Prince Paul Jeyaraj

Karunya School of Management
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 can
include 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.
1 | A Study on Advertising Message Processing amongst Rural Children

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 prominent
advertising 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 main
objective 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 advertisements
are 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 local
newspapers 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 online
advertising 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 they
can 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:
 Target advertising
 One-day, and long-term campaigns
 Conventions
 Sporting events
 Store openings and similar promotional events
 Big advertisements from smaller companies
 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 “pioneer for ad
creep”. “Kids 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 with
which they can also reach the next generation of consumers. “Key advertising messages exploit the
emerging independence of young people”. Cigarettes, for example, “are 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.”
“Product placements show up everywhere, and children aren't exempt. Far from it, the
animated film, Food fight, had ‘thousands 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 characters“Business 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. “The 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 “represent three distinct markets:
 Primary Purchasers ($2.9 billion annually)

 Future Consumers (Brand-loyal adults)
 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. “In 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: ‘...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 advertising
directed 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 is
interesting 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 products on impulse.
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-appropriate 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 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).
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 impact can be positive 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 equipment
and 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 review

By 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 “attitude toward the ad”. For example, should studies that focus on “feelings” and/or
“emotions” 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 “perceptions” 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 “warmth” in advertising; Batra and Ray’s (1986) examination of “affective 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

advertising
By 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 advertisement

By 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

inquiry
By 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 written
information 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 children
have 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.

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 best—known of these dimensions is
that of perceptual boundedness: younger children's tendency to focus on the perceptual and surface
characteristics 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 describing
general 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 product
class 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 the
other 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 correct
meaning 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 indicated
that 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 “patterns 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 will
sometimes 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 knowledge
By 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 aimed
at 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 Research
By 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 Journal 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 developments
in 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 on

television 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 to
television 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's
development. 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 4th to 6th, the questionnaire was distributed. Each
question was read and explained to them and they gave their answers to the questionnaire. For the
Children who studies 2nd and 3rd 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
Crosstab
Count
age
7-8 9 - 10 11 - 12 Total
daily schedule less than 30 minutes 13 10 6 29
for watching TV 30 minutes to one hour 19 14 19 52
? one to two hours 10 15 31 56
two to three hours 9 17 19 45
Total 51 56 75 182
Chi-Square Tests
Asymp. Sig.
Value df (2-sided)
Pearson Chi-Square 14.724a 6 .023
Likelihood Ratio 14.959 6 .021
Linear-by-Linear
8.237 1 .004
Association
N of Valid Cases 182
a. 0 cells (.0%) have expected count less than 5. The
minimum expected count is 8.13.
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.

Preference for TV Programs by different age groups and gender:
Crosstabs
Your favorite program and channel in the TV ? * Gender
Crosstab
Count
gender
male female Total
your favorite chutti TV 26 30 56
program and cartoon network 21 13 34
channel in cricket 26 14 40
the TV ?
regional tv 16 25 41
others 10 1 11
Total 99 83 182
Chi-Square Tests
Asymp. Sig.
Value df (2-sided)
Linear-by-Linear
.872 1 .350
Association
Your favorite program and channel in the TV ? * age
Crosstab
Count
age
7-8 9 - 10 11 - 12 Total
your favorite chutti TV 25 14 17 56
program and cartoon network 10 14 10 34
channel in cricket 8 14 18 40
the TV ?
regional tv 6 13 22 41
others 2 1 8 11
Total 51 56 75 182

Chi-Square Tests
Asymp. Sig.
Value df (2-sided)
Linear-by-Linear
14.578 1 .000
Association
a. 3 cells (20.0%) have expected count less than 5. The
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.

Parental Control over setting daily priorities:
Crosstabs
Who prioritize these activities for you ? * Age
Crosstab
Count
age
7-8 9 - 10 11 - 12 Total
who prioritize yourself 31 17 31 79
these activities your parents 12 16 18 46
for you ? together 8 23 26 57
Total 51 56 75 182
Chi-Square Tests
Asymp. Sig.
Value df (2-sided)
Linear-by-Linear
4.828 1 .028
Association
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.

Parental control over media usage:
Factor Analysis
Total Variance Explained
Initial Eigenvalues Extraction Sums of Squared Loadings Rotation Sums of Squared Loadings
Component Total % of Variance Cumulative % Total % of Variance Cumulative % Total % of Variance Cumulative %
1 1.333 13.331 13.331 1.333 13.331 13.331 1.262 12.625 12.625
2 1.299 12.987 26.317 1.299 12.987 26.317 1.200 12.004 24.629
3 1.204 12.041 38.358 1.204 12.041 38.358 1.185 11.851 36.480
4 1.081 10.806 49.164 1.081 10.806 49.164 1.146 11.462 47.942
5 1.003 10.030 59.194 1.003 10.030 59.194 1.125 11.252 59.194
6 .933 9.327 68.521
7 .887 8.870 77.392
8 .804 8.036 85.427
9 .749 7.490 92.918
10 .708 7.082 100.000
Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.
Rotated Component Matrixa
Component
1 2 3 4 5
they are irrational and do
not understand that you -.539 -.196 .357 .424 -5.58E-02
have grown up
because they feel that
most of the TV programs -2.24E-03 -2.78E-02 .817 -4.29E-02 -5.67E-02
are not for kids
you also feel that these
.343 -4.19E-02 .315 2.459E-02 .599
programs are not for you
your demand for buying
things gets increased by -.124 -.692 .167 -.126 .291
TV
they want you to just study
and score good marks so
1.554E-03 .443 .419 7.874E-02 .244
that your parents can tell
this to their friends ?
they feel that by watching
a lot of TV you will get .250 -4.82E-02 .192 -4.05E-02 -.747
spoiled ?
they are worried about
-2.98E-02 7.106E-02 -.121 .844 .128
your eye sight ?
they want you to play
.774 -7.43E-02 1.414E-02 7.164E-02 -4.22E-02
outdoor games instead
you do not understand
their behavior since they
-.398 5.289E-02 -.184 -.460 .148
themselves watch a lot of
TV
they should in fact let you
take your own decision on -.134 .685 5.199E-02 -.103 .132
watching TV
Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.
a. Rotation converged in 12 iterations.

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 questioned
the 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
because advertising are entertaining ?
Cumulative
Frequency Percent Valid Percent Percent
Valid fully agree 36 19.8 19.8 19.8
partially agree 80 44.0 44.0 63.7
disagree 66 36.3 36.3 100.0
Total 182 100.0 100.0
so that your parents can watch them and buy you things ?
Cumulative
disagree 13 7.1 7.1 100.0
Total 182 100.0 100.0
so that you watch them and choose things for yourself
Cumulative
disagree 37 20.3 20.3 100.0
Total 182 100.0 100.0
so that your parents can easily be persuaded by you to buy certain things ?
Cumulative
disagree 33 18.1 18.1 100.0
Total 182 100.0 100.0

so that everybody should know what is available in the market ?
Cumulative
disagree 39 21.4 21.4 100.0
Total 182 100.0 100.0
to fill the gap between two programmes
Cumulative
disagree 2 1.1 1.1 100.0
Total 182 100.0 100.0
TV companies earn money by showing the advertisements ?
Cumulative
disagree 23 12.6 12.6 100.0
Total 182 100.0 100.0
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.

Attitudes and feelings towards advertisements:
Crosstabs
do you think all the advertisements shown on TV or printed in the newspapers are truthful ? * age
Crosstabulation
Count
age
7-8 9 - 10 11 - 12 Total
do you think all the always 27 13 25 65
advertisements shown on
never 15 19 21 55
TV or printed in the
newspapers are truthful ? half truth and half lie 9 24 29 62
Total 51 56 75 182
Chi-Square Tests
Asymp. Sig.
Value df (2-sided)
Linear-by-Linear
5.822 1 .016
Association
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.

Influences on attitude towards advertisements:
Crosstabs
you feel that way because * age Crosstabulation
Count
age
7-8 9 - 10 11 - 12 Total
you feel your parents feel that way 6 9 6 21
that way your elder brother or
because 3 4 7
sister feel that way
your friends feel that way 17 9 28 54
your teacher feel that way 6 3 9 18
you know it because it is
19 31 32 82
so simple
Total 51 56 75 182
Chi-Square Tests
Asymp. Sig.
Value df (2-sided)
Linear-by-Linear
.907 1 .341
Association
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.

Attitude towards advertisement endorsers and source:
Tables
fully agree partially agree disagree

Count % Count % Count %
an ad where a doc ,
scientist or a successful
111 61.0% 38 20.9% 33 18.1%
sportsman advocates a
pdt is a truthful ad ?
products with good
advertisements are good 69 37.9% 69 37.9% 44 24.2%
products
goodlooking models
generally advocate good 75 41.2% 74 40.7% 33 18.1%
products
famous personalities will
always advocate good 70 38.5% 75 41.2% 37 20.3%
products
famous companies make
109 59.9% 40 22.0% 33 18.1%
good products
advertisements which are
seen most often are of 47 25.8% 77 42.3% 58 31.9%
good products
you like the
advertisements because
the advertised product is 81 44.5% 35 19.2% 66 36.3%
already used in your
house ?
your parents are the best
judge of a good or a bad 93 51.1% 52 28.6% 37 20.3%
product
there is no relationship
between likeable
58 31.9% 67 36.8% 57 31.3%
advertisement and a good
product
advertisements featuring
children of your age 68 37.4% 75 41.2% 39 21.4%
impress you more
you do not know the exact
reasons as to why you 29 15.9% 86 47.3% 67 36.8%
like an advertisement

Factor Analysis
KMO and Bartlett's Test

Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling
Adequacy. .517
Bartlett's Test of Approx. Chi-Square 81.631

Sphericity df 55
Sig. .011
Rotated Component Matrixa
Component
1 2 3 4 5
an ad where a doc ,
scientist or a successful
.229 .338 -.220 .206 -.613
sportsman advocates a
pdt is a truthful ad ?
products with good
advertisements are good -9.99E-02 .750 -.234 1.830E-02 2.717E-02
products
goodlooking models
generally advocate good .424 -6.64E-02 .283 .589 9.651E-03
products
famous personalities will
always advocate good .806 .118 1.113E-02 4.677E-02 -3.60E-02
products
famous companies make
3.914E-02 .177 .736 2.242E-02 7.491E-02
good products
advertisements which are
seen most often are of .122 .266 -.271 .116 .706
good products
you like the
advertisements because
the advertised product is -3.15E-02 -.199 .497 -9.50E-02 -.140
already used in your
house ?
your parents are the best
judge of a good or a bad .108 3.577E-02 .270 -.782 5.307E-02
product
there is no relationship
between likeable
-.468 .310 -2.67E-02 -3.25E-02 -.312
advertisement and a good
product
advertisements featuring
children of your age -2.45E-02 -.587 -.309 5.774E-02 -6.60E-03
impress you more
you do not know the exact
reasons as to why you -.540 .223 .121 .439 .252
like an advertisement
Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.
a. Rotation converged in 23 iterations.

Total Variance Explained
Initial Eigenvalues Extraction Sums of Squared Loadings Rotation Sums of Squared Loadings
Component Total % of Variance Cumulative % Total % of Variance Cumulative % Total % of Variance Cumulative %
1 1.590 14.454 14.454 1.590 14.454 14.454 1.432 13.015 13.015
2 1.391 12.648 27.102 1.391 12.648 27.102 1.329 12.078 25.092
3 1.177 10.697 37.799 1.177 10.697 37.799 1.229 11.175 36.267
4 1.107 10.068 47.867 1.107 10.068 47.867 1.224 11.126 47.393
5 1.013 9.210 57.077 1.013 9.210 57.077 1.065 9.684 57.077
6 .963 8.755 65.832
7 .932 8.472 74.304
8 .868 7.892 82.196
9 .688 6.256 88.452
10 .670 6.094 94.546
11 .600 5.454 100.000
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 x2 measure) indicated that the variables correlated, hence suitable for factor
analysis.

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
how do you feel when you watch your favorite TV advertisement ? * age Crosstabulation
Count
age
7-8 9 - 10 11 - 12 Total
how do you feel delighted 10 19 35 64
when you watch excited 26 22 21 69
your favorite TV feel like owning the
advertisement ? 12 8 10 30
product
try to remember the
jingle or the dialog 3 7 9 19
of the advertisemet
Total 51 56 75 182
Chi-Square Tests
Asymp. Sig.
Value df (2-sided)
Linear-by-Linear
2.091 1 .148
Association
how do you feel when you watch the advertisements that you dislike the most ? * age
Crosstabulation
Count
age
7-8 9 - 10 11 - 12 Total
how do you feel angry 21 13 11 45
when you watch the feel like changing the
advertisements that 18 24 31 73
channel
you dislike the most develop negative
? feelings towards the 7 16 25 48
advertised product
the disliking towards
the advt decreases 5 3 8 16
as you see more
Total 51 56 75 182

Chi-Square Tests
Asymp. Sig.
Value df (2-sided)
Linear-by-Linear
8.467 1 .004
Association
INTERPRETATION:
From the Tables, it is obtained that when children watch their favorite advertisement they
feel 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.

Elements creating likeability towards an advertisement and their

importance:
Tables
first second third fourth fifth sixth

influencing influencing influencing influencing influencing influencing
factor factor factor factor factor factor Total
Count Count Count Count Count Count Count
you like the model of the
57 35 46 10 17 17 182
advertisement
you like the music and the
26 51 42 33 23 7 182
song of the advertisement
you like the slogan in it 29 45 33 33 42 182
because everybody in the
house likes it and 33 24 39 29 36 21 182
therefore you like it
because your best friend
like it and therefore you 20 16 18 35 23 70 182
like it
you like the advertised
product and therefore you 13 11 7 39 41 71 182
like the advertisement
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 responses
have been ranked as per the preference for the most liked elements.

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
is it true that you will buy the product of the advertisement which you liked ? *
age Crosstabulation
Count
age
7-8 9 - 10 11 - 12 Total
is it true that you will yes
41 52 59 152
buy the product of
the advertisement no
which you liked ? 10 4 16 30
Total 51 56 75 182
Chi-Square Tests
Asymp. Sig.
Value df (2-sided)
Linear-by-Linear
.246 1 .620
Association
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.

Involvement of Children with advertising:
Frequencies
do you discuss the advertisements among your friends ?
Cumulative
Valid yes 156 85.7 85.7 85.7
no 26 14.3 14.3 100.0
Total 182 100.0 100.0
Crosstabs
what is generally discussed about the advertisements especially among friends

? * age Crosstabulation
Count
age
7-8 9 - 10 11 - 12 Total
what is generally product 7 10 4 21
discussed about jingle 9 13 8 30
the advertisements models 25 21 35 81
especially among
slogan 6 6 23 35
friends ?
action 4 6 5 15
Total 51 56 75 182
Chi-Square Tests
Asymp. Sig.
Value df (2-sided)
Linear-by-Linear
5.117 1 .024
Association

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
 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).
 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.
 Predictably, age of the child is another important factor impacting upon the ability to decode an
advertising message.
 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.
 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.

 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.
 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
 Children like entertaining advertisements on television. They like advertisements dramatizing the
situation or benefits of products and with good lively visuals.
 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
 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.
 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.
 The advertisement message directed towards children has to be entertaining and not necessarily
‘‘humorous’’. A message narrating only the product attributes or benefits may not work well with
children.
 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.
 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.
 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 brand
cognition leads to brand attitude, which finally reinforces the purchase intention.

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Issues and Research in Advertising, Vol. 17, Fall, pp. 25-58.
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attitude: considerations across message-involvement levels’’, Journal of Advertising, pp. 23-34.
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Dainik Bhaskar group of Publication, Bhopal, p. 37.
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medicine advertising’’, Journal of Consumer Research, pp. 247-55.
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of research’’, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 26, December, p. 183.
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Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Vol. 38 No. 3, pp 323-37.
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Children, Sage Publications, New Delhi.
Ward, S. (1972), ‘‘Children’s reactions to commercials’’, Journal of Advertising Research, pp. 37-45.
Ward, S., Wackman, D.B. and Wartella, E. (1977), How Children Learn to Buy, Sage, Beverly Hills,
CA.
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1983), 337-49
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Ellen Wartella, Daniel B. Wackasan, Scott Ward “Children's Consumer Information processing:
representation of Information from Television Advertisements”
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results from a diary study”, Journal of Advertising research, October/November 1987
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No. 1, February/March, 1983

APPENDIX A
QUESTIONNAIRE
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 family
4. Only with father or mother with other brothers/sisters and grandparents and/or other
relatives
5. 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 much
time do you spend on each activity? (Give approximate number of minutes or hours)
Schedule Time Spent

Less than 30 minutes One to Two to Three to More than
30 to one two hours three six hours six hours
minutes hour hours
At school
Homework and
Studies
Playing
Watching TV
Reading
newspapers
or magazines
Taking rest or
Sleeping
Daily activities
like 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? (Specify
approximate number of hours or minutes)
Schedule Time Spent

Less than 30 minutes One to Two to Three to More than
30 to one hour two hours three six hours six hours
minutes hours
At school
Homework and
Studies
Playing
Watching TV
Reading
newspapers
or magazines
Taking rest or
Sleeping
Daily activities
like
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 principal
2. through the report cards
3. By asking and talking to you
4. By asking and talking to your friends
5. 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 friends
2. Since they regularly meet your class teacher and come with you to play ground
3. Since they talk to you regularly about your co-curricular activities
4. They are not aware of your friends circle

8. How often do you do the following?
Activity Never Less than Once a One to two Three to four Every day
once a week week days a week days a week
Watching
TV
Reading
newspaper
Reading
magazines
Listening
music
Listening
to the radio
Using
Internet
Any other
(like
tuition)
9. At a time, how much time do you devote for the above listed activities?
Activity Less than One to two Two to three More than

one hour hours hours 3 hours
Watching TV
Reading
newspaper
Reading
magazines
Listening
music
Listening to the
radio
Using Internet
Any other (like
tuition)

10. Who all are with you when you do the following?
Activity Alone Family members are Along with friends

present
Always Sometimes Always Sometimes Always Sometimes
Watching TV
Reading newspapers
Reading magazines
Listening music
Listening to the radio
Using Internet
Any other (like tuition)
11. Which programs/channel do you like most in the TV and which is your next favorite?
Most favorite program/channel

Program Channel
12. Do you watch advertisements on TV? (1) Yes [ ] (2) No [ ]
Your most favorite Why you like it? Your most disliked Why you dislike it?
advertisement(s) advertisement(s)
13. How do you feel when you watch your favorite advertisement(s)?
1. Delighted
2. Excited
3. Feel like owning the product
4. 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. Angry
2. Feel like changing the channel
3. Develop negative feelings towards the advertised product
4. 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 Magazines

1. Headlines
2. Current affairs news
3. Sports news
4. Children’s section
5. Puzzles
6. Your city news
17. Do you read advertisements in newspapers/magazines? (1) Yes [ ] (2) No [ ]
Your most favorite Why you like it? Your most disliked Why you dislike it?
advertisement(s) advertisement(s)
18. How do you feel when you read your favorite advertisement(s)?
1. Delighted
2. Excited
3. Feel like owning the product
4. Try to remember the slogan of the advertisements
19. How do you feel when you read the advertisements that you dislike the most?
1. Angry
2. Feel like turning the page
3. Develop a negative feeling towards the advertised product
4. 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 irritated
2. Delighted
3. You vouch for not buying the advertised brand ever in the future
4. You simply switch the channel knowing that you do not have a control over these
things
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. Home
2. Friend’s house
3. School
4. Cyber cafe
5. Father’s/mother’s office
6. Others
23. Why do you access the Internet? (You may tick on more than one choice)
1. Sending e-mails
2. Obtain information on schoolwork
3. Obtain information that is of interest to you
4. 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 disagree

with the following statements)
No. Statement Fully agree Partially agree Disagree

1. Because advertisements are
entertaining
2. So that your parents can watch
them and buy you things
3. So that you watch them and

choose things for yourself
4. So that your parents can easily be
persuaded by you to buy certain
things
5. So that everybody should know
what is available in
the market
6. To fill the gap between two
programes
7. TV companies earn money by
showing the advertisements
25. You have agreed or disagreed to all the above because:

1. Your parents say so
2. Your elder brother or sister says so
3. Your friends say so
4. Your teacher says so
5. 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 magazines
are truthful?
1. Always
2. 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 way

2. Your elder brother or sisters feel that way
3. Your friends feel that way
4. Your teacher feels that way
5. You know it because it is so simple
6. 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 Rank

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 it
5. Because your best friend likes it and therefore you like it
6. You like the advertised product and therefore you like the advertisement (like
you may be liking all the chocolate advertisements because you like
chocolates)
29. Do you agree or disagree to the following statements?
No Statement Fully Partially Disagree

. agree agree
1. An advertisement where a doctor, scientist or a successful

sportsman advocates a product is a truthful advertisement
2. Products with good advertisements are good products
3. Good-looking models generally advocate good products
4. Famous personalities will always advocate good products
(like Sachin Tendulkar for Pepsi and Kapil Dev for Boost)
5. Famous companies make good products
6. Advertisements which are seen most often are of good
products
7. You like an advertisement because the advertised product
is already used in your house
8. Your parents are the best judge of a good or a bad product
9. There is no relationship between likeable advertisement
and a good product
10. Advertisements featuring children of your age impress
you more
11. 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 the
advertised 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. Product
2. Jingle
3. Models
4. Slogan
5. 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 Fully Partially Disagree

. agree agree
1. They are irrational and do not understand that you have

grown up
2. Because they feel that most of the TV programs and
Internet contents are not for kids
3. You also feel that these programs are not for you
4. Your demand for buying things gets increased by TV and
the Internet
5. They want you to just study and score good marks so that
your parents can tell this to their friends
6. They feel that by watching a lot of TV and spending a lot
of time with the Internet you will get spoiled
7. They are worried about your eyesight
8. They want you to play outdoor games instead
9. You do not understand their behavior since they
themselves watch a lot of TV and spend lot of time on
the Internet
10. They should in fact let you take your own decision on
watching TV and using the Internet since you have
grown up

35. For your homework or extra studies at home (you may tick on more than one choice)
1. You take tuition
2. 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. Tamil
2. Telugu
3. Malayalam
4. 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) 2nd [ ] (2) 3rd [ ] (3) 4th [ ] (4) 5th [ ] (5) 6th [ ]
Thank You

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Karunya School of Management

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

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Attitude toward the Ad: a review

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Attitude-behavior consistency in children's responses to television

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Children’s responses toward gender role stereotyped advertisement

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

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

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Models of adult consumer information processing have tended to distinguish those

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