Journal of Consumer Marketing

Television advertising’s influence on parents’ gift-giving perceptions

Steven Holiday, Mary S. Norman, R. Glenn Cummins, Terri N. Hernandez, Derrick Holland, Eric E. Rasmussen,
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Steven Holiday, Mary S. Norman, R. Glenn Cummins, Terri N. Hernandez, Derrick Holland, Eric E. Rasmussen, (2018)
"Television advertising’s influence on parents’ gift-giving perceptions", Journal of Consumer Marketing, https://doi.org/10.1108/
JCM-07-2017-2274
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 Television advertising’s influence on parents’
gift-giving perceptions
Steven Holiday
University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA
Mary S. Norman and R. Glenn Cummins
Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, USA
Terri N. Hernandez
Mississippi State University, Starkville, Mississippi, USA, and
Derrick Holland and Eric E. Rasmussen
Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, USA

Abstract
Purpose – This study aims to examine factors, beyond child requests, that influence parents’ perceptions of the most important gifts to give their
children by assessing the influence of television advertising on children’s programming.
Design/methodology/approach – Using agenda-setting as a theoretical and methodological template, a content analysis of 7,860 commercials in
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children’s programming was compared using a questionnaire to 143 parents of 240 children to test the transfer of salience between advertising and
parents’ perceptions. The study also examined the role of child purchase requests in this relationship.
Findings – The product categories that most prevalently advertised on children’s television had a significant relationship with the product
categories that parents perceived to be the most important to give their children as gifts. Furthermore, the results indicate that this relationship was
not contingent upon parental advertising mediation or child product requests.
Research limitations/implications – The results are limited to a single broadcast market during the Christmas season. Strategically, the research
suggests that advertising through children’s television programming may be an effective way to directly inform parents’ gift-giving consideration
sets, and this target and outlet should be strategically evaluated in subsequent campaign decisions about the marketing mix.
Originality/value – The findings add new insights to the gift-giving literature, indicating that advertising in children’s programming may be an
alternative direct influence on parents’ perceptions. This research also extends research on advertising agenda setting into the new context of
commercial advertising of consumer products.
Keywords Television advertising, Purchase requests, Gift giving, Agenda-setting, Advertising mediation, Salience transfer
Paper type Research paper

The Christmas gift-giving season is a profitable season for sales;
in 2016 alone, consumers spent 4 per cent more than they
anticipated spending from the outset of the holiday season
(ICSC, 2017). During this time of year, families gather to enjoy
the season and exchange gifts, while children go to great lengths
to ensure that their detailed, brand-oriented wish lists are
understood (O’Cass and Clarke, 2002). In contemporary
society, the television medium plays a prevalent role in the gift
requests of children (Buijzen and Valkenburg, 2000). Parents –
driven by obligation and anxiety about providing an acceptable
gift (Wooten, 2000) – also seek out various sources to inform
their gift-giving ideas (Clarke and McAuley, 2010). Given that
many parents consume children’s television programming and
its accompanying advertisements either directly or indirectly as
their children consume this type of media, it stands to reason
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that the toys and products most dominantly featured would
also inform parents’ perceptions of which gifts are important to
be given to their children.
To date, however, the literature primarily focuses on the
direct influence of children’s purchase requests on parent’s gift-
giving ideas (Clarke, 2008), and it generally overlooks the
influence of television advertising as an additional or alternative
source of influence. The present study was designed to examine
both the practical and theoretical implications of
The present article uses the term “Christmas season” to differentiate gift-
giving that collectively occurs during numerous holidays at the end of the
year from other holidays at other times of the year where gift-giving occurs
(e.g. Easter and Valentine’s Day). It also uses this language to align with
other research conducted on this particular season (Buijzen and
Valkenburg, 2000; Clarke and McAuley, 2010). The researchers of the
present study are sensitive to the fact that gift-giving that occurs during this
season may be directly associated with other holidays that occur at the end
of the year and coincide with varying personal, cultural, secular or religious
traditions.

Received 12 July 2017

Journal of Consumer Marketing Revised 23 February 2018
© Emerald Publishing Limited [ISSN 0736-3761] 28 May 2018
[DOI 10.1108/JCM-07-2017-2274] Accepted 25 July 2018
 Advertising’s influence on parents
Steven Holiday et al.
advertisements aired during children’s programming on
parent’s gift-giving perceptions. Practically, such influence
could have important strategic and managerial implications for
marketers examining how the media mix will reach parents, the
ultimate purchasers of their children’s gifts. A direct
relationship between advertising content and parents’
perceptions would give advertisers an important method for
communication with parents. Theoretically, this study also
aims to advance advertising agenda-setting theory by applying
the fundamental assumptions of transfer of salience and
interpersonal communication to the underexplored context of
commercial advertising.
Literature review
Gift giving
Gift giving is intimately connected to consumer behavior.
Mauss’s (1924) essay on the topic has spawned nearly a century
of research that has examined its manifestation across cultures
(Park, 1998) and microsystems, including communities
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(Caplow, 1984) and families (Clarke, 2006). Within the
specific context of holidays, gift-giving research has included
examinations of Valentine’s Day (Rugimbana et al., 2003),
birthdays (Otnes and McGrath, 1994) and Christmas (Clarke,
2006). Extant research demonstrates that gift giving is
motivated by a combination of sociological, economic and
psychological factors (Sherry, 1983) with the ultimate purposes
of marking important life events, building interpersonal
relationships, creating an environment of economic exchange
or socializing children (Belk, 1979). Furthermore, the act of gift
giving communicates affection, admiration, deference and
appreciation of the receiver by the giver (Belk, 1979). With all
of these factors at play, it is understandable that gift giving
involves an immediate material need that is entwined with
substantial normative expectations, obligations and anxieties
(Caplow, 1984; Clarke, 2006; Wooten, 2000).
Parents’ gift giving
The marketplace effects of this culmination of factors are so
important that researchers have started examining the external
forces that drive this culture. Here, scholarship has identified
that parents do indeed turn to external sources to inform their
gift-giving ideas (Clarke and McAuley, 2010). Kiel and Layton
(1981) and Putrevu and Lord (1999) identified that catalogues,
magazines, newspapers, retail displays and store flyers all
inform adult purchase decisions. However, Clarke (2008)
identified that many parents’ perceptions of which gifts are
important to give their children are directly informed by
communication with their children.
The notion that child requests inform gift-giving perceptions
is intuitive, given that children have detailed, brand-oriented
gift requests (O’Cass and Clarke, 2002). The detailed nature of
these requests is almost certainly informed by advertising,
which peaks in volume during the Christmas season
(Valkenburg, 1999) and influences children’s gift requests
(Buijzen and Valkenburg, 2000). Although past research
indicates that the communication between children and their
parents, through purchase requests, informs those parents’
ultimate gift-giving decisions (Clarke, 2008), it assumes that
advertising aimed at children only indirectly informs those
decisions and is contingent upon the parent–child
Journal of Consumer Marketing
communication. Such assumptions overlook how frequently
parents actively watch television content with their children.
Indeed, research shows that this behavior, also known as co-
viewing, is done by a majority of parents on a consistent basis
(Paavonen et al., 2009). It may stand to reason that parents
actually directly consume a good deal of the advertising that is
included in children’s television programming, and that this
exposure directly influences their gift-giving perceptions.
There is, however, an underrepresentation of research that
examines the direct influence that commercial advertising on
children’s television channels has on parents’ perceptions of
which gifts are the most important to give to their children.
Extant research is also yet to validate the contingent effect of
parent–child communication on the relationship between
advertising and parents’ perceptions. Given that parents are the
ultimate consumers in purchasing children’s gifts and one of
marketers’ primary objectives in advertising is to increase brand
awareness in the end consumer (Karrh et al., 2003), this
relationship is especially prudent to examine in the collective
understanding of marketing influence on parents.
Agenda-setting
To understand how commercial advertising of toys and other
products to children could conceivably influence parents’
perceptions of which gifts to give, the present research adopted
the tenets of media agenda-setting (McCombs and Shaw,
1972), a mass media theory that demonstrates how the media’s
frequent portrayals of specific topics informs the audience’s
perceptions that those topics are important (McCombs, 2014).
Researchers have devoted attention to validating this basic
assumption (Brosius and Kepplinger, 1992) and probing
variables that moderate and mediate this fundamental
relationship (McCombs, 1992).
Advertising agenda-setting
Although research exploring the media’s agenda-setting effects
has traditionally examined news, it has also been used in the
context of advertising influence (Sutherland and Calloway,
1981). The initial bridging of disciplines occurred in political
advertising of campaigns and associated candidates (Benoit
et al., 2007; Roberts and McCombs, 1994). Here, Ghorpade
(1986) identified that advertisers are able to orient consumers’
attention to focus on a chosen topic, which then influences
perceptions of the topics most important to consider when
choosing political candidates. These findings have also
extended into health communication and the promotion of
positive health behaviors and shaping of public policy
(Dorfman and Wallack, 1993; Weiss and Tschirhart, 1994).
The present research extends advertising agenda-setting into
the commercial advertising of children’s products, especially as
these advertising agenda-setting effects apply to parent
consumers. If advertisers focus their advertising efforts on
specific products, consumers should also perceive those
products as the most salient items to purchase. Both McNeal
and Ji (1999) and Buijzen and Valkenburg (2000)
demonstrated that television-advertising agendas influence
children’s perceptions of products and their purchase requests
to parents, the latter study having particular application of
advertising agenda-setting effects during the Christmas season.
 Advertising’s influence on parents
Steven Holiday et al.
In contrast, the present study examines the direct agenda-
setting effect of commercial advertising on parents. It also
examines the interpersonal moderators of this particular
consumer product environment that are uniquely different than
either advertising in health communication or political
communication. Examining the phenomenon of gift-giving
through the theoretical lens of advertising agenda setting allows
a richer understanding of the factors that influence gift-giving
decisions and the expectations, obligations and anxieties tied to
those decisions.
Hypotheses
The mechanisms specified by agenda setting form the basis for
the hypotheses of the present study. Specifically, the study
assesses transfer of salience to empirically examine the
influence that the commercial advertising agenda has on
parents’ perceptions of which products are important to give
their children as gifts. Additionally, the study assesses the
agenda-setting moderator of interpersonal communication to
examine the dynamic of parent–child communication and
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children’s requests, two notable variables in the gift-giving
literature (Clarke, 2008).
Transfer of salience
The fundamental test of whether a source’s message
successfully sets the public’s agenda is whether it has the ability
to influence the public’s perception of the importance of the
message’s topic and content (McCombs and Reynolds, 2009).
This characteristic of agenda-setting, known as the transfer of
salience, is particularly important among marketers, whose
primary objective in advertising is often to increase brand
awareness (Karrh et al., 2003) and encourage consumers to
focus on product attributes that agree with the consumers’
values (Sutherland and Calloway, 1981).
Marketers accomplish these objectives by ensuring that their
advertisements receive more exposure than their competitors’
advertisements (Atkin et al., 1973). Doing so positively affects
brand attitudes and brand familiarity (Batra and Ray, 1986). In
political advertising, when public perceptions of an object’s
salience coincide with the media’s depiction of that object’s
salience, it can ensure behavioral outcomes that are favorable
for the marketer (Ghorpade, 1986). Thus, it seems reasonable
that during a time when parents are invested in finding gifts for
their children, the increased volume of toys, games and other
products advertised through children’s television commercials
(Valkenburg, 1999) could raise parents’ awareness of the
popular products and influence perceptions of which products
should be given as gifts:
H1. There will be a positive relationship between the most
frequently advertised products and respondents’
perceptions of which products are most important to
give as gifts.
Interpersonal communication
As is often the case in media effects, this relationship is rarely
clean and direct (McCombs, 1992). Interpersonal
communication is one key moderator of this relationship
between the media agenda and the consumer’s perceived
agenda (Wanta and Wu, 1992). Within the context of the
Journal of Consumer Marketing
present study, the relationship between the most advertised
products on television and parents’ gift-giving perceptions
could conceivably be moderated by how much parents
communicate about gifts during the Christmas season. In
classic agenda-setting research, scholarship has suggested that
interpersonal communication about a topic may inhibit the
transfer of salience from the media agenda to the consumer
agenda (Atwater et al., 1985). This relationship could be
especially relevant when the type of interpersonal
communication occurring is focused on a critical assessment of
the advertisements, such as when parents actively mediate their
children’s exposure to advertising.
Advertising mediation. Parental advertising mediation refers
to parents’ intervention efforts intended to alter the outcome of
children’s responses to advertising’s persuasive messaging
(Buijzen, 2014). This is occasionally manifested through active
advertising mediation, which endorses the notion that parents
instigate conversations about advertising and openly discuss it
with their children as their children are exposed to the content
(Buijzen, 2014). This is done in an effort to help children become
critical consumers (Carlson and Grossbart, 1988) who formulate
independent responses that reflect an understanding of the
nature of the advertising content they are exposed to (Valkenburg
et al., 1999). Naturally, this type of mediation requires some
amount of literacy on the parents’ parts, which enables them in
recognizing the “frenetic editing techniques, emotionally
evocative cues and dynamic formal features” that are used in the
advertisement to engage their children (Rozendaal et al., 2011,
p. 338).
Indeed, researchers define parental mediation as the
manifestation of media literacy (Mendoza, 2009). While this
literacy, as it pertains to advertising, develops organically over
time as individuals age (Friestad and Wright, 1994), its
development occurs, in part, as a product of accumulated
exposure to advertisements throughout life (John, 1999;
Lorenzon and Russell, 2012). Within advertising, parents’
ability to literately assess food advertisements has been found to
be positively associated with more parent–child discussions, or
active mediation, about advertising claims (Hindin et al.,
2004).
Given this literature, it stands to reason that parents, who are
literate about television advertising and its purposes (Lorenzon
and Russell, 2012), and who actively discuss advertising
content with their children should be more attuned to the
advertising agenda and its persuasive purposes, and should,
therefore, experience less influence of the media’s advertising
agenda:
H2. Parental active advertising mediation will negatively
interact with the advertising agenda, decreasing the
strength of the transfer of salience from the advertising
agenda to the gift-giving agenda.
Children’s requests. Children’s requests are the most recognized
antecedent to parents’ gift-giving perceptions (Clarke, 2008).
They are also another type of interpersonal communication that
could reasonably affect the relationship between an advertising
agenda and a parent’s gift-giving agenda. Within the Christmas
gift-giving tradition, parents who lack literacy on gifts rely more
heavily on gift-giving cues from their children (Clarke, 2008),
which are heavily informed by the children’s own exposure to
 Advertising’s influence on parents
Steven Holiday et al.
commercial advertising content (Buijzen and Valkenburg, 2000).
While these parents may actively discuss their children’s wish lists
(Clarke, 2008), this type of communication may be qualitatively
different than communication that concerns the form and
purpose of the advertising that informed the wish lists. Returning
once again to classic agenda-setting research, Wanta and Wu
(1992) found that interpersonal communication might actually
strengthen the transfer of salience from media agenda to
consumer agenda when the discussions are focused on the media
content. Within the context of gift giving, this could imply that
children’s requests, which are informed by the advertising agenda
(Buijzen and Valkenburg, 2000), could positively affect the
transfer of salience from ad agenda to parents’ gift-giving agenda.
Wanta and Wu (1992) did caution, however, that interpersonal
communication also has the potential to mitigate the transfer of
salience associated with agenda-setting effects by increasing
awareness and perceptions of the importance of items that were
not dominantly portrayed by the media. So, it is also entirely
possible that parents’ perceptions of which gifts are important to
give for holidays may be less influenced by the ad agenda when
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their source of information about the gifts come from child
requests.
While the broader literature dominantly affirms that child
purchase requests will influence parents’ perceptions, the
literature examined here is less unanimous on how it will affect
the relationship between the advertising message and those
parents’ perceptions. While some literature seems to imply a
causal chain where children’s requests strengthen the transfer
of salience, it suggests that such a source of information could
reduce the transfer of salience. The conflict in this literature
encourages us to examine the following relationships using
research questions regarding children’s requests in relation to
the transfer of salience from the ad agenda to parents’ gift-
giving agendas:
RQ1. How is the transfer of salience from advertising agenda
to parents’ gift-giving perceptions affected when
parents attribute the source of their perceptions to
child requests?
However, because parents’ reports of whether they learned of a
particular gift from their children may be affected by those
respondents’ abilities to recall their children as the source of
this information, we also propose an examination of the
likelihood that their children may imminently request the gifts
that the parents’ perceive to be important to give:
RQ2. How is the transfer of salience from advertising agenda
to parents’ gift-giving perceptions affected by the
likelihood that their children will request the gifts
identified as important to give?
Methods
Pursuant to exploratory research in agenda-setting (McCombs
and Shaw, 1972), the present study was conducted in two
stages. First, researchers conducted a content analysis to
examine the products advertised during children’s television
programming preceding the 2016 Christmas season and to
establish an ordinal ranking of the prevalence of the advertised
Journal of Consumer Marketing
product categories. Additionally, researchers conducted survey
research to examine decision-making context by assessing
parents’ perceptions of which products were most important to
give as gifts to their children that season. These perceptions
were then statistically compared to the ordinal ranking to
identify the existence of a transfer of salience between the
advertising agenda and parents’ perceptions. The survey
further examined the contingent condition of interpersonal
communication through child purchase requests and active
parental advertising mediation to see how they may affect the
relationship between the advertiser’s agenda and parents’
perceptions.
Stage 1: Content analysis
Researchers performed a content analysis to preliminarily
examine the advertising context of the present study, or the
prevalence of commercial advertising content that appeared
during children’s television programming. The universe of
advertising content examined in this study comprised all
commercial advertisements that appeared in the six weeks
before December 12, 2016, on each of the most popular
children’s cable and satellite channels (i.e. Disney, Disney
Junior, Nickelodeon, Nick Jr., Sprout and Cartoon
Network). Researchers composed a sample that consisted of
one constructed seven-day week for each channel (Monday
through Sunday, 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.), with each day of the
week for each channel being randomly selected from the six
weeks. The selected channels were chosen because they
include commercial advertising and produce-dedicated
programming for children under the age of 12 years. As a
result, network stations such as PBS, CBS, ABC and NBC
were excluded because of either their lack of commercial
advertising or lack of programming primarily aimed at
children (Robb, 2016).
After the programming was recorded, a team of coders
reviewed 7,860 commercials within the sample. As research
suggests that specific products and brands have low salience to
parents in their gift giving (Clarke, 2006), these products were
further distilled into broader product categories identified
through constant comparative analysis of the sampled
advertisements (Strauss, 1987).
Following the categorization of each advertisement, the
product categories were rank ordered according to frequency
and recoded according to this rank order to create the ordinal-
level variable Advertising agenda.
Stage 2: Survey research
Following the content analysis, which examined the advertising
context, surveys were conducted to examine the decision-
making context.
Participants
One hundred and forty three parents of 240 children aged 3-12
years (M = 7.25, SD = 2.89) were recruited from 5 counties in a
state in the southwest USA. This age range for children was
selected because it spans the two youngest stages of child
consumer development (John, 1999), and children as young as
3 years old experience parental advertising mediation and can
recognize the various forms their parents use in response to
advertisements (Nelson et al., 2017).
 Advertising’s influence on parents
Steven Holiday et al.
Because the analyzed advertising was culled from the local
market, the volunteer sample of participants was recruited from
the same market. Participants were recruited through local
preschools, elementary schools and homeschools, as well as
through internet communities of parents.
Questionnaire
After consenting to participate, respondents completed an
online survey. The questionnaire asked respondents to list the
three most important products (unranked) to give to each of
their children, as well as where they learned about the product,
their active advertising mediation tendencies and other control
variables. These questions were repeated to obtain
respondents’ responses for up to five children. This yielded 704
individual responses about products.
Measures
Salience was assessed using an open-ended inquiry that asked
respondents to list the top three items that were the most
important to give as gifts to the noted child that season.
Analogous to previous research (Ghorpade, 1986), responses
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were qualitatively coded individually and then categorized
using the previously reported advertising agenda categories,
with a “1” representing the least prevalent product category
(“Instruments”) and a “23” representing the most prevalent
product category (“Animals: Stuffed/Toy Animals”).
Child purchase requests was identified by asking respondents
for the source of where they learned about the given product.
Respondents were provided with a list of 11 common sources of
gift-giving ideas, including television advertisements,
discussions with family or friends, internet top-gift lists and
child requests. They were able to select any of the sources that
influenced their gift-giving ideas. Respondents’ nominal-level
selections were dummy-coded for each response option.
Researchers coded the resulting data of interest that focused on
child purchase requests with either a “1” if the respondent
learned of the gift from their child, or “0” if the respondent
learned about the gift from another source.
Likelihood of an imminent child purchase request was assessed by
asking respondents “Will your child ask you to buy this product
next time you go to the store?” using a five-point scale ranging
from “Certainly Not” (1) to “Certainly” (5) (Putrevu and
Lord, 1994; M = 3.79, SD = 1.32).
Active advertising mediation was assessed using the five-item
advertising mediation scale (Buijzen and Valkenburg, 2005).
Respondents were asked to respond to the five items (e.g.
“How often do you tell your child that the purpose of
advertising is to sell products?”) using a five-point scale from
“Never” (1) to “Always” (5). Responses to each item were then
averaged to create a mean composite (M = 3.35, SD= 0.05; a =
0.91), with higher scores representing more active mediation of
advertising.
Covariates
The study used the covariates of child sex, parent sex, child age,
parent age, parent income, parent education, parent’s total number
of children, parent TV use, internet use and social-media use, parent
budget for gifts and gift-shopping completeness. For parent TV use,
internet use and social media use, respondents reported the
number of hours they generally spend with the specified media
on a typical day on a 14-point scale ranging from “none” to
Journal of Consumer Marketing
“more than 6 hours”. Additionally, covariates included multi-
item composite measures of parents’ need for orientation
(Chernov et al., 2011; M = 2.72, SD = 0.94; a = 0.89) and
personal issue relevance (McCombs, 2014; M = 3.00, SD = 0.80,
Guttman Split-Half Coefficient = 0.42). These were included in
analyses because the transfer of salience from media agenda to
consumer perceptions of the agenda is frequently found to be
moderated by the need for orientation and personal issue
relevance (McCombs, 2014).
Statistical tests
Given the ordinal nature of the variables of advertising agenda
and salience, Hypothesis 1 was tested using a Spearman’s rho
calculation pursuant to previous research on the transfer of
salience for advertising messaging (Ghorpade, 1986).
Advertising agenda and salience were then proportioned into
scale-level variables by converting the hierarchal categories into
the proportion of the advertising agenda they filled, so that
response values ranged from “0.1” (Instruments) to “13.7”
(Animals). Following this procedure, the remainder of
Hypothesis 1 and the subsequent hypothesis and research
questions were assessed using hierarchical linear regressions.
Specifically, in the hierarchical linear regression performed to
address Hypothesis 1, the salience variable was entered as the
dependent variable, all initial covariates were entered in the first
independent variables block, parents’ need for orientation and
personal issue relevance were entered in the second block and
the advertising agenda was entered in the third block. In the
hierarchical linear regressions performed to address Hypothesis
2 and Research Questions 1 and 2, the salience variable was
entered as the dependent variable, all covariates, advertising
agenda and parental active advertising mediation were entered
in the first independent variable block, and the interaction
between (i.e. product of) advertising agenda and the respective
moderator variables (parental active advertising mediation for
H1, child purchase request for RQ1 and the likelihood of future
child purchase request for RQ2) were entered into the second
block.
Results
Content analysis
Analysis of the 7,860 commercials and the subsequent constant
comparative analysis of the advertised products produced 23
product categories, with “Animals” (i.e. stuffed animals and
toy animals) being the most prevalent and appearing in 13.7 per
cent of the analyzed advertisements (n = 1,076). Conversely,
“Instruments” (e.g. guitar, drums, etc.) were the least
prevalent, appearing in just 0.1 per cent of the analyzed
advertisements (n = 8; Table I)
Survey research
Survey respondents ranged in age from 20 to 56, with a median
age of 35, were predominantly mothers (95.1 per cent) in two-
parent households (79.7 per cent) with at least an associate’s
degree (57.7 per cent), an annual household income of less
than $50,000 (54.1 per cent) and three or fewer children (60.2
per cent). Most participants were White/Caucasian (71.5
per cent); 22.8 per cent were Hispanic/Latino; and 3.3 per cent
were Black/African American.
 Advertising’s influence on parents Journal of Consumer Marketing
Steven Holiday et al.

Table I Aggregate agenda of product advertisements and gift giving perceptions

Advertising
Product category Examples Agenda (%) Perceptions (%)
Animals Stuffed/toy animals 13.7 7.8
Dolls Doll/doll house/doll accessories 11.4 9.5
Games/puzzles Puzzles/board games 9.7 3.6
Cars Cars/trucks/trains/tracks 8.8 4.7
Art Arts/crafts 8.7 4.8
Electronics Computers/tablets/phones/video games 8.7 16.3
Figures Action figures/playsets 6.8 4.8
Building Blocks/Legos 6 6.4
Movies DVDs/theaters 5.5 1.4
Clothing Clothing/accessories 3.9 11.8
Other Gift cards/unclassifiable 3.1 2.7
STEM Coding/science/circuits 2.4 2
Foundational Educational/motor skills 2.1 0.4
Action toys Weapons/guns/swords 2 2.1
Outdoor toys Motorized/bikes/wagons/things with wheels 1.9 6.1
Domestic Kitchens/cleaning/cooking/ vacuums 1.9 1.4
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Sports Balls/equipment 1.1 2.3

Books 0.9 6.7
Pretend Costumes 0.8 2.1
Dinosaurs 0.4 0.6
Bed Bedding/decor 0.2 0.4
Beauty Bath/beauty 0.2 1.1
Instruments Drums/keyboards 0.1 0.9
n = 100% (7,860) 100% (704)

Participants’ children were predominantly males (54.4
per cent), who spend less than 1.5 hours a day watching
television (57.4 per cent) and less than 1 hour a day using the
internet for activities such as watching videos and browsing
Web pages (57.4 per cent).
The relationship between each study variable was initially
assessed, and a correlation matrix of all study variables can be
found in Table II.
Hypothesis 1 predicted that television’s advertising
agenda would be positively associated with parents’
perception of the most important gift to give during the
ensuing holiday season. A rank–order correlation using a
Spearman’s rho calculation (Ghorpade, 1986) revealed a
significant relationship between the advertising agenda and
parents’ perceptions of the most important products to give
as gifts (rs = 0.23, p < 0.001). To further probe the strength
of the relationship, a hierarchal linear regression, accounting
for the study’s control variables was performed. Results
indicated that the advertising agenda accounted for 9.6
per cent of the variance in salience, or parents’ perceptions
of the most important gift to give their child. Specifically, the
most advertised products on television were more likely to
be perceived as the most important gifts to give (ß = 0.50,
SE = 0.07, t = 7.12, p < 0.001, DR2 = 0.08).
Hypothesis 2 predicted that parental active advertising
mediation would moderate the relationship between the
television advertising agenda and parents’ perception of the
most important gift to give their children for the ensuing
holiday season. The results of a hierarchical linear regression
revealed no significant moderating effect (ß = 0.04, SE = 0.07,
t = 0.59, p = 0.56, DR2 = 0.001).
Research Question 1 examined whether child purchase
requests as a source of parent’s information moderated the
relationship between the television advertising agenda and
parents’ perception of the most important gift to give their
children for the ensuing holiday season. The results of a
hierarchical linear regression indicated no significant
moderating effect (ß = 0.09, SE = 0.14, t = 0.67, p = 0.50,
DR2 = 0.001). Thus, whether parents learned of the gifts that
were important to give through child purchase request did not
affect the significant relationship between the advertising
agenda and parents’ perceptions of which gifts were important
to give as gifts.
Research Question 2 examined whether parents’ belief in the
likelihood of an imminent child purchase request moderated
the relationship between the television advertising agenda and
parents’ perception of the most important gift to give their
children for the ensuing holiday season. The results of a
hierarchical linear regression indicated no significant
moderating effect (ß = 0.09, SE = 0.05, t = 1.74, p = 0.08,
DR2 = 0.005). Thus, parents’ beliefs in the likelihood of an
imminent child purchase request did not affect the significant
relationship between the advertising agenda and parents’
perceptions of which gifts were important to give as gifts.
Discussion
The present study specifically sought to examine the agenda-
setting effect that the advertising agenda on children’s
 Downloaded by York University At 23:34 03 December 2018 (PT)

Table II Correlation matrix of study variables

Steven Holiday et al.

Variable 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
Advertising’s influence on parents

(1) Ad agenda –
(2) Gift agenda 0.25 –
(3) Need for orientation 0.02 0.06 –
(4) Active ad mediation 0.04 0.07 0.00 –
(5) Relevance 0.00 0.00 0.42 0.00 –
(6) Child purchase request 0.06 0.04 0.12 0.07 0.07 –
(7) Likelihood of child request 0.03 0.01 0.31 0.07 0.09 0.07 –
(8) Parent’s TV use 0.03 0.00 0.23 0.10 0.13 0.07 0.24 –
(9) Parent’s internet 0.04 0.04 0.09 0.00 0.11 0.02 0.04 0.21 –
(10) Parent’s social media 0.00 0.06 0.39 0.11 0.23 0.02 0.22 0.40 0.23 –
(11) Gift complete 0.03 0.06 0.37 0.06 0.08 0.10 0.26 0.27 0.06 0.30 –
(12) Number of children 0.10 0.10 0.01 0.08 0.03 0.00 0.02 0.01 0.14 0.04 0.22 –
(13) Parent’s age 0.39 0.01 0.01 0.11 0.05 0.01 0.07 0.02 0.07 0.14 0.00 0.16 –
(14) Parent’s income 0.06 0.07 0.25 0.08 0.02 0.00 0.32 0.29 0.13 0.35 0.34 0.06 0.23 –
(15) Parent’s education 0.07 0.07 0.29 0.02 0.02 0.02 0.28 0.37 0.14 0.45 0.45 0.29 0.16 0.59 –
(16) Budget 0.11 0.01 0.11 0.03 0.09 0.00 0.12 0.11 0.06 0.06 0.28 0.02 0.24 0.36 0.27 _
(17) Parent’s sex 0.02 0.02 0.02 0.04 0.03 0.02 0.02 0.09 0.05 0.04 0.02 0.17 0.07 0.14 0.02 0.12 –
(18) Child’s age 0.11 0.00 0.13 0.19 0.04 0.09 0.00 0.02 0.09 0.00 0.10 0.16 0.33 0.05 0.13 0.18 0.10 –
(19) Child’s sex 0.03 0.02 0.05 0.01 0.08 0.05 0.04 0.02 0.07 0.04 0.01 0.01 0.02 0.00 0.02 0.07 0.05 0.02 –

Notes: p  0.05 ; p  0.01; Correlations are two-tailed Pearson’s r coefficients
Journal of Consumer Marketing
 Advertising’s influence on parents
Steven Holiday et al.
commercial television has on parents’ perceptions of which
products are important to give as gifts to their children. Given
the heightened salience of television advertising as a strategic
marketing tool in the children’s market during Christmas
(Valkenburg, 1999), this study examined this phenomenon
during the Christmas season. Results of this research identified
that advertising agenda does predict parents’ perceptions.
Specifically, advertisements presented during the broadcast of
children’s programming influence the product categories that
parents perceived to be important to give to their children
during the ensuing holiday season.
To more explicitly examine whether parents’ gift-giving
perceptions are directly or indirectly influenced by advertising
in children’s television programming, this study examined the
moderating influence that communication with children has on
the relationship between advertising and parents’ perceptions.
This study conceptualized interpersonal communication with
children in three different ways. It began by examining the
communication that parents’ have with their children about
advertising content in general (i.e. active parental advertising
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mediation). It then examined whether parents attributed the
source of their gift-giving ideas to requests from their children.
Finally, this study examined how likely parents believed that
their children were to request the identified gifts in a future
shopping trip before the gift would be given. This study did not
find support for any of these contingent conditions of
interpersonal communication, however. Given that children’s
gift desires and requests are influenced by their own exposure
to television advertising (Buijzen and Valkenburg, 2000) and
parents turn to their children for gift-giving cues (Clarke,
2008), it would seem intuitive that the transfer of salience in
this environment should be moderated by whether the child
communicates with the parent about the gift and how much the
parent–child dyad actively discusses advertisements. The lack
of support for any of the three conceptualization of
interpersonal communication that were examined in this study
is a notable finding and may strengthen the notion that
advertising on children’s television programming has a direct
influence on parents’ gift-giving perceptions, while child
requests continue to be an important alternative explanation for
parents’ gift giving perceptions.
Although these conceptualizations of interpersonal
communication did not affect the transfer of salience identified
in this study, caution should be exercised before inferring that
interpersonal communication, more broadly, does not
moderate the relationship between advertising and parents’
perceptions. Each of the conceptualizations used in this study,
while seemingly appropriate and applicable to the present
context, are much more stringent than the conceptualization
and operationalization of interpersonal communication in
traditional agenda-setting research (Wanta and Wu, 1992).
Within the conversation of advertising and ad planning,
because word-of-mouth behaviors are so important to
advertising effectiveness (Hogan et al., 2004), the endeavor to
identify and refine what types of interpersonal communication
either enhance or hinder the transfer of salience from the
advertising agenda to consumer perceptions seems particularly
important. Future research in the present study’s area of
agenda-setting effects in commercial advertising should
Journal of Consumer Marketing
continue to strive to identify which forms of interpersonal
communication influence the transfer of salience.
Even though child purchase requests did not moderate the
relationship between the advertising agenda and consumer
perceptions, there was still a significant transfer of salience from
television advertising to parents’ perceptions that occurred.
Yet, only 36 per cent of all respondents reported television as
the source of their awareness of the gifts they perceived to be
most salient to give. This could suggest that consumers are
being directly influenced by television advertisements even
though they are not aware of it and they are not the primary
targets of the programming that the advertisements are
included in. This could be occurring through either low-
elaboration during television consumption or through indirect
exposure to television advertising. Environmentally, this could
encompass parents who are present in the room and distracted
with other tasks while their children are watching TV.
Advertisers are already recognizing that parents are receiving
some kind of exposure to this content – even though the present
study was interested in the advertised products that targeted
children, the researchers qualitatively noted a presence of
advertisements for products ranging from toilet paper, dish
soap and laundry detergent, to acetaminophen, home security
products and food subscription boxes. Further research should
probe the manner in which parents’ consume television with
their children while experiencing the agenda-setting effects of
the included commercials.
The findings of the present study have theoretical, social and
applied managerial implications that should be acknowledged.
Theoretical implications
The results of this study provide preliminary evidence that
commercial advertising on television stations that primarily
produce content for children influence the consumer
perceptions of parents. Specifically, it illustrates that
the products that are advertised the most by the media will be
perceived to be the most important to purchase and give as
gifts. This is an important finding within the literature on gift-
giving as it suggests an alternate explanation to child requests
for parents’ perceptions of which products are important to give
as gifts to their children. It is also an important finding within
agenda setting as it indicates that transfer of salience occurs in
the advertisement of commercial products. This extends
advertising agenda-setting research into a new direction that
will hopefully propel future research on the theory and on
commercial advertising.
Social implications
Because parents are not the primary target of children’s
programming – the forum of focus in this study – but are still
influenced by the advertising agenda in this setting, the findings
of the present study take on practical meaning for consumer
advocates. Parents are being influenced by the advertising
agenda, and they are not predominantly recognizing it.
Research demonstrates that incidental exposure, and shared
exposure, to advertising content with children can effectively
inform memory for and consideration of advertised products
(Holiday and Davies, 2016; Shapiro et al., 1997). If this
exposure and the resulting effects are in opposition to those
parents’ consumer goals and desires, this becomes another
 Advertising’s influence on parents
Steven Holiday et al.
contribution to the larger discourse on the ethics of advertising
(Jackson et al., 2014).
The lack of a finding to suggest that active advertising
mediation moderates the transfer of salience from the
advertising agenda to parents’ gift-giving agendas may seem to
support this notion. Parental mediation is the manifestation of
media literacy (Mendoza, 2009) and parents, as adults, are
generally literate about television advertising (Friestad and
Wright, 1994). According to the findings of the present study,
parents’ natural tendencies to communicate with their children
about the nature of advertising do not interact with the transfer
of product salience. As relatively few parents in this study
recognized television content as the source of their perceptions
about which gifts are important to give, but the television
commercial advertising agenda still influenced them despite
their tendencies to actively mediate such content, these findings
could suggest that parents may not be directly engaging in the
television programming that is informing their perceptions.
Ultimately, a more robust measure of exposure is needed to
assess whether parents’ exposure to this content was incidental
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or calculated. Future research should examine the role of
exposure in the transfer of salience between advertising and
consumer perceptions.
Managerial implications
Practically, this study also advances collective understanding of
the influences on gift giving beyond child requests or the notion
that advertising can only influence parents’ gift-giving ideas
indirectly through children. As previously noted, the prevalence
and effects of parental co-viewing has been documented in
other contexts (Paavonen et al., 2009). Thus, marketers should
be mindful that advertisements directed toward younger
viewers are often seen by parents as well. Thus, the results
presented here demonstrate that the commercial advertising of
children’s products on children’s television plays an important
role in directly informing parents’ gift-giving perceptions.
Because advertising has a substantial role “in maintaining the
financial base for the media as a whole” (Dorfman and Wallack,
1993, p. 718), the present findings should reassure both
marketers and programmers that advertising on commercial
television maintains efficacy in eliciting top-of-mind response
from consumers. Furthermore, it should encourage marketers,
advertisers and media buyers that advertising content produced
for children’s television influences the child’s parents, and this
influence may not be entirely dependent on influencing the
child first. Such direct influence on parents could strengthen
decisions about including advertising in programming
produced for children into the media mix when the target
audience of a product or service is a parent, even if the parent is
ultimately the target so they can give the product as a gift to
their children.
From an applied perspective, advertising strategy that
revolves around the marketing mix that is selected to inform
parents about the toys and products they should include in their
consideration set for gift giving should continue to include
content that is produced for television, generally, and in
programming for children, specifically. Additionally, marketers
should be mindful of the direct effects through advertisements
directed at children identified here and consider this within
their broader marketing strategy that may include
Journal of Consumer Marketing
advertisements across media platforms and channels (e.g.
magazine, online, etc.). Synergistic agenda-setting effects could
maximize the value of promotional efforts.
Limitations and recommendations
Although the use of a local sample was intentionally
coordinated to coincide with the television market, this method
limits the generalizability of these findings to other television
markets that may include consumers with different
demographic or psychographic characteristics. This study
encourages the replication of these methods in different
markets and in subsequent years to validate the transfer of
salience between the advertising agenda and parents’
perceptions.
Furthermore, the survey method used in this research limits
the inferences that can be made about the causality of the
relationship between the advertising agenda and consumers’
perceptions. To aide with this, the present study did, however,
account for multiple covariates that measured media exposure
beyond television and used a regression analysis that provides
some indication of influence between variables.
Additionally, this study conceptualized interpersonal
communication as communication between parents and
their children. It is conceivable that parents’ gift-giving
perceptions could be moderated or alternatively explained
by interpersonal communication with other friends or
parents. In the present study, this type of interpersonal
communication as a source of knowledge was recognized
and measured. The response option appeared so
infrequently and did not support the study’s theoretical
focus on family communication that it was disregarded early
in the study. Future research should explicitly examine the
influence of interpersonal communication that occurs
outside of the home and influences gift giving.
Finally, this study was conducted at a time where both
advertisers and parents are intensely invested in the gift-giving
traditions of the holiday season. This could limit the
generalizability of these findings to the holiday season. Although
this is a particularly salient time of year to understand advertising
effects, future research should conduct a follow-up study that
examines the transfer of salience from advertising to parents’
perceptions during other times of the year, to see whether parents
are equally affected outside of the holiday season.
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Corresponding author
Steven Holiday can be contacted at: stevenjholiday@gmail.
com