model) until, suddenly,their thinking takes a shift upwards (the stair's riser) and they think at a different, higher level until the

next shift upwards, and so on. The problem with this approach is that its conclusions are based on data

averaged over subjects and individual behaviour is not accounted for. More importantly, it portrays

cognition as less variable than it actually is.

At any age or in any domain, Siegler argues, children will have a number of different

ways of thinking about a particular problem and the past two decades have seen a rise in studies

showing cognitive variability in children's learning of a variety of concepts (e.g. Geary and Brown

1991 for arithmetic; Kuhn and Phelps 1982; Schauble 1990 for scientific reasoning; Siegler and

McGilly 1989 for time telling; Pine and Lufkin 2002 for problem solving; Leonard, Rowan, Morris

and Fey 1982 for language). Thus, in relation to children's thinking about television advertising, we

must begin to question the idea that this progresses in distinct stages, with more sophisticated ideas

appearing at certain ages. An alternative approach proposes that children of all ages may be capable of

thinking in a number of different ways about this concept, with some ways of thinking being more

explicit than others. Siegler (1996) prefers to view development as a series of overlapping waves,

where one way of thinking may be at its peak but another one, or more, may be slowly rising up to the

surface ready to emerge. The aim of researchers should be to identify those ways and their respective

influences.





Consumer Socialization of Children: A Retrospective Look at

Twenty-Five Years of ResearchBy DEBORAH ROEDDER JOHN

Published in JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH Inc. Vol. 26 December 1999

Scholarly research examining children's consumer behavior dates back to the 1950¶s with

the publication of a few isolated studies on topics such as brand loyalty (Guest 1955) and conspicuous

consumption (Reisman and Roseborough 1955). Further recognition of children as a consumer market

followed in the 1960s, as researchers expanded their scope of inquiry to include children's

understanding of marketing and retail functions (McNeal 1964), influence on parents in purchasing

decisions (Berey and Pollay 1968; Wells and LoSciuto 1966), and relative influence of parents and peers on consumption patterns (Cateora 1963). Though few in number, these papers were extremely

important in terms of introducing the topic of children's consumer behavior to a marketing audience,

presenting empirical methods and data pertaining to children, and communicating results in

mainstream marketing journals. Clearly, the pioneering work of researchers in the 1960s had set the

stage for more widespread and programmatic research on children. But it was not until the mid-1970s

that research on children as consumers blossomed and gained visibility in the marketing community.

This turn of events was based largely on public policy concerns about marketing and advertising to

children, which emerged as consumer activist groups such as Action for Children's Television (ACT)

and government bodies such as the Federal Trade Commission became vocal in their criticisms of

advertising to young children.

About this time, a further impetus to development of the field occurred with the

publication of a J ournal of Consumer Research article entitled "Consumer Socialization," which

argued forcefully for studying children and their socialization into the consumer role. The author,

Scott Ward, defined consumer socialization as "processes by which young people acquire skills,knowledge, and attitudes relevant to their functioning as consumers in the marketplace" (Ward 1974,

p. 2). This definition gave focus to a new generation of researchers and an emerging field of study

pertaining to children as consumers. Twenty-five years later, an impressive body of research has

accumulated on the topic of consumer socialization. Researchers have explored a wide range of topics





reflecting children's growing sophistication as consumers, including their knowledge of products,

brands, advertising, shopping, pricing, decision-making strategies, and parental influence and

negotiation approaches. Also examined have been the social aspects of the consumer role, exploring

the development of consumption symbolism, social motives for consumption, and materialism.

Clearly, we have amassed a great deal of information regarding what children know about the

marketplace and their roles as consumers.

The purpose of this article is to merge findings from the last 25 years of research into a

unified story of the way consumer socialization proceeds as children mature throughout childhood and

adolescence. Integration of find-ings, both within and across topic area, has seldom been attempted

due to tbe vast body of heterogeneous literature that exists on children as consumers (for examples, see

Moscbis 1987; Young 1990). To provide an organizing theme, we focus on age-related developmentsin consumer socialization, with the objective of characterizing what children know and how they think

as consumers at different ages. We develop a conceptual framework that identifies age-related patterns

across areas, describes major characteristics of knowledge and reasoning at those ages, and identifies

developmental mechanisms behind these changes. The review focuses on research reported by

consumer researchers published in marketing and communication journals covering the period from

1974 to 1998. In effect, this excludes consideration of research by economists and psychologists

pertaining to children's economic concepts (e.g., money values, saving, resource scarcity) and research

by public health and medical researchers pertaining to children's consumption of products such as

cigarettes, alcohol, and illegal drugs. Findings from research in other areas, or from studies prior to

1974, are included on occasion only to provide context or corroboration for more recent work by

consumer researchers. We also exclude consideration of consumer research pertaining to children that

is outside the realm of consumer socialization. In effect, this excludes: (1) studies of the effects of

advertising strategies, such as host selling or repetition, on children's responses to advertising (for a

review, see Adler et al. 1980); (2) content analyses of television commercials aimed at children; (3)

surveys of parental responses to children's purchase requests and parental views about advertising and

marketing to children; and (4) discussions of specific public policy issues and regulatory debates.

This article is divided into three parts. First, we provide a conceptual overview of

consumer socialization, summarizing important theoretical views on cognitive and social development





and developing a conceptual framework that describes stages of consumer socialization. These stage

descriptions identify general characteristics of children's knowledge, skills, and reasoning and specify

ages at which these stages are likely to occur. In the second part, we present five sections that review

research pertaining to the development of consumer knowledge, skills, and motives in children and tie

these findings to our conceptual framework. Reviewed are findings about children's advertising

knowledge, transaction knowledge (products, brands, shopping, and pricing), decision-making skills

and strategies, purchase request and negotiation strategies, and consumption motives and values. In the

final part, implications are drawn for future theoretical and empirical development in the field of

consumer socialization.





Do Children Understand TV Ads?By M. Carole Macklin

During the past decade, government regulators considered significant restrictions ontelevision advertising to children. Although regulatory interest has subsided, many important questions

surfaced during the controversial proceedings. Young children were reported not only to recall little

commercial content, but also to fall short in understanding an entire message (Ratner, 1978).

These contentions reflected a reliance on the traditional Piagetian perspective of child

development. Piaget was a prolific writer whose influence in developmental psychology was

profound. With his work spanning decades, Piaget remained constant on certain assumptions about the

child. For Piaget, a child progressed through a series of stages characterized by different psychological

structures. Psychological structures formed the basis for intellectual activity and were the result of

complex interactions between biological and experiential factors (Piaget, 1952).

One such structural characteristic will be a central concept work discussed later in this

article. Verybriefly, centration was purported to be a structural characteristics that restricts all young

children (2-7 years) to concentration on only one feature of an object (Flavell, 1963). Traditionalists

have argued that the characteristic can be viewed from a variety of activities, including responses totelevision advertising (Ward, 1971; Rubin, 1974; Ward, Wackman, and Wartella, 1978).

During the 197O's, marketing academicians embraced the Piagetian perspective and

pursued research centering on age related differences in children's responses to television advertising.

Of particular relevance to this article, older children were reported to recall more content of

commercials than younger children due to one-dimensional focusing (Blatt, Spencer, and Ward, 1972;

Ward, Reale, and Levinson, 1972; Rubin, 1974; Ward, Wackman, and Wartella, 1978; Hendon,

McCann, and Hendon, 1978). These works reflected a dependence on stage theory. Stage theory was a

basis for predictable age differences marked by limited abilities (especially for children under 8 years).

When one considers the early prominence of Piaget¶s thinking in developmental psychology, such

reliance on the stage perspective by applied researchers was to be expected (Calder, Robertson, and





Rossiter, 1976). Indeed, pioneering work using the traditional perspective has provided useful

descriptions of age-related patterns of responses to television advertising.

However, especially during the 197O's, developmental psychologists began to seriously question

many of Piaget's assumptions of development. Although Piaget's stage theory suggested limits on

children's abilities to process information, the fixed-stages view of development did not provide an

explanation of how children actually process information.

Gelman (1978) provided an excellent review of criticisms in developmental psychology of the

traditional approach. She structured her concerns along two dimensions: 1) methodological problems

with limited investigations of children's abilities, and 2) conceptual narrowness with the assumption of

the young child as being cognitively inept. Gelman cited of the structural interpretation of children'sdevelopment. Because pre-schoolers successfully performed tasks redesigned to reflect age readiness,

developmental psychologists no longer accepted one grand theory regarding the cognitive processes of

the child.

In accord, although somewhat more belatedly, advertising researchers expressed doubts as to the

explanatory power of Piaget's theory of children's cognitive development (calder, Robertson, and

Rossiter. 1975; Robertson and Feldman, 1976; Chestnut, 1979: Roedder, Didow, and Calder, 1978), A

key question to ask is the following- What difference does a reconsideration of appropriate theoretical

perspective make in research regarding the effects of television advertising on children'' proposed

answer to this important question is the focus of this article.





NEED FOR THE STUDY

To understand the context in which children are exposed to media and hence to the advertisements,

like parental control, peer presence and interactions, etc.

To find out whether children understand the advertising intent and are there any differentiations on the

basis of age, gender and family status.

To find whether advertisement elements like endorsers, music, slogans, etc. influence processing and

understanding of advertising messages by children

To understand the involvement of children with advertising in their day-to-day communications and

interaction

SCOPE OF THE PROJECT

The scope of this research can be extended to find the needs of the children in the

advertising industry. It also contributes towards better understanding of children¶s processing abilities

and designing of effective communication strategies. The study also covers exploration of

environmental factors playing important role. The Project can help advertising companies to find how

children¶s decode the advertising message and what the sources of influence are. To better promotion

of the product, the advertising needs to be simple and should be understandable, the things which are

expected for the advertising to be simple and effective can be analyzed.





LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY

The research was conducted only in a limited area.

Time will be a major constraint.

The respondent will be limited so cannot be treated as a whole population.

Due to language problem it is possible that the respondents are not be able to understand the

questionnaire and can cause misleading results.

Since the respondents are children of age between 7 to 12 some questions were made invalid in the

research.





RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

RESEARCH DESIGN

The Research Design used is Descriptive Research.

SAMPLE TECHNIQUE

The respondents for this are the children¶s between ages 7 to 12. The Sampling technique used was

Non- Probability Sampling method. This method is used because it is known previously about the

respondents who were children and they should fill this questionnaire.

SAMPLE SIZE

The Sample Size for this research is 182 respondents. Two schools have been chosen in the city of

Coimbatore and the Children of age 7 to 12 are identified as respondents for this research. In the

sample size of 182, the boys were 99 and the girls were 83.

TOOLS USED

SUBJECTIVE ASSESSMENT USING QUESTIONNAIRE

To perform this research, a standard questionnaire was framed. If one wishes to find what people think

or know, the logical procedure is to ask them. This has lead marketing researchers to use the

questionnaire technique for collecting data more than any other method.

For the Children who studies standard 4 th to 6 th, the questionnaire was distributed. Each

question was read and explained to them and they gave their answers to the questionnaire. For theChildren who studies 2 nd and 3 rd were personally interviewed with the questionnaire in order to make

them completely understand the questionnaire since they are totally new to this type of experience and

to avoid errors to a certain limit. The data were then analysed and interpreted with SPSS software.





Time Spent on Watching TV on weekdays:

Daily schedule for watching TV ? * Age

INTERPRETATION:

From the table, daily schedule for watching TV is cross tabbed with different age group

of the children and it is identified that children of age 7 to 8 watch TV mostly around 30 minutes to

one hour, children of age 9 to 10 watch TV for 2 to 3 hours and finally children of age 11 to 12 watch

TV for one to two hours mostly. It is that children tend to watch more TV when they grow up and at

the age of 11 to 12 there TV watching is slightly reduced which can say that there homework¶s from

school is more and they switch their concentration from TV to studies.

From the Chi- Square analysis, the significant difference is 0.023 which is lesser than

0.05 and the factors are normally distributed over the normal curve. The Karl Pearson¶s coefficient

obtained was 14.724 which depict the amount of relationship it has with the factors.

Crosstab

Count

13 10 6 2919 14 19 5210 15 31 56

9 17 19 4551 56 75 182

less than 30 minutes30 minutes to one hour one to two hourstwo to three hours

daily schedulefor watching TV?

Total

7 - 8 9 - 10 11 - 12age

Total

Chi-Square Tests

14.724 a 6 .02314.959 6 .021

8.237 1 .004

182

Pearson Chi-SquareLikelihood RatioLinear-by-Linear

AssociationN of Valid Cases

Value df Asymp. Sig.

(2-sided)

0 cells (.0%) have expected count less than 5. Theminimum expected count is 8.13.

a.





Preference for TV Programs by different age groups and gender:

Crosstabs

Your favorite program and channel in the TV ? * Gender

Your favorite program and channel in the TV ? * age

Crosstab

Count

26 30 56

21 13 34

26 14 40

16 25 41

10 1 11

99 83 182

chutti TV

cartoon networ k

cric ket

regional t v

others

your fa voriteprogram andchannel inthe TV ?

Total

male female

gender

Total

Chi-Square Tests

13.80 7 a 4 .00814.9 73 4 .005

.8 72 1 .350

182

Pearson Chi -

¡ uareLikelihood RatioLinear -

¢

y-Linear AssociationN of Valid Cases

Value df Asymp. Sig.

(2-sided)

0 cells (.0%) ha ve expected count less than 5. Theminimum expected count is 5.02.

a.

Crosstab

Count

25 14 1 7 56

10 14 10 34

8 14 18 40

6 13 22 412 1 8 11

51 56 75 182

chutti TV

cartoon networ k

cric ket

regional t vothers

your fa voriteprogram andchannel inthe TV ?

Total

7 - 8 9 - 10 11 - 12

age

Total





INTERPRETATION:

TV watching is also a function of programs being watched. For example, Cricket is a full day¶s

show (sometimes afternoon to late evening if it is a day-night match), while most other programs are

like cartoons and serials, and maximum viewing takes place between 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. to 10

p.m.

The Table reveals that Children between age group 7 to 8 mostly watch Chutti TV and

Cartoon network which basically come under cartoon category and children of age group 9 to 10 spent

their time in watching all programs commonly having their weight age equally distributed to all programs in the TV. Whereas Children of age group 11 to 12 watch mostly cricket and regional

language programs like serials etc.

From the table it is found that, as the child grows, preference shifts from programs for

children to those for the adults. Usually, all of these programs carry commercials/advertisements and

promotional messages varying from 5 to 40 seconds duration.

From the table it is also found that gender also make some difference in watching TV

programs. Most of the female child prefer to watch Chutti TV and regional programs, whereas, Male

child prefer to watch Cricket in high percentage than female Child.

Chi-Squ ar e Te sts

20 .274 a 8 .00920 .362 8 .009

14 .578 1 .000

182

P earson Chi- Sq uareLi

£

elihood RatioLinear- ¤ y-Linear


Value df Asym ¥ . S ig.

(2-sided )

3 cells (20 .0%) ha ¦ e e x ¥ ected count less than 5 . Theminimum e x ¥ ected count is 3 .08 .

a .





Parental Control over setting daily priorities:

Crosstabs

Who prioritize these activities for you ? * Age

INTERPRETATION:

Parents in India have a lot to say in their children¶s lives including their studies and

career options. With such an involvement, they also have a lot of influence on children¶s thinking and

world views. Above table gives information on parental control on prioritizing daily activities of

children, cross tabulated with age. It is studied that mostly children¶s themselves prioritize their

activities in all the age groups especially in the age of 7 to 8. The next higher percentage goes to both

children and parents prioritizing the daily activities mostly in the age of 9 to 10. Parents themselves

prioritize the child¶s activities with lesser percentage in all the age groups. This shows that Parents

have less control over setting daily priority for the children. It is possibly a manifestation of the

parent¶s attitude giving more attention to child¶s demands and respect for the individuality. From the

Chi- Square value, the significant difference is 0.016 which is lesser than 0.05 which clearly depicts

that the values are normally distributed over the normal curve and the Karl Pearson¶s Chi- square

value is 12.118.

Cr § ¨ ¨ t ©

Coun t

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toge t % e r

&

% o # rioritizet % ese $ ' ti( itiesf or ou )

0

ot $ l

- - 1 -

$ geTo t $ l

Chi-Squ 2 re Te 3 t 3

4 5 . 4 4 6

7

8

. 9 4 @

4 5 . A 4 @

8

. 9 4 B

8

. 6 5 6 4 . 9 5 6

4 6 5

P ea r son Ch i-Sq ua r eLike lihood Ra tioLinea r-b C -Linea r

Assoc ia tionN of

D

a lid Cases

Va lue d f Asy m E . Si g.

( 5 -s ided )

9 ce lls (. 9 %) have e x E ec ted coun t less than F . Theminimum e x E ec ted coun t is 4 5 . 6 G .

a .





Parental control over media usage:

Factor Analysis

TH t I l VI r iI nc e Exp lI in ed

1. P P P 13 .331 13 .331 1 .333 13 .331 13 .331 1 . Q R Q 12 . R 25 121.299 12 .987 26 .317 1 .299 12 .987 26 .317 1 .200 12 .004 241.204 12 .041 38 .358 1 .204 12 .041 38 .358 1 .185 11 .851 361.081 10 .806 49 .164 1 .081 10 .806 49 .164 1 .146 11 .462 471.003 10 .030 59 .194 1 .003 10 .030 59 .194 1 .125 11 .252 59

.933 9 .327 68 .521

.887 8 .870 77 .392

.804 8 .036 85 .427

.749 7 .490 92 .918

.708 7 .082 100 .000

Co mp onen t12345678910

Tot S l T of V S ri S nce Cu mulS tive T Tot S l T of V S ri S nce Cu mulS tive T Tot S l T of V S ri S nce Cu mulS tiInitiS l Ei U en v S lue s Extr S ction S ums of Sq ua r e d Loa ding s Rota tion S ums of Sq ua r e d Loa din

Extr a ction Me t V od: Principa l Co mp onen t Ana lys is .

Ro t W t X

Y

Componen t MW tr i`

a

-.539 -.196 .357 .424 -5.58 E

-2.24 E-03 -2.78 E-02 .817 -4.29 E-02 -5.67 E

.343 -4.19 E-02 .315 2 .459 E-02

-.124 -.692 .167 -.126

1.554 E-03 .443 .419 7 .874 E-02

.250 -4.82 E-02 .192 -4.05 E-02 -

-2.98 E-02 7 .106 E-02 -.121 .844

.774 -7.43 E-02 1 .414 E-02 7 .164 E-02 -4.22 E

-.398 5 .289 E-02 -.184 -.460

-.134 .685 5 .199 E-02 -.103

tb

e y a r e irr a tiona l an d dono t un de r s tan d t

b

a t youha ve gr own up

c

e cau s e the y f ee l tha tmos t of the TV pr og r a msa r e no t f or

d

ids

you a ls o f ee l tha t the s epr og r a ms a r e no t f or you

you r de man d f or c

uyingthing s ge ts incr ea s e d

c

yTV

the y wan t you to jus t s tudyan d sc or e goo d ma r

d

s s otha t you r p a r en ts can te llthis to the ir frien ds

e

the y f ee l tha tc

y wa tchinga lot of TV you will ge ts poile d

e

the y a r e wo rrie d abou tyou r e ye s igh t

e

the y wan t you to pla you tdoo r ga me s ins tea d

you do no t un de r s tan dthe ir beha vior s ince the ythe ms e lve s wa tch a lot of TV

the y s hou ld in f a ct le t youtake you r own de cis ion onwa tching TV

1 2 3 4 5

Co mp onen t

Extr a ction Me tho d: Pri ncipa l Co mp onen t Ana lys is . Rota tion Me tho d: Va rima x with Ka is e r

f

orm a liza tion .

Rota tion con ve r ge d in 12 ite r a tion s .a .





INTERPRETATION:

The study reveals that parents tend to control the media time usage of children, especially

time spent on watching television, across segments and cultures. There could be three possible reasons

for this: first, they think that the programming on television is not tailored for children; second, the

child should also spend time doing some physical activity or more constructive things like study; third,

most Indian households single television set.

The data collected on children¶s attitudes towards parental control on media reveal that

on the one hand they realize that parents try to control media usage for the sake of their studies and

eyesight; on the other hand, they also have a kind of feeling that parents just want them to study harder

so that they( parents) can have a one up feeling amongst their social peers. Some have even questionedthe behavior, as parents themselves see a lot of TV but expect children not to watch it for a longer

durations. Children also feel that parents do not consider them as responsible and mature, therfore

want to control their media viewing habits. Children also disagree that watching television has any

effect on their demands for new and advertised products. With such a diverisified response, it was

thought that a factor analysis of all these responses using principal component analysis method might

lead to grouping of attitudes towards parental control on media usage.

To ensure that factor analysis is suitable for the kind of data generated in the study,

kaiser- Meyer- Olkin (KMO) and Bartlett¶s tests were performed.

The factor loadings having eigenvalues more than 1 account for about 59 per cent

explanation in terms of attitudes of respondents.

The factor analysis gives three distinct attitudes of children towards parental control on media time

usage. They are as follows:

(1) Parents want to be in total control of media exposure of children without explaining any reason to

them.

(2) Parents are concerned about their health, studies and career.

(3) Parents are irrational in excercising controls.

The negative loadings indicate opposite reactions of children for the feelings of their parents.





Understanding of Advertising Intent:

Frequency Table

b e g a u s e a h ve i

p

q s q ng a i e e np

e i

p

a q n q ng ?

36 19 r 8 19 r 8 19 r 880 44 r 0 44 r 0 63 r 766 36 r 3 36 r 3 100 r 0

182 100 r 0 100 r 0

s

ully ag t eeu a t

v ially ag t eedisag t eeTo v al

ValidF t e quency P e t cen v Valid P e t cen v

Cu w ula v ix eP e t cen v

so th y t yo ur p y re n ts c y n w y tc h them y n d u y y o u th ing s ?

89 48 r 9 48 r 9 48 r 980 44 r 0 44 r 0 92 r 913 7 r 1 7 r 1 100 r 0

182 100 r 0 100 r 0

s

ully ag t eeu a t


ValidF

t

e quency P et

cen v Valid P et

cen v

Cu w ula v ix e

P et

cen v

so th y t yo u w y tc h them y n d c h oos e th ing s f o r yo ur s e f

49 26 r 9 26 r 9 26 r 996 52 r 7 52 r 7 79 r 737 20 r 3 20 r 3 100 r 0

182 100 r 0 100 r 0

s

ully ag t eeu a t




so th y t yo ur p y re n ts c y n e y s ily e p er s u y ded y y o u to u y c ert y in th ing s ?

62 34 r 1 34 r 1 34 r 187 47 r 8 47 r 8 81 r 933 18 r 1 18 r 1 100 r 0

182 100 r 0 100 r 0

s

ully ag t eeu a t








INTERPRETATION:

Another Important research objective was to answer whether children understand the

advertising intent and are there any differentiations on the basis of age and gender.The Data were

analysed to learn more about their attitudes and feelings towards advertising in general and external

factors influencing them in forming these attitudes.

The above tables gives the informations regarding respondents¶ understanding of advertising intent. It is evident from the table that Children find advertising more entertaining.

However, they also understand that basic objective of advertisements is to inform about the products

and also to persuade them to buy those products. And very interestingly, they also know that media

vehicles carrying advertisements gain financially from the advertisements.

so th t ever y

o d y s h o uld kn o w w h t is v il

le in the m r ket ?

44 24 .2 24 .2 24 .299 54 .4 54 .4 78 .639 21 .4 21 .4 100 .0

182 100 .0 100 .0

f ully ag r eepa rtia lly ag r eedis ag r eeTota l

Va lidFr e quen cy P e r cen t Va lid P e r cen t

Cu mula tiveP e r cen t

to

ill the g p et wee n two p r o g r mme s

108 59 .3 59 .3 59 .372 39 .6 39 .6 98 .9

2 1 .1 1 .1 100 .0182 100 .0 100 .0




TV c o m p ni e s e r n m o n e y y s h o wing the dvert is eme n ts ?

72 39 .6 39 .6 39 .687 47 .8 47 .8 87 .423 12 .6 12 .6 100 .0

182 100 .0 100 .0








Attitudes and feelings towards advertisements:

Crosstabs

INTERPRETATION:

The literature survey suggests that children from the age of six year onwards start viewing

advertisements with a little skepticism. From the table it is identified that from the different age groups

of children, the children of age 7 to 8 totally believe the advertisements and children of age 9 to 10

believes some advertisements are true and many are half truth and half lied. But the children of aged

11 to 12 who are more matured from the rest of the two believes advertisements are more for

entertaining and mostly advertisements are disguising ones telling half truth and half lie sometimes

only lies. This shows as Children grew up they tend to know more about advertisements and are aware

about the advertisement tricks. From the chi- Square value, the significant value is 0.011 which is

lesser than 0.05 and the Karl Pearson¶s Value is 12.967.

d o

o u thi nk all the a d ve rt is eme nts s h own on TV or r int e d in the n e wspap e rs ar e tr u th

u l ? * ag eCrosstab u lat ion

Count

27 13 25 65

15 19 21 55

9 24 29 62

51 56 75 182

always

ne er

half truth and half lie

do you thin

all thead ertisements shown onTV or rinted in thenews a ers are truthful ?

Total

7 - 8 9 - 10 11 - 12age

Total

Chi- Sq u ar e Te sts

12 .967 a 4 .01113 .516 4 .009

5.822 1 .016

182

Pearson Chi-SquareLi elihood RatioLinear-by-Linear

Asso ciationN of Valid Cases

Value df Asym . Sig .

(2-sided )

0 cells (.0 ) ha e ex e cted count less than 5 . Theminimum ex e cted count is 15 .41 .

a .





Influences on attitude towards advertisements:

Crosstabs

INTERPRETATION:

Such attitudes are formed while children interact with parents and through their own

experiences when they visit market place or through their use experiences. The friends and peer

opinions also play a vital role in shaping their attitudes towards advertisements. The data collected for

the study suggest that at the age of 7 to 8 children try to get their knowledge from their friends and

parents, at the age group of 9 to 10 children know themselves about the advertisements, at the age of

11 to 12 it is the influence of friends and themselves to mark an attitude about the advertisements.

From the Chi- Square analysis, the significant value obtained is 0.45 which is lesser than 0.5 and the

Karl Pearson¶s value is 15.821.

yo u

ee l th at wa y b e a u s e * ag e Crosstab u lat ion

Count

6 9 6 21

3 4 7

17 9 28 546 3 9 18

19 31 32 82

51 56 75 182

your arents feel that wayyour elder

rother or sister feel that wayyour friends feel that wayyour teacher feel that wayyou

now it

ecause it isso sim le

you feelthat way

ecause

Total

7 - 8 9 - 10 11 - 12age

Total

Chi-Squ ar e Te sts

15 .821 a 8 .04519 .034 8 .015

.907 1 .341

182


elihood RatioLinear-

y-Linear AssociationN of Valid Cases

Value df Asym . S ig.

(2-sided )

3 cells (20 .0%) ha

e e x

ected count less than 5 . Theminimum e x ected count is 1 .96 .a .





Attitude towards advertisement endorsers and source:

Tables

111 61 .0% 38 20 .9% 33 18 .

69 37 .9% 69 37 .9% 44 24 .

75 41 .2% 74 40 .7% 33 18 .

70 38 .5% 75 41 .2% 37 20 .

109 59 .9% 40 22 .0% 33 18 .

47 25 .8% 77 42 .3% 58 31 .

81 44 .5% 35 19 .2% 66 36 .

93 51 .1% 52 28 .6% 37 20 .

58 31 .9% 67 36 .8% 57 31 .

68 37 .4% 75 41 .2% 39 21 .

29 15 .9% 86 47 .3% 67 36 .

an ad where a doc ,scientist or a successfuls ortsman ad ocates a

dt is a truthful ad ? roducts with goodad ertisements are good

roductsgoodloo ing modelsgenerally ad ocate good

roductsfamous ersonalities willalways ad ocate good

roductsfamous com anies ma egood roductsad ertisements which areseen most often are of good roductsyou li e thead ertisements ecausethe ad ertised roduct isalready used in your house ?your arents are the est

judge of a good or a ad roductthere is no relationshi

etween li ea lead ertisement and a good

roductad ertisements featuringchildren of your ageim ress you moreyou do not now the e xactreasons as to why youli e an ad ertisement

Count %fully agree

Count % artially agree

Count %disagree





Factor Analysis

KMO an d Bartl e tt's Te st

.517

81 .63155

.011

aiser- j eyer-Ol k in j easure of S am l ling Ade quacy .

A l l rox. Chi- Sq uaredf S ig.

Bartlett's Test of S l hericity

R otat e d Co m pon e nt Matr im a

.229 .338 - .220 .206 - .

-9.99 n -02 .750 - .234 1 .830 n -02 2 .717 n

.424 -6 .64 n -02 .283 .589 9 .651 n

.806 .118 1 .113 n -02 4 .677 n -02 -3 .60 n

3.914 n -02 .177 .736 2 .242 n -02 7 .491 n

.122 .266 - .271 .116 .

-3.15 n -02 - .199 .497 -9 .50 n -02 - .

.108 3 .577 n -02 .270 - .782 5 .307 n

-.468 .310 -2 .67 n -02 -3 .25 n -02 - .

-2.45 n -02 - .587 - .309 5 .774 n -02 -6 .60 n

-.540 .223 .121 .439 .

an ad where a doc ,scientist or a successfuls o ortsman ad ocates ao

dt is a truthful ad ?o roducts with goodad ertisements are goodo roductsgoodloo

ing modelsgenerally ad ocate goodo roductsfamous o ersonalities willalways ad ocate goodo roductsfamous com o anies ma

egood o roductsad ertisements which areseen most often are of

goodo

roductsyou li

e thead ertisements ecausethe ad ertised o roduct isalready used in your house ?your o arents are the est

judge of a good or a ado roductthere is no relationshi o

etween li

ea lead ertisement and a goodo roductad ertisements featuringchildren of your age

imo

ress you moreyou do not

now the e xactreasons as to why youli

e an ad ertisement

1 2 3 4 5Com o onent

n xtraction ethod : P rinci o al Com o onent Analysis . Rotation ethod : Varima x with aiser Normali ation .

Rotation con erged in 23 iterations .a .





INTERPRETATION:

The data have been further analyzed to understand attitude of children towards the

advertisement or message source. Data regarding attitude towards endorsers and source are presented

in the above tables.

A closer look at the table reveals that socially respectable sources like doctors, engineers

and scientists generate positive attitude towards advertisements. Similar responses are generated when

a celebrity endorses the product. It has also been found that parents are big influencers in terms of

building an attitude towards a brand or advertisement. It is also appearing that one can actually

segregate children on the basis of their attitudes and liking towards the source or endorser or

advertisement. A factor analysis was done towards this effect to find out whether we can segregate

these children on the basis of their attitudes. Kaiser- Meyer-Olkin (KMO) and Bartletts¶ test were

performed. The value of KMO measure of sampling adequacy obtained from the analysis was 0.517,

indicating that sample size is adequate for principal component analysis. Similarly, the Bartlett¶s test

of sphercity ( using x 2 measure) indicated that the variables correlated, hence suitable for factor

analysis.

T o t l r i nce p l ined

1 . 14 .454 14 .454 1 .590 14 .454 14 .454 1 .432 13 .015 13

1 .391 12 . 48 27 .102 1 .391 12 . 48 27 .102 1 .329 12 .078 251 .177 10 . 97 37 .799 1 .177 10 . 97 37 .799 1 .229 11 .175 36

1 .107 10 .068 47 .867 1 .107 10 .068 47 .867 1 .224 11 .126 47

1 .013 9 .210 57 .077 1 .013 9 .210 57 .077 1 .065 9 .684 57

.963 8 .755 65 .832

.932 8 .472 74 .304

.868 7 .892 82 .196

.688 6 .256 88 .452

.670 6 .094 94 .546

.600 5 .454 100 .000

Compone1

23

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

To ta l of a rianc umu la tive To ta l of a rianc umu la tive To ta l of a riance umu lInitia l igenva lues tr ac tion ums of ua r e oa ing ota tion ums of ua r e o

Ex tr ac tion e tho : rinc ipa l Componen t na lys is .





All such factor loadings having the eigen values more than 1 were considered for

identifying the relevant factors. It was found that about 57 percent variance is explained by six factors.

From the output of factor analysis, five main typologies of children emerged:

(1) Impressed and influenced by the reputation of the company and/ or endorsers.

(2) Impressed and influenced by the attractiveness of the model and style of execution.

(3) Obedient type, dependent on parents¶ decisions.

(4) Rationale decision makers having independent opinions, and

(5) Confused, not knowing why they like or dislike an advertisement.





Children reaction towards their favorite and disliked advertisement:

Crosstabs

ow do ou

ee l when ou wa tch ou r

avo r ite TV adve rt i emen t z * age Cr oss tabu la tion

Coun t

10 19 35 64

26 22 21 69

12 8 10 30

3 7 9 19

51 56 75 182

d e ligh te d

exc ite d

f ee l like owning thepr od uc ttr y to r emem be r the

jing le or the d ia logof the a d ve rtiseme t

ho w d o you f ee lwhen you wa tchyou r f avo rite T

{

a d ve rtisemen t |

To ta l

7 - 8 9 - 10 11 - 12

ageTo ta l

C hi-Squ } r e Te s ts

14 .194 a 6 .028

14 .602 6 .024

2 .091 1 .148

182

P ea r son Ch i-Sq ua r eLike lihoo d Ra tioLinea r-by-Linea r

Assoc ia tionN of ~ a lid Cases

~ a lue d f Asymp . Si g.

(2 -s id e d )

0 ce lls (.0 %) have expec te d coun t less than 5 . Theminimum expec te d coun t is 5 .32 .

a .

h o w d o yo u fee whe n yo u w } tc h the } d e rt is e e nt s th } t yo u di sl ike the

os t ? * } g eC r oss t }

u la tio n

Coun t

21 13 11 45

18 24 31 73

7 16 25 48

5 3 8 16

51 56 75 182

ang r y

f ee l like chang ing thechanne ld eve lop nega tivef ee lings towa r d s thea d ve rtise d pr od uc t

the d is liking towa r d sthe a d vt d ec r easesas you see mo r e

ho w d o you f ee lwhen you wa tch thea d ve rtisemen ts tha tyou d is like the mos t

To ta l

7 - 8 9 - 10 11 - 12

age

To ta l





INTERPRETATION:

From the Tables, it is obtained that when children watch their favorite advertisement theyfeel excited and delighted and hence try to remember the storyline, jingle or slogan irrespective to the

age they belong to and the chi- square value for this was 14.194.

It is also been found that when encountered with a dislike advertisement, they get angry

and most of them feel like changing the channel where children of age 11 to 12 feel some negative

feeling about the product of the disliked advertisement. Some may even think about not buying the

advertised product and some simply switch to other channel programs. The Karl Pearson¶s Chi-

Square value is 14.816.

Chi-Squ ar e Te sts

14 .816 a 6 .02215 .071 6 .020

8.467 1 .004

182


elihood RatioLinear- y-Linear


Value df Asym . S ig.

(2-sided )

2 cells (16 .7%) ha e e x ected count less than 5 . Theminimum e x ected count is 4 .48 .

a .





Elements creating likeability towards an advertisement and their

importance:

Tables

INTERPRETATION:

Advertisements are made up of various elements, like message, endorser/source, music,

slogans and songs. Likeability is a function of all these elements and personal traits of a child and even

more. Data collected through fieldwork are analyzed to understand what children like in an

advertisement. These responses cannot necessarily be the only liking factors; therefore, the responseshave been ranked as per the preference for the most liked elements.

57 35 46 10 17 17 182

26 51 42 33 23 7 182

29 45 33 33 42 182

33 24 39 29 36 21 182

20 16 18 35 23 70 182

13 11 7 39 41 71 182

you like the modeladvertisementyou like the musicsong of the advertiyou like the sloganbecause everybodyhouse likes it andtherefore you like itbecause your bestlike it and thereforelike ityou like the advertiproduct and therefolike the advertisem

Count

firstinfluencing

factor Count

secondinfluencing

factor Count

thirdinfluencing

factor Count

fourthinfluencing

factor Count

fifthinfluencing

factor Count

sixthinfluencing

factor CouTot





Table reveals that the most important reason for liking an advertisement has liking for

the model or the protagonist. This is in line with the findings of literature survey that likeability or

positive pre-disposition towards the models may create liking towards the advertisement which could

subsequently be transferred to liking towards the brand. Music, song and slogans also emerge as other

elements which create likeability towards advertisements. Maybe, a reason why advertisement jingles,

tunes and slogans are memorized and used by children in their social communications. Another

observation that can be made from the table is when it comes to likeability of a TV commercial; the

peer group influence and the product usage by the family are not relevant.

In India, advertising to children is not prohibited by law; nevertheless there are certain

codes of conduct approved by the Advertising Standards Council in this regard. In practice, however,

it has been observed that most advertisers, including the multinationals operating in the country,circumvent the spirit of such codes while adhering to them in letter.





Relation between Advertisement likeability and Purchase intentions:

Crosstabs

INTERPRETATION:

Literature survey indicated a positive correlation between advertisement likeability and

purchase intentions. From the research also it is identified that children from different age groups tend

to buy the product of their liked advertisements.

is it tr ue th a t yo u will u y the pr o du ct o f the a d e rt is e e nt whi c h yo u liked ? *a g e C r oss tab u la tio n

Count

41 52 59 152

10 4 16 30

51 56 75 182

ye s

no

is it tr ue that you willbuy the pr oduct of the a dve r tis e mentwhich you like d

Tota l

7 - 8 9 - 10 11 - 12age

Tota l

C hi -Sq u a r e Te s ts

5.192 a 2 .0755.875 2 .053

.246 1 .620

182

P ea rs on Ch i-Sq ua r eLike lihoo d Rat ioLinea r-by-Linea r

Ass ociat ionN of Va lid Ca s e s

Va lue df Asym p. S ig.

(2-s ide d)

0 ce lls (. 0%) ha ve e xpe cte d count le ss than 5. Theminimum e xpe cte d count is 8.41 .

a .





Involvement of Children with advertising:

Frequencies

Crosstabs

do

ou d iscuss the adve rt isemen ts among

ou r

r iends

156 85 .7 85 .7 85 .7

26 14 .3 14 .3 100 .0

182 100 .0 100 .0

yes

no

To ta l

a lidF r equency Pe r cen t

a lid Pe r cen tCumu la tive

Pe r cen t

wha t is gene r a lly d iscussed abou t the adve rt isemen ts espec ia lly among

r iends? * age Cr oss tabu la tion

Coun t

7 10 4 21

9 13 8 30

25 21 35 81

6 6 23 35

4 6 5 15

51 56 75 182

pr od uc t jing lemo d e lss loganac tion

wha t is gene r a llyd iscusse d a bou tthe a d ve rtisemen tsespec ia lly amongfrien d s

To ta l

7 - 8 9 - 10 11 - 12

ageTo ta l

Ch i-Sq ua r e Tes ts

18 .044 a 8 .021

18 .295 8 .019

5 .117 1 .024

182

Pea r son Ch i-S qua r eLi

e lihoo d Ra tioLinea r-by-Linea r

Assoc ia tionN of a lid Cases

a lue d f Asymp . S ig.

(2 -s id e d )

2 ce lls (13 .3 %) have e xpec te d coun t less than 5 . Theminimum e xpec te d coun t is 4 .20 .

a .





INTERPRETATION

Data were analyzed to understand whether children are involved with advertising in their

day-to-day life, which could suggest the importance given by them to advertising messages. Two

questions needed to be answered in this regard. First, does child talks about an advertisement while

communicating or playing with the friends, and second, what elements of the advertisement such as

model, jingle, slogan or product features are talked about more frequently? The assumption here is if

advertising is near to popular culture, the processing of messages will be more intense. If some

advertisement is a topic of discussion during gatherings and no one wants to be left out, involvement

of the children with the advertisement is obvious. About 85.7 per cent respondents agreed that they

discuss the advertisements of their choice with their friends. About 14.3 per cent children said that

normally they do not discuss advertisements with their friends.

The information collected from the fieldwork also indicates that elements like models,

jingles, slogans and product itself are the most often discussed elements amongst friends whenever

advertising is being discussed. Therefore, it is important to have a likeable model or celebrity, a catchy

jingle and product newness in the communications targeted at children.





FINDINGS

y The study finds that socioeconomic background of the family plays a significant role in the

understanding of advertising intents by children. This identification is in line with the findings of

studies in the US, wherein it was reported that children from less educated and especially from lower

socioeconomic strata were not able to understand the advertising intents properly (Roedder, 1999).

y It also identifies that family and peer interactions affect the interpretations and understanding of

advertisements by children. The medium of instructions at the school also had significant relation to

the child¶s ability to understand advertising intent.

y Predictably, age of the child is another important factor impacting upon the ability to decode an

advertising message.y In terms of parental control, it was observed that in most cases, parents act leniently for children¶s

media exposure and activity prioritization; therefore, they form an important audience for any

communication related to children¶s products, services or activities. Media time usage, especially

television watching, is partially controlled by parents; however, females seem to be more independent

in terms of prioritizing their media interactions. Children have three kinds of attitudes towards the

parental control on media:

Not allowing them to take their own decisions;

Cautious about their well being; and

Irrational in exercising controls.

y It was also observed that in most households, consumption of electronic media is a group activity;

therefore, the attitudes towards messages from electronic media tend to be influenced by the family

and peer-group opinions on the message. For effective message delivery to children, it is beneficial to

segment them on the basis of culture and environment with which they interact, like medium of

schooling, society they live in, etc. rather than treating them as just one mass or segmenting them on

the basis of age or gender.





y Majority of the children believe that there is always some amount of exaggeration in the advertising

arguments. This skepticism may have come from own experience with the promise ± delivery balance

for a product or service or may have been fuelled by other¶s influence and experiences. Friends and

parents play a significant role in influencing children¶s attitudes towards advertising, making them

alert about the hidden intents in advertisements. Children from higher socioeconomic background

could understand the advertising better than the children from lower socioeconomic strata, meaning

that the environment and exposure play an important role in this regard.

y The advertisement elements like model/endorser, music, jingle and slogans are the most important

factors (in the same order) for liking an advertisement. Factor analysis on attitude towards

advertisements and role of advertisement elements in the understanding of advertisement message

helped grouping children in five sets:

those who are impressed by the reputation of the company and/or endorsers,

those who are impressed by the nicely executed advertisements and the attractiveness of the

model,

those who are obedient type and depend on parent¶s decisions,

those who are independent and rationale in their decision making and

those who are confused and do not know why they like or dislike an advertisement

y Children like entertaining advertisements on television. They like advertisements dramatizing the

situation or benefits of products and with good lively visuals.

y A large number of children discuss advertising amongst friends, thus advertising is attaining the status

of popular culture. The elements like models, jingles, slogans and product itself are the most often

discussed elements amongst children.





SUGGESTIONS

y Though it is proposed that further research needs to be done for the validation of findings of this study,

there are some findings which could be of interest to marketers.

y The most important thing is to understand that children cannot be treated as one mass; hence, it is not

advisable to segment them just on the basis of their age or gender. We need to use more sophisticated

variables like attitudes, culture and family environment for targeting messages at them. Parents are

gatekeepers between children and media (especially the television); therefore, some socially

acceptable alternative medium of communication needs to be explored if one wants to communicate to

children directly.y The advertisement message directed towards children has to be entertaining and not necessarily

µµhumorous¶¶. A message narrating only the product attributes or benefits may not work well with

children.

y Likewise selection of model/endorser is very important for messages directed at children. It has to be

relevant for them. Children expect models/endorser, who were familiar in their particular area or

region.

y Creating buzz about an advertisement through unconventional channels could work in favor of the

marketer, as advertising is a part of popular culture for children.

y Children also need the advertisements to be simple.





CONCLUSION

As discussed earlier in this section, the finding that social and economic background of a

child has a significant role in the understanding of the advertising intent by the child is in line with the

studies done in the West. Similarly, the skepticism towards exaggerations in advertising claims is also

in line with the findings of the researches conducted in the West. The liking of an advertisement

because of likeability of the endorser/protagonist or because of good music is a universal phenomenon,

as the findings from this study match with that of Western studies. However, media exposure of an

Indian child is controlled by the parents, which may not be the case in the Western world where

multiple television ownership in a household is a common phenomenon.

The findings partly validate the DMH model proposed by Lutz (1985), wherein he

suggested that advertisement cognition leads to an advertisement attitude, which in turn leads to brand

cognition, or directly to brand attitude leading to purchase intention. It was found that in the study that

family background, peer interaction and self- experience give rise to advertisement cognition leading

to advertisement attitude. However we still need data to prove that advertisement attitude cue in brandcognition leads to brand attitude, which finally reinforces the purchase intention.





BIBLIOGRAPHY

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APPENDIX AQUESTIONNAIRE

1. Who all live with you in the family (tick any one of the following)?1. Father and mother 2. Father, mother, brother and/or sister 3. Grandparents and/or other relatives living with basic family4. Only with father or mother with other brothers/sisters and grandparents and/or other relatives5. Only with father or mother 6. Living away from the family in a boarding school

2. Which school do you go to?(1) Tamil [ ] (2) English [ ]

3. What is your daily schedule or activities on a normal school day/working day and how muchtime do you spend on each activity? (Give approximate number of minutes or hours)

Schedule Time SpentLess than30minutes

30 minutesto onehour

One totwo hours

Two tothreehours

Three tosix hours

More thansix hours

At schoolHomework andStudiesPlaying

Watching TV

Readingnewspapersor magazinesTaking rest or SleepingDaily activitieslike brushing

teeth, bathing, etc.

Out of all these activities,What you like the most? _________________________________ What you dislike the most? _________________________________





4. What do you do on weekends or holidays and how much time do you spend on each? (Specifyapproximate number of hours or minutes)

Schedule Time Spent

Less than

30minutes

30 minutes

to one hour

One to

two hours

Two to

threehours

Three to

six hours

More than

six hours

At school

Homework andStudiesPlayingWatching TVReadingnewspapersor magazines

Taking rest or SleepingDaily activitieslike

brushing teeth, bathing, etc.

Out of all these activities,What you like the most? _________________________________ What you dislike the most? _________________________________

5. Who prioritize these activities for you?(1) Yourself [ ] (2) Your parents [ ] (3) Together [ ]

6. Your parents keep a track of your school activities (you may tick more than one choice)1. By regularly meeting or keeping in touch with the class teacher/school principal2. through the report cards3. By asking and talking to you4. By asking and talking to your friends5. They do not know what happens at the school

7. Your parents know about your friends circle in the school and outside (you may tick more than

one choice)1. Since they regularly interact with you and your friends2. Since they regularly meet your class teacher and come with you to play ground3. Since they talk to you regularly about your co-curricular activities4. They are not aware of your friends circle





8. How often do you do the following?

Activity Never Less thanonce a week

Once aweek

One to twodays a week

Three to four days a week

Every day

WatchingTVReadingnewspaper ReadingmagazinesListeningmusicListeningto the radioUsingInternetAny other (liketuition)

9. At a time, how much time do you devote for the above listed activities?

Activity Less thanone hour

One to twohours

Two to threehours

More than3 hours

Watching TVReadingnewspaper ReadingmagazinesListeningmusicListening to theradioUsing InternetAny other (liketuition)





10. Who all are with you when you do the following?

Activity Alone Family members are present

Along with friends

Always Sometimes Always Sometimes Always SometimesWatching TVReading newspapersReading magazinesListening musicListening to the radioUsing InternetAny other (like tuition)

11. Which programs/channel do you like most in the TV and which is your next favorite?

Most favorite program/channelProgram Channel

12. Do you watch advertisements on TV? (1) Yes [ ] (2) No [ ]

Your most favoriteadvertisement(s)

Why you like it? Your most dislikedadvertisement(s)

Why you dislike it?

13. How do you feel when you watch your favorite advertisement(s)?1. Delighted2. Excited3. Feel like owning the product4. Try to remember the jingle or the dialog of the advertisements

14. How do you feel when you watch the advertisements that you dislike the most?1. Angry2. Feel like changing the channel3. Develop negative feelings towards the advertised product4. The disliking towards the advertisement decreases as you see it more number of times

15. Which newspapers and magazines do you read? Newspaper(s):Magazine(s):





16. What do you like to read in newspapers and magazines? (you may tick more than one choice)

Contents Newspaper Magazines1. Headlines2. Current affairs news

3. Sports news4. Children¶s section5. Puzzles6. Your city news

17. Do you read advertisements in newspapers/magazines? (1) Yes [ ] (2) No [ ]

Your most favoriteadvertisement(s)

Why you like it? Your most dislikedadvertisement(s)

Why you dislike it?

18. How do you feel when you read your favorite advertisement(s)?1. Delighted2. Excited3. Feel like owning the product4. Try to remember the slogan of the advertisements

19. How do you feel when you read the advertisements that you dislike the most?1. Angry2. Feel like turning the page3. Develop a negative feeling towards the advertised product4. The disliking towards the advertisement decreases as you see it more number of times

20. How do you feel when a TV program is interrupted by your favorite advertisement?1. Frustrated or irritated2. Delighted3. You vouch for not buying the advertised brand ever in the future4. You simply switch the channel knowing that you do not have a control over thesethings

21. Do you have an access to the Internet? (1) Yes [ ] (2) No [ ]

22. If yes, from where? (You may tick on more than one choice)1. Home2. Friend¶s house3. School4. Cyber cafe5. Father¶s/mother¶s office6. Others





23. Why do you access the Internet? (You may tick on more than one choice)1. Sending e-mails2. Obtain information on schoolwork 3. Obtain information that is of interest to you4. Entertainment

5. Other reasons (like distant education, please specify)

Understanding of advertising (ask only the child aged between seven and 12 years)

24. Advertisements are shown on TV or printed in a newspaper or magazines (agree or disagreewith the following statements)

No. Statement Fully agree Partially agree Disagree1. Because advertisements are

entertaining2. So that your parents can watch

them and buy you things

3. So that you watch them andchoose things for yourself

4. So that your parents can easily be persuaded by you to buy certainthings

5. So that everybody should knowwhat is available inthe market

6. To fill the gap between two

programes7. TV companies earn money byshowing the advertisements

25. You have agreed or disagreed to all the above because:1. Your parents say so2. Your elder brother or sister says so3. Your friends say so4. Your teacher says so5. It is very simple and you know it

6. Any other (please specify)26. Do you think all the advertisements shown on TV or printed in the newspapers or magazinesare truthful?

1. Always2. Never 3. Half truth and half lie





27. You feel that way because (you may tick on more than one choice)1. Your parents feel that way2. Your elder brother or sisters feel that way3. Your friends feel that way4. Your teacher feels that way

5. You know it because it is so simple6. Any other (please specify)

28. Most of the time you like an advertisement because (you may tick on more than one choice, but rank them in order of importance where 1 is most important)

No. Reason 1. You like the model of the advertisement (like Vijay in Coca-Cola)2. You like the music and the song of the advertisement (like in Nescafe )3. You like the slogan in it (like Boost is the secret of our energy)4. Because everybody in the house likes it and therefore you like it5. Because your best friend likes it and therefore you like it6. You like the advertised product and therefore you like the advertisement (like

you may be liking all the chocolate advertisements because you likechocolates)

29. Do you agree or disagree to the following statements?

No. Statement Fullyagree

Partiallyagree

Disagree

1. An advertisement where a doctor, scientist or a successfulsportsman advocates a product is a truthful advertisement

2. Products with good advertisements are good products3. Good-looking models generally advocate good products4. Famous personalities will always advocate good products

(like Sachin Tendulkar for Pepsi and Kapil Dev for Boost)5. Famous companies make good products6. Advertisements which are seen most often are of good

products7. You like an advertisement because the advertised product

is already used in your house8. Your parents are the best judge of a good or a bad product9. There is no relationship between likeable advertisement

and a good product10. Advertisements featuring children of your age impress

you more11. You do not know the exact reasons as to why you like an

advertisement





30. Is it true that if you have liked the advertisement, you generally will like and want to buy theadvertised product also? (1) Yes [ ] (2) No [ ]

Advertising and social circles (ask only the child aged between seven and 12 years)

31. Do you discuss the advertisements among your friends? (1) Yes [ ] (2) No [ ]

32. What is generally discussed about the advertisements especially among friends?1. Product2. Jingle3. Models4. Slogan5. Action

33. Does your parent tell you to watch less TV or not to use the Internet especially when you are

alone in the house and your parents are not around?(1) Yes [ ] (2) No [ ]

34. If yes, please give your agreement or disagreement with the following statements.

No. Statement Fullyagree

Partiallyagree

Disagree

1. They are irrational and do not understand that you havegrown up

2. Because they feel that most of the TV programs andInternet contents are not for kids

3. You also feel that these programs are not for you4. Your demand for buying things gets increased by TV and

the Internet5. They want you to just study and score good marks so that

your parents can tell this to their friends6. They feel that by watching a lot of TV and spending a lot

of time with the Internet you will get spoiled7. They are worried about your eyesight8. They want you to play outdoor games instead9. You do not understand their behavior since they

themselves watch a lot of TV and spend lot of time on

the Internet10. They should in fact let you take your own decision onwatching TV and using the Internet since you havegrown up




35. For your homework or extra studies at home (you may tick on more than one choice)1. You take tuition2. You are helped by your father 3. You are helped by your mother 4. Somebody else helps you (please specify)

36. Does your mother work? (1) Yes [ ] (2) No [ ]

37. Does your father work? (1) Yes [ ] (2) No [ ]

38. Which language is spoken at your home? (You may tick on more than one choice)

1. Tamil2. Telugu3. Malayalam4. Kannada

5. Others

Name of the child: ________________________________

Gender: (1) Male [ ] (2) Female [ ] (tick)

Age (years): (1) 7-8 [ ] (2) 9-10 [ ] (3) 11-12 [ ]

Standard: (1) 2 nd [ ] (2) 3 rd [ ] (3) 4 th [ ] (4) 5 th [ ] (5) 6 th [ ]

prince paul jeyaraj

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