Advertising Children's Products

Amidst growing public policy debate, the impact of advertising to children warrants deeper understanding. For children's products, the path to purchase is less direct than for adult products.  Children wishing to influence purchase often resort to what is called the "nag factor," in which promotional activities influence children, who request that their parents buy the product.  The parent then makes the decision and/or purchase.  In "Advertising Decisions and Children's Product Categories," research by SMUCox's Richard Briesch, Eileen Bridges of Kent State, and Chi Kin (Bennett) Yim of The University of Hong Kong find that the nag factor is effective and frequent brand switching is common for households with children.

Background
This research seeks to develop the link between advertising to children and its influence on household purchasing behavior.  Advertising to children is found to affect the parent’s purchasing behavior, particularly in terms of the tendency to buy more unhealthy foods.
 
Advertising directed at adults, for adult products, tends to aim at building brand loyalty, focusing on product characteristics that are perceived to be of long-term value.  On the other hand, children's products must be updated frequently, reflecting the latest theme or character in order to grab attention.  Advertising aimed at children does not focus on brand loyalty, but on the new and exciting features and tie-ins that are available.

An interview with an analyst at a major consumer goods firm, reported in the research, indicates that promotional decisions depend on whether the product category is aimed toward children or adults. The analyst expressed a need to better understand how the nature of the product category influences promotional effectiveness. For instance, he said that “children don't think of tuna as a 'fun food,' but rather as a nutritional food.  Children want to make their food fun and interesting.”

Prior research suggests that a young audience does not necessarily understand the purpose of advertising, and they may believe messages that imply unhealthy foods are good for you.  Further, they do not develop brand loyalty, and they request whatever brand offers the latest appeal that reaches them. Thus, their response to advertising appears as frequent brand switching.  Teenagers, on the other hand, are beginning to shop more like adults; they respond to image-oriented messages and develop brand loyalties.

Key Findings
A study of 3000 households over a two-year time period was conducted using the product categories of children's cereals, adult cereal, sodas and coffee. Results indicate that roughly 50% of households that buy kids’ cereal are adults without children and the other half are households with children. As might be expected, households with children are the heavy buyers.

Parents are more price sensitive when buying for kids than for themselves, and less likely to seek variety.  However, price sensitivity and variety seeking were found in households with children. Households both with and without children were found to respond similarly to promotions, whether these were price cuts, feature ads, or in-store displays.  Briesch commented, "In-store displays and feature advertising are very influential in general. But surprisingly, we are not finding a difference in their influence between households with or without kids."  Variety seeking behavior may actually be induced by a brand's promotional activities such as temporary price cuts, in-store displays, feature advertisements and media advertising.

The Nag Factor
Food marketing expenditures aimed at children increased from $6.9 billion in 1992 to $15 billion in 2002.  This includes advertising for such items as cheese crackers, pasta, cereal, sweetened snacks, Oscar Mayer "Lunchables," and Kellogg's Pop-Tarts, as well as fast food restaurants.  One in three visits to a fast food restaurant in 2003 may be attributed to the nag factor, up from one in ten in 1977. Many new products are created to capitalize on the nag factor, for example, Kraft's X-treme Jell-O. Heinz pioneered invoking the nag factor through use of color with colored Ore-Ida Fries and Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. Briesch commented, "The nag factor works and makes people variety seek that product which is last advertised. And through the child's influence, the household will be less likely to purchase what was last purchased."

There appear to be age-related differences in impact of the nag factor. These differences may be due to developmental stage. Younger children pay greater attention and do more requesting of products, while older children have greater memory for commercial messages.  Considering the results of these studies, younger children might be expected to do more requesting, but older children to have greater success when they do so. Family income has been found to influence response to the nag factor, with lower income families having a higher likelihood of purchase. Influence may travel in either direction between parent and child, and that may not necessarily be considered a bad thing by either party.  Parents appear to have become more accepting of children's preferences.

Public Policy Issues
Legislators have shown an interest in advertising aimed at children. Specifically, Senator Joe Lieberman requested new public policy measures, including (1) limiting the impact of advertising on children, (2) disclosing nutritional information in advertising of children's products, (3) requiring foods sold in schools to be nutritional, and (4) requiring nutritional information to be supplied with fast food.  Advertising for food products that may contribute to child obesity seems tame and certainly falls into a gray area compared to the debate about advertising cigarettes, alcohol and adult-oriented entertainment items. "In general, children are becoming more obese; and they watch more TV," Briesch mentioned. "Advertising towards children has also increased. From the cereal company perspective, they would attribute obesity to children watching too much TV rather than the selection of unhealthy foods."

Little research has been done to study the impact over time of the effect of advertising to children, although studies do indicate that advertising for a brand tends to increase desire for the product category.  Using this result along with the present research findings, it can be said that advertising children's food category brands to children is likely to increase their desire for the product category.  Thus, the product category would appear to be the most effective level for any public policy intervention.  One solution would be to offer public service advertising that encourages healthy eating; however, funding would be needed to produce such messages.  This could potentially be obtained through a tax, perhaps directed at unhealthy foods. Tax dollars could also be used to pay for educational interventions to reduce children's media exposure and developing educational campaigns to promote healthy eating habits.

Conclusion
The findings support the propositions that promotional price cuts and feature advertisements are not relevant to children.  However, children do appear to influence purchase of child oriented products for which they have had greater opportunity to observe media advertising.  Thus, as marketers, the authors believe that media advertising may be the most effective use of promotional dollars for brands in product categories targeted to children. Further, according to the authors, observed differences in brand choice are due to the nature of advertising strategy, i.e., whether it is image-oriented with the intent of building brand loyalty, or reflects a short-term focus including introducing exciting new characters and tie-ins.