Global shift in business practice
Evolution of advertising on children
http://www.youtube.com/embed/eFOs4RrwF8s
To target children, the most direct way is to
increase the exposure of the companies’ products to where the kids spend most
of their time—school. Thus, companies now try to put different vending machines
selling snacks and soft drinks with big posters or advertisement on the vending
machines in school. When the kids used to buy those snacks and soft drinks of
specific brands at school, they will also buy those brands outside school. This
kind of marketing strategy makes use of the convenience of school setting and
kids’ subconsciousness by reminding them the brands and products whenever they
are at school to increase kids ‘addiction to the products.
The
media industry is also targeting this potential segment. Children Magazines such as Sports Illustrated, National Geographic Kids Magazine and Discovery Girls are
published for the kids’ market.
McNeal, James U..,
The Child Consumer: A New Market, Journal of Retailing, Summer69, Vol. 45 Issue 2, p15, 8p
Sharon Beder, 'A Community View', Caring for Children in the Media Age,
Papers from a national conference, edited by John Squires and Tracy Newlands,
New College Institute for Values Research, Sydney, 1998, pp. 101-111.
Introduction
Traditionally, companies advertised
and focused their resources on the adult consumers – the “today consumers”.
Children have never been a popular demographic group of consumers despite of
the money they have, they are not the spenders but the saver of the money.
However, in the past few decades, a new market pops up in which companies, and
divisions of companies shift their focus on making and advertising products for
teens.
A brief history of marketing on the children
Actually marketers started
advertised to kids since the end of the Second World War through TV
advertisements. The born of baby boomers created a large and whole new market.
In addition to the increasingly receptive parents to the children’s requests
where children manipulated their parents to buy formed the successful marketing
formula at that time (Kurnit, 2005). The child market has continued to grow
since then. When tracing back to the 80s, companies spent around $100 million
marketing to kids only, but in 2009, it is estimated that they spent $17
billion per year on advertising children’s products (Lagorio, 2009); new
product lines are also developed to target those young consumers.
Evolution of advertising on children
http://www.youtube.com/embed/eFOs4RrwF8s
The old retail or marketing
practices may tell us that promoting and selling products to kids was not a new
thing, marketers knew that though the products were designed to attract kids,
the real consumers were their parents. However, the new child market
we are referring in the following discussion is not the one that kids nagging
and influencing their parents to purchase; instead, according to McNeal (1969),
it is the market which targets the children (who aged around 5 - 13) who are
willing to buy for personal purposes and satisfaction. As children are
now the “real consumers”, marketers change their marketing strategies. McNeal (1969)
stated “Instead of saying, ‘ask your mother to buy so-and-so,’ advertisements
to children often simply say, ‘buy so-and-so’.”
Reasons of the shift
You may wonder why such change would
occur. We point out the following three possible reasons of the shift:
- The increasing purchasing power of kids
- Kids are easily affected by the narrative
advertisements
- Kids are the future consumers
How much is the purchasing power of kids? Answer can be
varied across different studies. But one thing is for sure, kids have a very
high buying power nowadays. In 2002, American children who aged 4 - 12 spent
$30 billion (Schor, 2004); in 2005, according to the survey done by the market
research publisher Packaged Facts, kids who aged 3-11 in U.S. had a collective
$18 billion in buying power. Population growth in most of the developed
counties has been slowed down (Worldbank, n.d.). Each family has fewer new born
baby or kids when comparing to the post-WWII. Parents can hence provide a much
better environment and more resources (say money) to their kids. With more
money on the hand, children may no longer need to nag their parents for buying
what they want; instead, they can make the purchase all by themselves.
A story designed to prepare people for change needs to evoke
the future and conjure up a direction for getting there, but without being too
precise (Denning, 2004).
Another reason that marketers change to sell products
directly to the kids is that the lack of cognitive ability in resisting the
advertisement makes the children easily be affected by the advertisements. Advertisements that target children do not
necessarily convey the message very explicitly, instead, like Calvert (2008) explained in his finding that marketers use online advertising and embedding the
products in films, online and in video games that make the children difficult
to understand the undermining persuasive message of the advertisement, but
being attracted to buy the products.
Lastly, companies understand that the young consumers are
the adult consumers in the future. Companies try to cultivate the children consumers when they
are still young and make
them loyal to their brand in the future.
New marketing strategies
Advertising for
children on the TV and the Internet
Young children became an important target for the
advertisers as we have already mentioned at the beginning. Before analysing in a deeper way how companies
actually promote their products, we first define what children consume and how
much money they can spend on it. The chart provided below shows that the
average budget children have per month can allow them to buy such products as
sweets, small toys or kid magazines.
Average
Income and Spending for Children aged 5-13 yrs
Regular Income Annual
Income# Savings Total Spending
$US/month/child
$US/year/child $US/year
Germany
32.30 569.40 46% 0.9 billion
UK 31.50 506.20 26% 1.7 billion
US 29.10 493.10 21% 8.9 billion
France 22.50 377.90 30% 2.2 billion
Japan* 10.70 407.90 62% 1.0 billion
China* 9.00 182.00 60% 2.6 billion
* urban areas only # including special income
Source: Laurie Klein, `More than play dough', Brandweek,
Vol. 38 (24 November 1997)
Sources for
advertising
There are different types of means to advertise
products to the children. First we will have a look at the two biggest sources
of advertisement: the television and the Internet.
If we take the example of the USA, children going to
school spend around 2 to 4 hours watching television. The researchers found out
after various studies that children are more likely to stay in front of the
television during the advertising time. That is why the companies choose very
carefully the time of the day. Most of the commercials demonstrate happy
children, animation and cartoons: they are happy because they use the product
advertised. And young kids are easily influenced so they believe these products
will make them happy as they did to the kids from the TV. The form of commercials
is always joyful, musical and very colourful. We can take an example of the advert for
Kinder Surprise or Kid’s meal for Burger King.
Nowadays, companies also use another powerful way to
advertise their products to children which is Internet. It can be also used as
a source of information. If we visit the website http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/kids-websites
we can see that most of the popular websites for kids are games. The companies
sometimes have contracts with these websites so that for example before playing
a game a kid has to fill out a small and easy survey which is a very useful
source of information for the advertisers. According of the Centre of Media
Education at least 90% of the websites designed for kids use different type of
surveys in order to gather the information. Another method is to publish an
advert for the company and to offer a free gift if a child gives some
information about his or her taste or even more personal information. Some
companies can even create online games where children must choose characters
with tastes that correspond to them and the products their characters can buy.
This helps advertisers to get necessary information without surveys.
There are also websites which provide games which are
free at the beginning and then you have to pay to continue the game. The most
famous example is Farmville on Facebook, where you can buy “virtual” goods
using your real money.
These are the main sources for companies to advertise
their products or to get to know the consumers better which are becoming
increasingly important on the global market.
Other types of marketing
Commercialization in education
Commercialization
in TV shows
Companies also
attract kids to buy their products by showing the products in kids TV shows.
For example, they will sponsor those kids TV shows like “Good Night Kids” in
Russia with the companies ‘products like drinks, toys or stationery. When the
kids watch the TV shows, they can also see the products.
As they usually
like the characters in the TV shows, it is very likely that they will buy the
same products which are used by the characters. It is how the marketing
strategy in TV shows work. The most convincing example is Walt Disney Company.
Walt Disney Company produces lots of Disney cartoon series and movies and show
them on the Disney Channel to make its characters like Snow White, Winnie the
Poon and Mickey Mouse popular among kids. When the kids like the characters
because of the cartoons and movies, they will also buy the toys, dolls or
stationery of those characters in Disneyland or other retailing shops.
Placement strategy in supermarket
Since the
companies have noticed that kids now have their own purchasing power too, they
are trying to directly reach the kids regarding them as independent customers.
For example, companies use placement strategy to attract children’s attention
of their products in the supermarket. Companies require the supermarket to put
their products such as chocolate, candies and potato chips in the lower level
on the shelves so that the kids can see their products regarding their heights.
By this special placement of products, it is easier for kids to pick the products
up and buy them. Some supermarkets also provide children trolley for the kids
to shop on their own without accompany their parents. This can let the kids
feel like to be a customer and put what they want to buy into their own trolley
without permission from their parents. These placement strategies in
supermarket can increase the possibility that kids will buy more products.
The
media industry is also targeting this potential segment. Children Magazines such as Sports Illustrated, National Geographic Kids Magazine and Discovery Girls are
published for the kids’ market.
The
newspaper like The Standard also diversifies its product lines like the Student
Standard Goodies for primary school students. Companies can place advertisement
in the kids’ magazines and draw their attention to buy them.
Ethical
Concern
Marketing directly to children is controversial.
Different perspectives of related parties are provided in this session.
Children
Children purchase goods in order to satisfy their
needs. According to James U. McNEAL (2001), there are two levels of
satisfaction. The basic satisfaction is produced by the items they bought
themselves. For example, candies and some simple toys can make them feel very
happy. The second dimension of satisfaction is the “purchase behavior” because
it may indicate an evidence of “grown-upness”. As children growing up, the
first type of satisfaction is increasing while the other is decreasing.
Parents
Parents concern about the impact of advertisement
directing at their children. They criticize the promotion of materialism,
persuasion of people to buy unnecessary goods, and provision of misleading
information (Pollay and Mittal, 1993). Some parents worry about the hidden
messages that delivered through advergames and product placement. (Quilliam and
Rifon, 2009)
Researchers
and experts
Many researchers and experts have concern on direct
marketing to children, too. Many experts think it is unethical to advertise to
children at early age because they question their ability to understand
advertisements and evaluate advertising claims.
l
According to Richard Mizerski, “their
cognitive structures are beginning to form and they are most sensitive to
external influences.” Children interact with external parties and learn from
them. Parents, teachers, peers, and even people they do not know may influence
how they percept the world. At the early age, children usually cannot tell
right from wrong. It is also hard for them to evaluate goods rationally.
l
According to Karpatkin and
Holmes from the Consumers Union, “Young children, in particular, have
difficulty in distinguishing between advertising and reality in ads, and ads
can distort their view of the world” Advertisements targeting at children are
usually made to be fancy and attractive, children in their early age are easily
been attracted and mix them with reality.
Harris study conducted a survey concerning the
ethical issues on marketing to children among 878 professionals from youth
marketing and research agencies, educational and non-profit institutions, and
traditional advertisement and promotion firms. Below is the table summarizes
the discrepancy in their perceptions of the appropriate age to market to
children.
Questions
|
Opinion on Average Age
|
Appropriate age to begin marketing to children
|
7
|
When children can view advertising critically
|
9.1
|
The age of distinguishing fantasy and reality in
media and advertising
|
9.3
|
When can make intelligent choices as consumers
|
11.7
|
In addition:
l
72% of the professionals think companies are
putting pressure on kids to “grow up faster than they should”.
l
61% agree that the beginning age of
targeting at children is too young.
l
58% think too much marketing has been
directed at children.
Industry
It is suggested that self-regulation is very
important for advertisers. For example, the Children’s Advertising Review Unit (CARU)
of the self-regulatory National Advertising Review Council has provided
guidelines on advertising to children (Better Business Bureau 2006; Martin
2006). They also created a voluntary program Children’s Food and Beverage
Advertising Initiative which is supported by 15 major food and beverage
marketers aiming at promoting healthy lifestyles to children.
Management
Regarding children as a marketing segmentation and
directly marketing to children is controversial and should be paid significant
attention by management. Corporations should participate in managing the issue
rather than just responding to the public. (Jaques, 2009) Fail to manage the
issue may create a social responsibility gap, which is one of the sources of
reputational trouble. (Greyser, 2009)Hence management should be very careful
when they marketing directly to children. When designing the marketing campaign
and advertisements, companies should balance the trade-off and concern more on
their social responsibilities.
References
Greyser, Stephen A.. corporate brand reputation and brand crisis
management. Management Decision,
2009, Vol. 47 Issue 4, p590-602, 13p; DOI: 10.1108/00251740910959431
Grimm, Matthew,
Is
Marketing to Kids Ethical? Brandweek, 10644318,
4/5/2004, Vol. 45, Issue 14
Jaques, Tony. Issue and crisis
management: Quicksand in the definitional landscape Public Relations Review, Sep2009, Vol. 35 Issue 3, p280-286, 7p; DOI: 10.1016/j.pubrev.2009.03.003
McNeal, James U..,
The Child Consumer: A New Market, Journal of Retailing, Summer69, Vol. 45 Issue 2, p15, 8p
Quilliam, Elizabeth
Taylor; Rifon, Nora J.. Trick or
Treat: Children, Advertising, and Social Responsibility, American Academy of Advertising Conference Proceedings, 2009, p30-32, 3p
Sharon Beder, 'A Community View', Caring for Children in the Media Age,
Papers from a national conference, edited by John Squires and Tracy Newlands,
New College Institute for Values Research, Sydney, 1998, pp. 101-111.
Marketing to Children, Sharon Beder