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Advertising effects on children
Advertising effects on children
Advertising effects on children
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Food advertising to children is a controversial issue that is considered as a source of attention to many investigators and analysts due to its influential impact on children’s food choices and parents buying behavior. Food advertising is the primary type of advertising that people go through on a daily basis. Nowadays, the industry of food advertising is growing enormously in the middle east region and Malaysia as a result of the huge amount of food advertisements, especially junk food ads that reach people directly and indirectly through various mediums that deliver advertising contents to the audience. Children and youth are the main target audience for fast food advertisers, mainly because of their purchasing influence, exposure to TV and …show more content…
In the middle east and Malaysia, there are huge marketing promotions of food high in fat and many parents are having a tough responsibility in which they are confined between picking a good selection of healthy food products or to succumb to their desires and their children’s requests to buy unhealthy advertised food products. Therefore, fast food advertising has a profound negative influence on children’s food choices and parents buying behavior in the middle east and Malaysia as it attracts them through several mediums and themes, resulting in unhealthy eating habits and an increase in the consumption of unhealthy food that causes negative health effects as obesity and weight gain, along with a great tendency in the middle eastern society and the Malaysian to eat western style fast foods, which in return creates a shift from traditional foods and a growing demand for western fast food outlets that rise from the western culture influence on …show more content…
It attracts children as a main target audience using numerous mediums and themes that feature food advertising contents. These mediums include television channels, internet, films, videogames, and supermarket promotions. Currently, advertising through television is the most prominent medium that advertisers use to promote food products to children, because it is the platform that many children spend much of their time on watching their entertaining channels. While watching the TV, children are exposed to a lot of embedded advertisements that contain animations, pictures, appealing statements, music, colors, cartoon characters, and celebrities. All of these are some themes that advertisers use to grab the attention of children while watching TV. According to Nassar & Zien (2012) who analyzed the effects of TV ads on children in the middle east, “children pay more attention to what they see rather than to what they only hear” (p.268). Hence, fast food advertisers take this opportunity to their advantage by designing advertisements with many visual triggers along with a nice food packaging and a great displaying of the product. A study about the effects of food ads on children and parents found that the majority of children in a sample size of 75 favored to have the unhealthy advertised food item they saw on TV than a healthy
...f television advertisements for junk food versus nutritious food on children's food attitudes and preferences. Social science & medicine, 65, (7), pp. 1311-1323.
Sutherland, Lisa., MacKenzie, Todd., Purvis, Lisa., Dalton, Madeline. “Research shows that food and beverage product placements in movies may be a potent source of advertising to children.” Hood Center of Children and Families. Retrieved April 22, 2014. (http://hoodcenter.dartmouth.edu/FoodProductPlacement.html)
Obesity in the United States, which the media has labeled a national crisis, has also been connected to poverty rates. Big fast food industry’s target poor communities, and spend millions of dollars each year to create advertising that appeals to these specific areas. These industry’s also target naïve children when advertising because they know that eating habits developed in childhood are usually carried into adulthood. Children who are exposed to television advertisements for unhealthy food and who are not educated well enough on good nutrition will grow up and feed their families the same unhealthy foods they ate as kids. A big way fast food giants are able to make certain young people have access to unhealthy food is by strategically placing franchises in close proximity to schools. They will often place three times as many outlets within walking distance of schools than in areas where there are no schools nearby. The way fast food advertising is targeted towards children is very alarming considering how important good nutrition is for young people and how a child’s eating habits can affect their growth and
The fast food industry is one of the largest sectors of the United States economy. Companies such as Burger King, Wendy's, Taco Bell, McDonalds and KFC have all become household names. Each of these companies operates under a similar mission statement: to serve a quick, filling meal for a very low cost. The primary marketing medium for these companies is television where via commercials, they can portray both their products and a lifestyle. Their intense advertising focus on minorities and children, however, has begun to exacerbate the epidemic of obesity that is sweeping our nation. Fast food's televised advertising is a significant contributor to obesity in today's minority youth. By promoting unhealthy tendencies and high-calorie foods as well as an attitude that promotes tolerance of diseases such as obesity, these companies are influencing people to such a degree that it is negatively affecting their health. This dangerous marketing method is not only sweeping America, but other countries as well. The emphasis on fast food companies' immoral marketing raises the question: Are people eating for hunger or because of an advertised, influenced habit? However, we must also address whether or not fast food companies are mainly responsible, or if the blame also covers their consumers.
Any agency that uses children for marketing schemes spend hundreds of billions dollars each year world wide persuading and manipulating consumer’s lifestyles that lead to overindulgence and squandering. Three articles uncover a social problem that advertising companies need to report about. In his research piece “Kid Kustomers” Eric Schlosser considers the reasons for the number of parents that allow their children to consume such harmful foods such as ‘McDonalds’. McDonalds is food that is meant to be fast and not meant to be a regular diet. Advertising exploits children’s needs for the wealth of their enterprise, creating false solutions, covering facts about their food and deceiving children’s insecurities. It contains dissatisfaction that leads to over consumption. Children are particularly vulnerable to this sort of manipulation, American Psychological Association article, “Youth Oriented Advertising” reveals the facts upon the statics on consumers in the food industries. The relationship that encourages young children to adapt towards food marketing schemes, make them more vulnerable to other schemes, such as, advertising towards clothing, toys and cars. Article writer of “The relationship between cartoon trade character recognition and attitude toward product category in young children”, Richard Mizerski, discusses a sample that was given to children ages three to six years old, about how advertising incurs young children that are attracted too certain objects or products on the market.
Commercials make the viewer think about the product being advertised. Because of the amount of television children watch throughout the week, it allows the children to be exposed to the information over and over again. Per year, children are known to view thousands of fast food commercials. On a daily basis, a teen will usually view five advertisements and a child aged six to eleven will see around four advertisements (Burger Battles 4). Businesses use this strategy to “speak directly to children” (Ruskin 3). Although the big businesses in the fast ...
Food advertising contributes to childhood obesity in many ways. One of them being that the food advertised is unhealthy. “The mechanism of effect of media exposure on obesity may also operate through the extensive advertising messages for unhealthy foods targeted at children.” (Agarwal, Dhanasekaran) The food advertising geared towards children makes them develop unhealthy eating habits, and choices. The advertisements are usually advertising unhealthy foods, never healthy ones. “When children watch television, they cannot escape food advertising. “Sugared snacks and drinks, cereal, and fast food advertisements respectively comprise approximately thirty-two percent, thirty-one percent, and nine percent of all advertisements marketed specifically to children.” (Termini, Roberto, Hostetter) Due to limited cognitive abilities, children view many food advertisements, and don’t really have the knowledge or capability to comprehend that the food being advertised is not healthy.
Worcester Polytechnic Institution. "Fast Food Marketing to Children." Public Health Communication. (2007). http://www.wpi.edu/Pubs/E-project/Available/E-project-082107-231740/unrestricted/Appendix_1.pdf (accessed February 17, 2014).
One way that fast food effects obesity is by advertising their products to children (Miller). In her article Food Advertising Contributes to Obesity, Patti Miller explains that the fast food companies are targeting kids and teenagers by advertising on television. The fast food advertisements are promoting unhealthy products as acceptable food which influences children to choose those meals. The American Psychological Association, an organization focused on improving the lives of individuals, expressed that with the exposure of different fast food commercials, children request to purchase these unhealthy products and cause the parents to be influenced by these requests. This concludes the idea that once children are encouraged by the commercials, they opt to consume the fast food advertised on television. Today, fast food companies are even advertising through schools by offering pizzas and burgers as school lunches, which consequently becomes a daily meal for children and teenagers to consume (Wadden, Brownell,
On that note, the families and communities where the children live significantly influence their learned lifestyles and activities of daily living that include the eating habits and physical activities. There will be a big challenge on how to teach the children to develop healthy and environmentally-friendly lifestyles when the community lacks full support. Programs that will encourage consumption of plant-based diets particularly fresh fruits and vegetables will surely help in minimizing obesity and climate change. However, the presence of fast-food outlets, and the flourishing poor quality foods influencing the unhealthy food choices and eating habits of the children would be a big issue to deal with. The business motivations behind food marketing created food fads and culture that developed fascination on trending unhealthy foods that include fast foods, sugar and fats-loaded foods, canned and processed foods.
Through Eric Schlosser’s book Fast Food Nation he examines the effects that fast food has impacted the world and the way it is affecting the people that are consuming it. As the fast food industry continues to grow throughout not only the United States but the whole world, marketing companies are always looking for ways to broaden the group of people that are interested in buying their product over another company’s. As a marketer for a fast food company it is essential to have a group of people that you can rely on to always buy the company’s product, to many fast food companies they found this group of people to be adolescents and children. Marketing groups specifically market their products to entice this group of people to lure them in. Food is an object that is needed for the survival of a human, but the type of food that humans chose to eat is also not always the best. Because fast food is so cheap and easily accessible just about everywhere you turn your head, many people resort to eating it even though it is very unhealthy. With these factors present, many adults have exposed their children to fast food at a young age, these parents do not always think about the long term effects of feeding their children fast food because they are so caught up in the moment of feeding their kids right then and there; they do not think about the health risks that can occur later as a result from eating fast food now.
Across America in homes, schools, and businesses, sits advertisers' mass marketing tool, the television, usurping freedoms from children and their parents and changing American culture. Virtually an entire nation has surrendered itself wholesale to a medium for selling. Advertisers, within the constraints of the law, use their thirty-second commercials to target America's youth to be the decision-makers, convincing their parents to buy the advertised toys, foods, drinks, clothes, and other products. Inherent in this targeting, especially of the very young, are the advertisers; fostering the youth's loyalty to brands, creating among the children a loss of individuality and self-sufficiency, denying them the ability to explore and create but instead often encouraging poor health habits. The children demanding advertiser's products are influencing economic hardships in many families today. These children, targeted by advertisers, are so vulnerable to trickery, are so mentally and emotionally unable to understand reality because they lack the cognitive reasoning skills needed to be skeptical of advertisements. Children spend thousands of hours captivated by various advertising tactics and do not understand their subtleties.
McGinnis, J. Michael., Jennifer Appleton. Gootman, and Vivica I. Kraak. Food Marketing to Children and Youth: Threat or Opportunity? Washington, D.C.: National Academies, 2006. Print.
Advertising uses the power of suggestion to sell a product. In the case of children, a company’s advertisement hopes to suggest that their product is best. Many food companies target children with the hopes that they can influence their parents'choices when it comes to buying a product. The product is a. Animated characters, catch phrases, and toys are used to lure a child to the product. WORKS CITED Dittmann, Melissa. A. (2004, June 6).
The more important part of focus on how ads are affecting our lives is in regards to food and beverage consumption. The vast growth and production of commercial food has skyrocketed over the past 20 years. Restaurants have been able to produce at faster rates and more efficiently due to there being high levels of mass commercial production. The affect that technology has had on food production is intense to the extent that it can get you to start salivating just by looking at the ad (Behrens, Rosen 564). The companies have mastered the technique of playing on our emotional pull towards food, and this has been greatly a success because of the marketing tactics used. Ever ordered something on the 99 cents menu and it looks exactly as it did in