Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Shabana Kirmani
International Islamic University Islamabad Pakistan
Hafiz Faiz-Ul-Hassan
Quaid-I-Azam University, Pakistan
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to explore Pakistani children’s attitude toward TV
advertisement, their awareness about add and influence of add on their purchase behaviour.
In Pakistan, most advertising agencies now target children through advertisement
especially when advertising consumer products like children’s toys, chocolates, candy bars,
tooth paste etc. Study shows that Pakistani children are very much aware about TV
commercial’s features like: truthfulness, annoyingness, taste and influencing characteristics
of the ad. Their behaviour Is also different about advertised and non-advertised brands.
1. Introduction
‘Advertising, in all its forms, plays an important role in informing people’s choices of products and
services. We welcome the industry’s efforts, channeled through Media Smart to help children
understand and interpret advertising.’(Sachiko, 2004)
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 Pakistan, 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, Haleeb),
tooth paste (Colgate, Aqua Fresh)
Children Attitude Towards TV Advertisements in Pakistan 694
2. Objectives
The objectives of this study are as follows:
To study children’s attention towards television commercials
To compare children’s response to different types of television commercials;
To compare children’s response to their favorite commercials and their most disliked
commercials.
To compare children’s perception of advertised and non-advertised brands.
3. Literature Review
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 toward
advertisement 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 product, sales deteriorates. (Evra, 1990).
695 Muhammad Shahbaz Shabbir, Shabana Kirmani and Hafiz Faiz-Ul-Hassan
4. Research Methodology
4.1. Sampling Procedure
This survey involved 5 Pakistani high schools from different vicinities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad,
The capital. A total of 150 Pakistani children aged 10–15 years were selected on the basis of
(Kobasigawa, 1977) study. The Convenience sampling method was used according to the convenience
of getting data from the schools of Islamabad and Rawalpindi. The questionnaire was also translated
into the Urdu language (domestic language) to bring out better understanding from the children.. All
the questionnaires distributed were collected with 98.5% response rate.
Children Attitude Towards TV Advertisements in Pakistan 696
Table 1:
6. Research Results
The sample characteristics for the 155 respondents are summarized in table-2.
Table 4 shows that children know that all TV adds do not tell the truth as greater percentage of
respondent children were disagreeing to the claim that TV add tells the truth indicated by the Mean
value of 3.31. This means that children understand the language of advertisement. Similarly Mean
results 2.85 shows in table that children feel the annoying qualities of advertisements and are agreeing
that most TV commercials are of poor taste and very annoying.
As it is a fact that TV advertisement’s purpose is to increase the sale of the product advertised,
that’s why it tells only good aspects of the product. Pakistani children are aware of this fact and Mean
results 2.29 are showing the same. About the likeliness of TV advertisements in Pakistan, most of the
children dislike ads. And response about the claim that TV adds influence people to buy the product
they don’t need, Mean 3.04 shows that they are neither agree nor disagree with the said statement.
Mean value for believability and always advertised products are best are respectively 3.24 and
3.24 which shows children are neither agree nor disagree with said statements. TV Advertisings do
create purchase desire as indicated by mean value which is 2.57.
Reliability analysis was used that is inter-item correlation among the items listed in the Table-1.
Results and findings are summarized in Table-3. According to Guilford (1973) guidelines, for a well-
constructed test, item inter-correlations should be between 0.10 and 0.60 (Rossiter, 1977). The present
findings shows that Rossiter’s (1977) scale can be applied usually among the Pakistani children while
measuring their understanding of TV commercials as inter-item correlation among (truth, annoy),
(truth, persuadable), (annoy, want), (good-only, persuadable), (good-only, best), (good-only, want) are
not significant i.e. all inter-correlations are negative, it means that these items are negatively correlated
with each other. On the other hand (annoy, like), (annoy, believe), (annoy, best), also don’t have
significant inter-Correlation they are not in the range of 0.10 to 0.60 although it is not negative.
Remaining items have significant inter-correlation.
Good Purchase
Truth Annoy Like Persuasive Believe Best
Only Desire
TRUTH 1.0000
ANNOY -0.521 1.0000
GOOD ONLY 0.1335 0.2810 1.0000
LIKE 0.4084 0.0040 0.1515 1.0000
PERSUADABLE -0.1501 0.1054 - 0.056 0.0368 1.0000
BELIEVE 0.3592 0.0780 0.0953 0.3330 0.1049 1.0000
BEST 0.1956 0.0968 -0.006 0.1775 0.0759 0.2190 1.0000
WANT 0.1722 0.0044 -.0742 0.1354 0.0902 0.2616 0.2951 1.0000
N of Cases= 148.0
Reliability coefficient 8 items
Alpha= 0.6567 Standardized item alpha = 0.6703
Children Attitude Towards TV Advertisements in Pakistan 698
Table 4: Results
Watch Truth Annoy Good Only Like Persuasive Believe Best Purchase Desire
N
Valid 155 153 153 153 155 154 155 154 155
Missing 0 2 2 2 0 1 0 1 0
Mean 1.00 3.31 2.85 2.29 3.22 3.04 3.24 3.24 2.57
St. eviation 0 1.13 1.40 1.26 1.37 1.28 1.28 1.25 1.23
7. Conclusion
Data shows that Children are very much aware of TV advertisements in Pakistan and advertising has a
impact on their purchase behaviors. We also got that they evaluate and compare the different product’s
TV Advertisements. TV advertisements influence children’s behavior about brand advertised. As
children’s behavior change it also changes their buying pattern and this is the purpose behind the
advertisements. As children are very much aware of TV advertisements and they know good and bad
aspects of them. Marketer should understand the children’s psychic before launching any
advertisement. Children also know the degree of truthfulness in add. So for the advertisers it’s very
important to realize that children are not ignorant from the content of their campaigns, and while
developing their campaigns they must address the issues with a professional approach. It is also clear
that advertisement can be a good effective media to convey the required message in child segments if
they are created professionally. Lastly advertisers can not rely only on comic and colors in children
related advertisements, they do need to focus on the content of the advertisements, they must avoid
over promising in their advertisement campaigns.
699 Muhammad Shahbaz Shabbir, Shabana Kirmani and Hafiz Faiz-Ul-Hassan
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