Imagine a challenge that tests our ideas about money and how we respond to it under certain conditions. This test involves the auction of a twenty-dollar bill with very simple rules. The highest bidder will get the bill and the second highest bidder receives nothing but pays the amount of the losing bid. As the test progresses players in the room bid above the face value ending the bid at twenty-eight dollars. The question now is, ‘Why would anyone want to pay above the face value?’ Behavioral economists believe that when decisions are made on value, the human mind often behaves irrationally. People judge value based on prior knowledge fed to them at some point in their lives and not something thoroughly researched. This is the kind of misinformed …show more content…
thinking that has shaped the world of governance, business and policy in today’s world. ‘The consumer embryo begins to develop during the first year of existence. Children begin their consumer journey in infancy and they certainly deserve consideration as consumers of that time.’ Not since the end of WW2 and at the peak of the baby boom era has there been so many kids in the world today. There are now more than 73 million children in the US under the age of 12, making it the largest youth population recorded in half a century. For American businesses millennials will represent the ultimate prize for their brand recognition loyalty from cradle to grave. Marketers have their sights on children because of their ever increasing buying power. The amount of money spent by younger audiences now on everything from clothes to music to electronics total a whopping 90 billion dollars a year. This figure ignores the amount of adult spending influenced by kids under the age of 12, which contributes over 700 billion dollars a year. This figure is the equivalent of the economies of the poorest 115 countries in the world with a combined GDP of 704 billion dollars. One economic impact of kids is the amount of money they themselves spend. Kids often receive money from their parents or grandparents in the form of an allowance. When they get older the money earned themselves is significant as well when brand loyalty comes into play. However, advertisers know that the real money is in their purchasing influence. With such great purchasing power and influence marketers/advertisers have become much more deliberate in their strategies in influencing those dollars. Often it’s the children who determines what kinds of cars get bought, computers, cellphones, furniture, TV’s and family vacations. Most parents and other people don’t realize how corporations and marketers try to make parents miserable. In fact, corporate marketers throughout the years have spent billions on researching “nagging” and how it impacts parents’ purchases. Sometimes kids use the phrase “Can I” as much as 9 times after viewing an advertisement. With the nag factor in place, it’s able to help maximize the number of times kids will be asking for a particular item. With that being said kids hold immense power in the economy and corporations know this. Our generation of youngsters is marketed to like never before through product placement, brand licensing, marketing in schools, self-marketing, videogames, internet and many other ways. When you think about it, every minute there’s a brand in a child’s face in the form of 360-degree marketing. Kids now multitask with media using more than one source at the same time. They’re surfing the web at times and viewing television. This makes them more vulnerable and open to on average 3000 messages per day. Think of kids as media hogs that absorb ‘secured brand loyalty’ for life. This involves individuals that life is about buying and getting what you want, whenever and wherever you want. The philosophy changes to getting kids at an early age, targeting them often and in as many places as possible. Not just by getting a parent to fork out money for their kid but rather to convert them to a consumer lifestyle. This uptick in mass consumption of median, good and services weren’t recent but can be linked to as far back as the early 1800’s. in the past children’s consumer culture was a very cheap culture. Back then before the 70’s, kids only had nickels to spend so advertising to kids was very confined. In the 70’s the FTC proposed a ban on ads directed at kids due to misleading information.
This was done because cereal companies were selling sugary foods which led to cavities. The FTC also believed that kids below the age of eight weren’t able to figure out if advertisers were deceiving them. This ban would ultimate affect the sugar and cereal companies if congress approved for the motion to adopt this bill. These industries responded by persuading congress to pass the “FTC Improvement Act”, which mandated the FTC would no longer have any authority to decide any matters on children’s advertising. Soon after this ruling other regulatory arms of government would be dealt a fatal blow during the early 1980’s. During the 80’s decade consumers began investing in the financial bubble as many people were becoming rich overnight. Under the Raegan Administration many industries were deregulated and in 1984 advertising restriction to kids were completely deregulated. Corporations were now free to do as they please. Prior to the deregulation of advertising authorities, kids on average spent at a conservative rate of about 4.2 billion dollars a year. After the Raegan Administration’s decision to wipe out regulatory boards, kids spending increased to 40 billion dollars, an 850 percent increase. As the walls of the FTC fell, the top best selling toys such as Transformers, Marvel, GI Joe and WWE Figures were all based of TV shows. The success in the booming media industry paved the way for a new generation of advertising. For example, when the Marvel superhero TV shows came out, there were over 4000 products sold related to the show. Kraft’s Mac and Cheese highest selling cartoon character was SpongeBob Squarepants. ‘Product Placement- A practice in which manufacturers of goods or providers of a service gain exposure for their products by paying for them to be featured in movies and television programs.’ (Google
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There should be limit’s that stop’s food companies from promoting themselves as appealing when in reality their food products are a hazard to our bodies. As Barboza states in his article “There is a need to set specific standards on what is marketed to children…” we are in agreement that, what ever kids see on T.V. or being marketed, they want it! As a child I remember that I wanted many things I saw on T.V. like Carl's Jr, Lucky Charms, Mcdonald's, Gushers, ect… When eating these food products, as you get older it affects your health. A good
“FERPA [Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act] essentially means you have no right, as a parent, to know what or how your children are doing in school.” Michele Willens says this in her article, “College Students Have Too Much Privacy” about the FERPA act that was passed in 1974. It was originally put in place to protect the privacy of students, but it also keeps information private from the student’s parents, or current gauardians. Because so many parents waste money on college students that might miss classes or even drop out without them knowing, the FERPA act needs to be reformed.
...s evasive when it came to monetary exchange and its effects. Money tends to make the reasonable, unreasonable at times. We see evidence of this everyday as people are corrupted by money.
In the course of writing this paper I learned about the way the human mind can be manipulated by very simple things, and when it is discovered it is often too late. There are smart gamblers who do win, but the majority don’t think and wind up spending incredible amounts of money.
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)
...od Television Ads Use Toys, Movies to Target Kids”. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. 28. Aug. 2013. 13. Sept. 2013. http://www.rwjf.org/en/about-rwjf/newsroom/newsroom-content/2013/08/fast-food-television-ads-use-toys--movies-to-target-kids.html
According to Mark Dolliver, “foods account for 39 percent of TV advertising seen by 2-7 year olds, 95 percent of that seen by 8-19s and 92 percent of that seen by 13-17s.On a typical day, the 2-7 year olds are exposed to 4:51 minutes of food commercials.” (Dolliver, 2007. p.1) Dolliver used statistics to show much how children are seeing these commercials. Throughout the rest of the article he talks about the increasing amounts of time that children spend watching television and the types of foods that are being advertised. Depending on the family dynamic in the household, children could be watching more television than the statistics that Dolliver presents in his study. This is what would be characterized as the advertisement of obesity in todays society. Before televisions were made, there were print advertisements that contributed to the purchasing of junk or fast foods like the 1956 Canada Dry Ginger Ale Print Ad. Although for 1956, there is not a lot of information about the obesity epidemic, it contributes to how powerful advertisements can be. These advertisements whether it is from the 1950s or if it is from today, largely influence the food quality that children are wanting or expecting. When children are exposed to television advertisements about unhealthy products in large quantities, they are more susceptible to the risk of obesity. Television
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 ...
...lue and having artificial value really changed the amount of power they felt. Research from Stanford shows that the more money people have, the more addictive it is. This causes a problem when people try to obtain items with emotional value, but end up getting caught up in money.
In the article “Report of the APA Task Force on Advertising and Children” talks about commercials targeting kids. First of all, Advertising didn’t take off until the arrival of various mass media;printing, radio, and television. Secondly, The British Parliament passed legislation in 1874 intended to protect children from the efforts of merchants to induce them to buy products and assume debt. Thirdly, Opportunities to advertise to children further expanded with the explosive growth the internet and thousands of child-oriented Web sites with advertising content have appeared in the past few years. After that, The growth in advertising channels reaching children and the privatization in children’s media use---have resulted in dramatic increase
Unless you live without television, radio, and magazines, your children are bombarded with advertisements for products you don’t necessarily want them to own or eat. Let’s not stop there, try shopping for children’s clothes without some form of media printed on the clothes. Marvel and Disney have really utilized this area. The influence of advertisers has even trickled down to our classrooms in the form of lunch boxes, pencils, and erasers. You will have a hard time just walking down the street without seeing some imaging for a product. We are going to focus on the unhealthy influence these companies have had on our families. Today’s children, ages 8 to 18, consume multiple types of media (often simultaneously) and spend more time (44.5 hours
“The Federal Trade Commission has reported that fast-food companies—with McDonald’s by far in the lead—spent $360 million in 2006 on toys to market children’s meals. In the same year, fast food restaurants sold more than 1.2 billion children’s meals with toys to children ages 12 and under, accounting for 20 percent of all child traffic at those restaurants”.
Did you know that there is a larger youth being affected by health problems because of advertising than there are with tobacco related problems? Cartoon figures such as Ronald McDonald are influencing children’s decisions about the food they are consuming because children are not able to differentiate between the truth and advertising. This conveys that advertisers are taking advantage of children. Clearly, advertising has a more negative impact on children. In addition, it also causes obesity. Another reason why ads are negative is because it leads to diabolical diseases in youths. Furthermore, it influences a child's psychology. Advertising certainly impacts children in an extremely terrible way.
David Barboza the author of If You Pitch It, They Will Eat It, states in his article that, “The increase in food marketing to children has closely tracked their increase in weight. Since 1980, the number of obese children, has more than doubled to 16 percent, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Barboza 2).” Over time the rates of obesity have been increasing and the biggest factor that is causing the obesity rates to go higher is the fast food and junk food that is being targeted at children. The food industry has the power to make and produce many ads, and commercials for their business and they are able to place those ads and commercials anywhere and everywhere they want. The food industry biggest target would be our generation of people, the children and the teens of today. Obesity is becoming a huge problem today, but still nobody believes that is a problem. To this day, no one is taking the obesity problem seriously and the biggest reason why is because no one wants to stop eating the big mac or the delicious french fries. As a result, until the food industry stops selling unhealthy food to the consumers, obesity is always going to be a
As a little girl I loved watching television shows on Saturday mornings. I’d get upset when a show would proceed to commercial. That is until I watched the shiny new toy being played with by the girl my age and of course the cool new one that came into the happy meal, then I’d forget. After seeing the appealing commercial I’d run to my mom and try to slickly mention it. “You know McDonalds has a new Monster’s Inc. toy in their happy meal. Isn’t that great? “Now I realize that back then I was targeted by big companies to beg my parents for things that I didn’t need or that wasn’t good for me in order to make money. Advertising today is affecting the health of today’s children because they eat the unhealthy foods advertised to them on: television, the internet, and even at school. Therefore, an impassioned discussion of possible solutions has been brewing.