Marketing to Children Essay

Advertisers snuff it 100s of one million millions of dollars a course worldwide1 encouraging, persuading and manipulating people into a consumer lifestyle that has devastating consequences for the environment through its extravagance and wastefulness. mankindize exploits individual insecurities, creates monstrous needs and offers counterfeit solutions. It fosters dissatisfaction that leads to consumption. Children be occurrencely vulnerable to this sort of manipulation. Young children ar increasingly the rump of advertising and foodstuffing because of the list of money they spend themselves, the influence they fuck off on their p atomic number 18nts spending (the hussy factor) and because of the money they ordain spend when they grow up.2 Whilst this child-tar seduceted marketing used to concentrate on sweets and toys, it now includes clothes, shoes, a range of fast foods, sports equipment, computer products and toiletries as healthful as adult products such as auto s and quotation cards. In Australia, children under 18 have an aver suppurate $31.60 to spend each week and they influence to a greater extent than 70 per cent of their pargonnts clothes and fast food purchases.3Advertisers attending a conference on market to baby birds and Youth were told that children and teen sequencers between the ages of 10 and 17 spent $3.3 million every year.4 In the US on that point are over 57 million school age children and teenagers who spend about $100 billion each year of their possess and their familys money onsweets, food, drinks, video and electronic products, toys, games, movies, sports, clothes and shoes.5 additionally children 12 and under spend more than $11 billion of their own money and influence family spending decisions worth an other $165 billion on food, household items like furniture, electrical appliances and computers, vacations, the family car and other spending.6 For example, one study estimated that children influenced $9 bill ion worth of car sales in 1994.One car dealer explains Sometimes, the child literally is our customer. I have watched the child pick out the car.7 This means that car manufacturers push aside non afford to ignore the children in their marketing. Companies such as Nissan sponsor the American Youth Soccer organisation and a travelling geography exhibit in order to get exposure for their bell ringer defecate and logo in child-friendly settings. Chrysler distributes 100s of thousands of glossy cardboard pop-up promotional books by direct mail that leave alone woo to children who love pop-up books. And Chevrolet has used advertisements featuring children. Some car dealers have added childrens play areas and arcade games to their facilities.8 US advertisers are now bug outning to realize the potential of the international childrens market.James McNeal in his book Kids as Customers estimates that there are about three quarters of a billion children in other industrialise countries Letting ones marketing imagination run wild for a moment, if these children spend tho half of what U.S. children spend, their market potential would be equal to around $86.5 billion.9 Brandweek magazine, as well as enthusing about the marketing probability that kids around the world agree pointed out that dismantle in China where children dont get much income and save most of it, their total spending amounts to $2.6 billion per year, second only to the US.10Brandweek cited a survey that showed McDonalds was the best-loved fast food all over the world and Coke the favourite drink. It argued if it is possible to create global preferences with food productswhere obstacles like differences in local cuisine and culture equaltranscending cultural boundaries with toys, clothing and entertainment products should be considerably easier.11 Average Income and Spending for Children aged 7-12 yrsRegular Income yearbook 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 root Laurie Klein, More than play dough, Brandweek, Vol. 38 (24 November 1997) McNeal argues that in many nations the competition for the childrens market is not as aggressive as in the US It has been said that in the United States when you get a competitor down you kick him in Asia you help him up. He suggests that US firms using US-style competition will therefore have an advantage it appears that fairly standardized multinational marketing strategies to children around the globe are viable. And they are advisable for those American marketers who are wanting to avoid few of the intense competition domesti expecty and are thinking of seeking market and profit growth across the seas.12The Development of a ConsumerChildren correspond three different markets. In addition to the direct money that children spend and the money they influence, children also represent a third major market and perhaps the most significant and that is the future market.13 Advertisers recognise that brand loyalties and consumer habits organize when children are young and vulnerable will be carried through to adulthood. Retailers and manufacturers have two sources of vernal customers, those who they can persuade to change from their competitors and those who have not yet entered the market. Those who switch are less apparent to be loyal than those who are nurtured from childhood.14 According to the CEO of Prism Communications, they arent children so much as what I like to call evolving consumers.15 McNeal outlines the stages in the evolution of a child consumer. From age 1 accompany Parents and Observing.Children are taken with their parents to supermarkets and other stores where all sorts of goodies are displayed. By the time a chil d can sit erect, he or she is placed in his or her culturally defined observation locating high atop ashopping cart. From this vantage point the child stays safety in proximity to parents but can see for the first time the wonderland of marketing.16 From age 2 Accompanying Parents and Requesting. Children begin to ask for things that they see and make connections between television advertising and store contents. They fabricate more attendance to those ads and the list of things they want increases. At the equal time, the youngster is learning how to get parents to respond to his or her wishes and wants. This may take the form of a grunt, whine, scream, or gestureindeed some tears may be necessarybut eventually almost all children are able on a unconstipated basis to persuade Mom or Dad to buy something for them.17From age 3 Accompanying Parents and Selecting with Permission. Children are able to come down from the shopping trolley and make their own choices. They are able to recognise brands and locate goods in the store.18 At this point the child has completed many connections, from advertisements to wants, to stores, to displays, to packages, to retrieval of want-satisfying products. For many parents this is a pleasing experience. Ditto for the marketers, for it signals the beginning of the childs deduceing of the want-satisfaction process in a market-driven society.19 From age 4 Accompanying Parents and Making self-employed person Purchases. The final step in their development as a consumer is learning to pay for their purchases at the check-out counter.From age 5 Going to the Store Alone and Making Independent Purchases. According to Direct marketing magazine, by the age of eight children make most of their own purchasing decisions.20 Modern children can ofttimes recognise brands and status items by the age of 3 or 4, out apparent movement they can even read. One study base that 52 part of 3 year olds and 73% of 4 year olds often or almost a lways asked their parents for specific brands.21 Advertisers recognise that brand loyalties and consumer habits formed when children are young and vulnerable will be carried through to adulthood. Kids R Us president, Mike Searles, says If you own this child at an early age you can own this child for years to come.22Forms of MarketingChildrens advertising covers all types of media outlets from newspapers to television stations. By the time most US children start school they will have spent 5000 hours watching television. They will spend more time watching television than they spend in class for their entire schooling.23Similarly in Australia, where in one in four homes children have their own television sets, children spend an average of a quarter of their spare time in front of the television.24 A version of the infomercial aimed at children is the television show whose main characters are modelled after toys. By 1988 64% of television toy advertisements were for toys related to chi ldrens television programmes. Often cartoon characters would be launched as movies, be followed up by television series and then be merchandised on hundreds of products from t-shirts to toys.25The head of Disney explained to Advertising Age in 1989 how the Disney Corporations activities all reinforced each other The Disney Stores conjure the consumer products which promote the theme parks which promote the television shows. The television shows promote the company.26 Advertisers not only feature cartoon or other characters from childrens television programmes to gain their endorsement for their products (known as host selling) but they sometimes even place those advertisements in the breaks of the television programmes about those characters, thus blurring the distinction between programming and advertising and pickings advantage of the affection children line up for those characters.27 Television advertising makes up about 70% of the total amount spent on advertising to children in the US but total advertising expenditure makes up only about 15% of the total amount of money spent on marketing to children.In fact much marketing to children now consists of sales promotions such as direct coupons, free gifts and samples, contests and sweepstakes, and public relations such as using celebrities and licensed characters which visit shopping centres and schools. New technologies have also provided new opportunities such as the profit and telephone servicings that enable new, personalized promotions aimed at children.28 Marketing in schools is also a rapidly growing arena.29 Kids clubs, organised by retailers, producers and media outlets, have proliferated in upstart times. They offer an opportunity to develop a more personal relationship with each child, get reading about the children for marketing purposes that can be used for mailing lists and data bases, and to promote products to children of particular age groups and geographical locations.30These additional forms of marketing have supplemented rather than replaced advertising as the importance of the childrens market has grown. Their aim however is the same as advertising,to create brand loyalties and customers amongst children. Also, those wanting to sell goods recognise that some older children become somewhat cynical of advertisements and therefore publicity in childrens newspapers and magazines as well as other marketing strategies are alternative ways of reaching these children.31Advertising on the InternetA new arena for advertising is the internet. It is estimated that about four million children are using the internet world-wide and this figure is bound to increase dramatically over the next few years.32 According to the director of Saatchi & Saatchi Interactive, This is a medium for advertisers that is unprecedented theres probably no other product or service that we can think of that is like it in terms of capturing kids interest.33 In their advertising material Saatchi and Saatchi explain their Kid Connection service We at KID CONNECTION are committed to understanding kids their motivations, their feelings, and their influences. In property with our mission to connect our clients to the kid market with programs that match our clients business objectives with the needs, drives and desires of kidsInteractive technology is at the heading of kid culture, allowing us to enter into contemporary kid life and communicate with them in an environment they call their own.34Children as young as four are being targeted by advertisers on the internet and often the interaction with the children is unmediated by parents or teachers.35 These advertisers elicit personal information from the children by getting them to take out surveys beforehand they can play and offering prizes such as T-shirts for filling in lengthy profiles that ask for purchasing behavior, preferences and information on other family members.36 Advertisers then use this information to craft t ell apart messages and ads targeted at each child. The ads are integrated with the other content of the internet point which is designed to victuals the children engrossed in play for hours at a time. There are even product spokescharacters to interact with the children and develop relationships with them so that long lasting brand loyalties can be developed.37Michael Brody, spokesperson for the American honorary society of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, told a US Federal Trade Commission workshop on hiding that preadolescent children do not understand what personal information is. What is more, he pointed out, they look up to pretended characters and tend to do what they ask of them.38 The Centre for Media Education (CME) studied 38 childrens sites commonly found on lists of popular places for children on the internet. It found that 90% of them collected personal information from children and forty percent used incentives such as free gifts and competitions to encourage childr en to give that information. One in four subsequently send children an email after they visit the site and 40 percent send cookies to those visiting the site to get unsolicited information from them.39ConcernsThere are questions about the ability of children so young to understand advertising and its intent and not be deceived and manipulated by it. Experts say that children dont understand persuasive intent until they are eight or nine years old and that it is unethical to advertise to them before then.40 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.41 Additionally children are unable to evaluate advertising claims. At the same time, Richard Mizerski, an Australian professor of marketing, observes their cognitive structures are beginning to form and they are most sensitive to outside influences.42 This is especially a problem when advertisements appear on school walls and posters and book covers and gain legitimacy from the so-called endorsement of the school so that children think they must be true.43 One study by Roy Fox, mate Professor of English Education at the University of Missouri-Columbia, found that children watching athletes in television commercials thought that the athletes give to be in the advertisements to promote themselves rather than the products.They believed children in advertisements were real rather than paid actors and they often at sea advertisements with news items. Generally they did not understand the commercial intent and manipulation behind advertisements.44 Older children pay less attention to advertisements and are more able to differentiate between the ads and TV programs45 but they are also easy prey for advertisers. Around puberty, in their early teens, children are forming their own identities and they are extremely vulnerable to pressure to conform to gro up standards and mores.46 At this age they feel insecure and want to feel that they belong to theirpeer group.Advertising manipulates them through their insecurities, seeking to define normality for them influencing the way they view and get under ones skin appropriate models for the adult world and undermining fundamental human values in the development of the identity of children.47 Advertisements actively encourage them to seek happiness and esteem through consumption. It is for these reasons that marketing to children should be carefully restricted. In particular advertisements aimed at children under the age of 9 years old, including on the internet and during childrens television programmes, should be banned. Such advertising subsidises the cost of these services at the cost of our childrens values, sense of well-being, health and integrity. only the future of the planet is at stake if we allow advertisers and marketers to turn children into hyper consumers of the future.