Marketing Strategies Targeting Children

Children have great market power because they have influence over their parents buying decisions.  Advertisers thus have strategies to target children to create this sense of "I have to have that" within the children.  One researcher, Sonya Grier, explained that fast food advertisements appeal to children by marketing a tasteful and visually pleasing product along with emphasizing low - cost and convenience, and of course each kid meal comes with a toy (Grier, 2007).  These types of appealing advertisements are desirable and thus kids feel a need to have the products.  Children will tend to nag their parents until they provide the children with the unhealthy fast food as seen on TV.  Grier also found that 36% of commercials during children programming is for fast food (Grier, 2007).  These advertisements apply techniques listed by Mary Story such as promotions, use of familiar characters, and product placement (Story, 2004).  Promotions geared toward children have a greater impact because they actually believe they can win something.  If a fast food chain offers a toy in every kids meal and there is a category with 5 different kinds, a child is going to want to keep going back until they collect the whole set.  Also kids will be more willing to purchase an item if it is endorsed by their favorite saturday morning cartoon character.  These findings help answer the question by showing that there is at least a small role television advertising plays in childhood obesity.  If children see so many fast food advertisements each day and they feel they must have it, they will continue to beg their parents for  it leading to children eating fast food more often.  Children will more likely than not ask for the food that they see on commercials rather than food they don’t see.  Mary Story found that the US food industry is the second largest advertiser in the economy behind the automotive industry and 95% of fast –food restaurants advertising expenditures are for television ads (Story, 2004).    Advertisers exploit the young minds of children to make a profit and as a result children are consuming more fast food, which leads to the increases in obesity rates in America. Here is a video that further demonstrates the marketing techniques aimed at children.  

Research Question

Every day children are exposed to media, especially that of fast food advertisements on television.  Children are impressionable and do not have the abilities to differentiate fantasy versus reality.  Thus, they are an easy target of advertisers.   The research question  is How fast food advertisement on television has effected childhood obesity in America? It is not a secret that obesity has been on the rise in this country, especially among children.  This research question can provide answers to why there has been rise of obesity and possibly a solution to fix this growing obesity rate.  It is a significant question because obesity has become a major problem in today's society and the first step to finding a solution is examining the cause.