European Journal of Social Sciences Impact of Advertisement on Children Behavior: Evidence from Pakistan Farooq Ahmed Jam

Volume 12, Number 4 (2010)

Principal Author, PhD Scholar, Faculty of Management Sciences International Islamic University, Islamabad, Pakistan E-mail: jam_farooq@yahoo.co.uk Tel: +92 333 2213269 Shakeel Akhtar PhD Scholar, Faculty of Management Sciences International Islamic University, Islamabad Pakistan E-mail: sakhtar1980@yahoo.com Syed Tahir Hijazi Professor, Comsats Institute of Information Technology Islamabad, Pakistan E-mail: hijazisyd@yahoo.com Muhammad Bashir Khan Professor, Management Sciences Department, Iqra University Islamabad, Pakistan E-mail: drmohdbashir@hotmail.com Abstract Impact of marketing activities (specially adverting) on children is very importa nt and sensitive issue for the society and marketers. We explored with sample from 07 d ifferent schools 330 children and 107 parents to come up with practical insight of advert ising influence on children memory and behavior in Pakistani context. Our results show ed interesting findings that ads do not impact negatively to children memory and be havior. It enhances the knowledge of children and the ads targeted to children are not effe ctive, for effective positioning of children related products marketers should target the p arents and include ethical orientation along with environmental knowledge to influence the buying behavior of parents. Our study provided several key market insights and suggesti ons for

practitioners and future researchers of marketing field. Introduction The consumer in this era is in target of massive media attacks effectively plann ed, and enlighten with glamour as per the emotions, needs, wants and demands of the consumers. Marketer s and companies are spending billions of dollars on consumer research and to know the important factors involved in consumer decision making. While talking about the marketing mix now a days marke ters main focus is on designing persuasive messages/commercials to attract the target customers. Be cause the major chunk of the population and among all consumption of household a considerable po rtion is of children products. So marketers are focusing and trying to attract and influence the chil dren by designing ads that are considerably attractive for children and persuasive enough for their em otional attachment with the product. While common notion is that the mother is the targeted customer for marketers of baby 663

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care industry. This notion is quit logical but now media and marketers are succe eded enough to generate emotional attachment of children with the products so that they can ins ist on purchasing the specific product for their use. This concept has created a war of massive attacks on children of this age and fo rced to conscious people of society about the negative impacts of these massive advertising attack s on children memory and behavior. Especially, the media, advertising and entertainment industries, collectively kn own as mass media, are powerful because they penetrate every segment of modern-day society a nd effectively influence how consumers view themselves, their neighbors, communities and the wo rld. Although the mass media denotes outlets beyond newspapers, radio and television, and the scop e of media influence now extends to digital spectrum, cable and satellite technology and the internet , it remains a fact that the TV is the single major and foremost communicator of our times. As the world has global village so now through our electronic media, access to all international channels is also e asy. All these factors have contributed in the increasing aggressive attitude in youth as they see viol ence on electronic media in one form or another. The media, now a day, is promoting violent culture, whic h leave a deep impact on youth. It has caused the aggression and violence of youth instead of promotio n of peace and harmony. According to, American Academy for Pediatrics Committee on Communicatio ns (AAPCC, 1995). Media violence can lead to aggressive behavior in youth. Over 1,000 studi es confirm this link. It also says that Media violence is especially damaging to young children (under ag e 8) because they cannot easily tell the difference between real life and fantasy. Violent images on television and in movies may seem real to young children. Viewing these images can upset them. Med ia violence affects children by increasing their fear of becoming victims. Making them less sensitiv e to violence and to victims of violence. Increasing their appetite for more violence in entertainmen t and in real life. Media violence often fails to show the consequences of violence. This is especially tr ue of cartoons, toy commercials and music videos. As a result, children learn that there is few if a ny repercussion for committing violent acts. Review of Literature In last 20 years impact of TV advertisements on children memory and behavior is the major topic of debates in countries open for market competition (Boddewyn, 1984).Till 1988 adve rtising expense of

TV program raised up to $500 million approximately (Leccese, 1989).While looking at the children responses to TV advertisement a research experiment revealed that children s food choices specially in snacks are based on their exposure to TV commercials (Gorn and Goldberg, 1982).A tkin (1981) also confirmed these findings in his experimental study and found that the children w ith heavy exposure to TV advertisements are more likely to recall those brands while shopping in the m arket and with their parents. Those children demand advertised food products and toys while moving in market with their parents. Children ranging in between 6 to 11 years of age watch TV commercials 3 hours a day and it is estimated that over the period of a year average child see about 20,000 adver tisements (Adler et al, 1980). Most of the research in consumer behavior and specially on advertisement impact on children has focused two major points :(1) impact of TV commercials in shaping behavior a nd its positive or negative influence on children life and habits.(2) Role of TV commercials on the development and growth mental as well as physical of the children s(Donohue, Meyer and Henke,1978) . Ward et al (1972) found age as a main factor in perception and learning from the advertisement and the behavioral change is more likely to occur in older children as compared to younger one. While focusing on the TV commercials and responses from the consumer in almost 5 00 commercials responses were recorded by the Leo Burnett Advertising Agency and th ey found seven different types of responses to TV advertisement. Those responses include entert ainment, confusion, relevant news, brand reinforcement, empathy, familiarity, and alienation (Schlin ger 1979). 664

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A sad or happy program or commercial can affect the mood, and cognition of the v iewer. A happy program can produce effectiveness and positive cognitive response to comme rcial as well as better and effective recall (Goldberg and Gorn, 1987). Galst and White (1976) pr oposed a cause and effect relationship and found strong correlations between TV advertisement expos ure of children and their purchase preferences as well as amount of purchase while shopping with the ir parents. Results of a two method study on snacks and sugar foods revealed that effectivel y designed message in TV advertisements can generate action and effectively persuasion in c hildren for purchase of the product (Goldberg, Gorn and Gibson, 1978). It was predicted that children s age is the factor that determines the effectivene ss and persuasiveness of TV advertisement in children. Younger children are less likely to differentiate among TV programs and commercials so they pay more attention to TV ads as compared to older ones (Blatt, Spencer, and Ward 1972; Robertson and Rossiter 1974; Ward, Levinson, and Wackman 1972; Ward, Reale, and Levinson 1972; Ward, Wackman, and Wartella 1977) Voojis and van der Voort's (1993) stated that there is a marvelous body of liter ature representing that watching aggressive television is linked with augmented hostil e attitudes and behaviors. This relationship is particularly distinct in childhood, whose compar atively restricted knowledge and cognitive capital make them especially susceptible to television. The essential mania comes out here that children try to copy the advertisement in which they get con cerned and we have been reading lot of occurrence in the media regarding copying issue. Those child ren tried to copy the ads or film senses we will be going to test this in our hypothesis. Television has the prospective to cause both positive and negative special effec ts, and numerous studies have appeared at the bang of television on society, principally on children and adolescents. An individual child s developmental level is a significant factor in determining whether the medium will have positive or negative effects. Not all television programs a re bad, but data showing the negative effects of contact to aggression, unsuitable sexuality and disgusting language are convincing. We will be hypothesizing that ads impact negatively to the children s memory as well as their behavior ,and we will also be testing in another hypothesis that ads enhan ces the knowledge of children about the environment.

The quantity of aggression on television is on the rise. The normal child see 12 ,000 aggressive act on television annually, as well as numerous interpretation of assassination and rape. Further more than 1000 studies authenticate that experience to serious doses of television vi olent behavior increases violent behavior, for the most part in boys. Other studies link television or ne wspaper exposure of suicides to an increased suicide threat. (Position Statement, Canadian Pediatric Society, 2003). A Federal Trade Commission (FTC) report discovered what many supposed: media corpo rations were normally neglecting their own ranking limits and aggressively advertising cruel amusement to children and teens (Media Awareness Network, 2005). Over the last 30 years there has been extensive research on the relationship between televisions violence and violent behavior among yout h. Longitudinal, cross-sectional, and experimental studies have all confirmed this correlation (B eresin.V Eugene, 2005). Prior to the birth of TV, this has discovered new entertainment opportunities fo r the families. People were not much emotionally linked with the means of amusement they had like radio , live theater. By submerging the people in too much entertainment, the media has created a new cul ture for the youth that has kept them so immersed that many of them have become unusual. Hypothesis On the basis of above review we hypothesized following relationships among media (Advertisements) and their impact on children memory as well as their behavior of buying. We addi tionally hypothesized the relationship between children focused advertisements and their impact on pro duct sales. H1: Children try to copy and rehears the advertisement. H2: Children insist on buying advertised products. 665

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H3: Ads targeted to children are effective in selling children related products. H4: Ads impact negatively on memory and behavior of children. H5: Ads enhance the knowledge of children about the environment. Methodology We selected seven schools in Rawalpindi, Pakistan focusing on children s below age 16 years. Two questionnaire one 9 item for children and other of 10 items for the parents were administered to collect the data from 500 students of seven schools and 200 of their parents. Among 500 distributed questionnaires to children 360 returned back and among 200 of parents questionna ires only 110 were back filled with response rate of 72% for children and 55% for parents. Further analysis excluded 30 responses from children s and 7 responses from parents due to improper filling and bad handwriting. So actual sample comprises of 330 for children and 107 for parents. Measures Questionnaires were prepared in Urdu for the full understanding of respondents a nd special attention was paid on language to make it as easier as possible to understand. Data were i nferred and tabulated using simple excel program and percentages are given for clarity of results. We used double response from parents and children s to minimize the single response bias and to see weathe r parents confirm the responses of children or not. To check the understanding of questionnaire a pilot testing was done in first school and results were 100% satisfactory that children easily read and understand the concepts asked in questionnaire. Due to unavailability of any standard questionnaire we u sed our own questionnaire as per Pakistani context to tap the real impact of media and adver tisement on children. We presented the findings separately as taping per item in questionnaire. We use d simple excel program for calculating percentages, we used percentage method intentionally to make our findings more simple and understandable. Following questions were asked in the questionnaire: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. e . 6. 7. 8. You have separate room for TV in your home . Cable is available at your home . You watch TV with your parents . You like TV advertisement . You shop things of your choice or your parents shop things for their own choic You go for shopping with your parents . Ads help you in making decision for purchase . You try to copy the ads .

Children Responded at these questions with

YES

or

NO . Because of children sample and

significant portion of sample was below 12 years of age we just provided them op tion of YES or NO to avoid from any confusion. Although school in sample were English medium but for more reliability and understanding we converted our questionnaires in URDU. Same questions were asked from parents with little changes in questionnaire to e ncounter single source bias problem. Additional questions asked to parents are: 1. 2. 3. 4. 666 You care for your children choice while making a purchase decision ? Does Ads influence children s buying choices ? Ads impact negatively to behavior of your children ? Ads enhance the knowledge of children regarding environment ?

European Journal of Social Sciences Results

Volume 12, Number 4 (2010)

All results obtained against each item are given in numbers and with percentages to elaborate the findings of study. We divided these into two tables. Table 1 explains the respon ses of children against 9 item questionnaire. Table two explains the findings from parent s responses with 10 item questionnaire. Table 1: Children Responses Questions Yes No Some times Separate rooms Cable Availability Watch TV with parents Likeness of Ad Parents shop for children Children go for shopping with parents Ads influence on buying Ads help on buying Children try to copy 61 (18%) 256 (78%) 166 (50%) 152 (46%) 277 (84%) 174 (53%) 83 (25%) 153 (43%) 122 (37%) 262 (82%) 74 (22%) 49 (15%) 108 (33%) 9 (3%) 23 (7%) 178 (54%) 102 (31%) 156 (47%) ----115 (35%) 70 (21%) 44 (13%) 133 (40%) 69 (21%) 75 (23%) 52 (16%) Table 2: Parents responses Questions Yes No Some times Separate rooms Cable Availability Watch TV with Children Impact of Ad on buying

Ads help on buying Care for children choice while shopping Ads influence children on buying Bad impact on children Children try to copy Knowledge Enhancement 11 (10%) 86 (80%) 166 (50%) 22 (26%) 43 (40%) 70 (65%) 25 (23%) 40 (38%) 46 (43%) 78 (73%) 96 (89%) 21 (20%) 49 (15%) 40 (38%) 39 (36%) 15 (14%) 54 (51%) 56 (52%) 36 (24%) 15 (14%) ----115 (35%) 45 (42%) 25 (24%) 12 (11%) 28 (26%) 11 (10%) 25 (23%) 14 (13%) Discussion When we asked for separate TV rooms 18% children replied of course while 82% hav e common room in their homes. While parents confirmed these findings with 11% responses in yes and 89% confirmed that they have common rooms for tv and they watch TV along with their children. So this finding has insight for advertisers and marketers to mould their messages as per family infl uencing rather than focusing on children only. Even they are targeting for child related products. Also the findings regarding cable availability were reported almost same by both respondent groups.80% people have cable connections in their home while 20% of the sample n ot having this facility. So this finding is of great importance for marketers who want to posit ion their products among the urban community. They can use local cable ads for that purpose instead of go ing on international channels and wasting lot of money. Responses regarding watching tv with family w ere found exactly same and both groups reported 50% in YES and 15 % in NO and 35% to some times.

Whether advertisements impacts on buying choices of children or not. Both groups have consensus in this hypothesis and findings rejected the hypothesis 2 proposed by us.54% of children reported no influence on buying choices while 51% parents confirmed their findin gs. Only 15% children and 26% parents agree that ads impact on buying choices of children s. Re maining 30 to 35 % reported some time influence on buying choices. Among the sample 84% children re sponded that their parents shop for them, only 3 % reported NO and 13% reported mix results. While parents responded that 65% of them care for children choices while shopping for them, 14% take no care for children choices and 11% gave mix results. So both answers are insight for marketers that they have to focus to 667

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children or their parents. Because children can have a bad impact from advertise ment and they have very little purchasing power so marketer should focus on parents while advertisi ng for child related products because they are the actual decision makers in purchase for children. T hese findings disagree with our Hypothesis 3 and suggest that marketer should focus on parents to influ ence them and sell them child related products instead of focusing /targeting the children in tv ad s. While results of another question relevant to this gives controversial results regarding children insist on buying advertised things while buying with their parents. Our findings show that 53% of the children s go for shopping with their parents but 65% parents care for children s insist on buying. So from this finding it looks positive to target the children but 26% children and parents are agree tha t ads can influence the buying choices but 56% not agree with it. Children may insist on buying but not affected by the advertisement. So wasting billions of dollars in advertisement to position the p roduct in the mind of children is useless, this strategy might be useful in products like confectionar y items etc. These findings rejected the H: 3 of our hypothesis that children targeted ads are not effective in generating sale for child related products. Marketers should keep in mind while doing the j ob of media planning. While our hypothesis regarding bad impact of ads on children memory and behavior was rejected because only 38% parents agreed on it while 52% were not agreed and only 10% wer e in between. This finding was quite surprising for us because in our review our main focus was on bad influence of media and advertisement on children memory and behavior to make them assertive a nd violent. But our sample rejected this H: 4 that ads do not impact negatively on behavior of c hildren. While 43% parents and 37% children found agreed on that children try to copy the ads while 47% children and 24% parents were not agree on copying the ads contents. H: 5 of our hypothesis w as strongly supported that 73% parents responded in favor that ads enhance the knowledge of children a bout the environment. This again gives key insight to marketers that ads promoting ethica l standards and good knowledge are liked by the parents. As we proposed earlier that targeting childr en for child related products is useless and marketer should focus on parents instead of children. Th is insight can help marketers how to target the parents while positioning children related products. Ads with promotion of ethical standards and widely accepted norms could get marvelous attention of par ents and could be the cause of ever high sales volumes. Conclusion

We started with the aim to explore the role of advertisement in influencing the behavior of children and our findings provided astonishing insights for future researchers and marketing managers. We ended up with the findings that ads didn t help buying behavior but children insist on b uying things they like while shopping with their parents. And the reason for this insistence was proved to be personal not the impact of advertising. We find mix results that they try to copy the ads, and pa rents rejected the notion that ads negatively impact the behavior of their children, while they were agree in majority that ads enhance the knowledge of their children. We discussed several key insights for p ractitioners and future researchers. What we believe this study has a great importance for marketers inv olved in positioning and advertisement and will definitely add value in marketing literature regardin g impact of marketing practices on society especially on children. Limitations and Futur Research Implications Future researcher must test these findings in different cultural context to supp ort our findings or if any different results found. There are some limitations of study regarding sample se lection because entire sample is taken from only one city of Pakistan so it may not be the true represe ntative of population. Life style, economic condition and per capita income of that area might have som e influence on the community in sample. Another major limitation of our study is that lack of groun ded theory for our hypothesis support. We tried our best to find relevant literature in good genera ls but due to uniqueness 668

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of the concept we didn t succeeded to add that in our study. Most of our reference s are from newspapers, internet and media sites. Third major limitation of our study is reg arding the validity and reliability of our measuring instrument, we adopted the questionnaire from (Nort h and Kotze, 2001) and make required changes in their scale as per our sample, we translated it int o Urdu for the need of our sample population. Although we tried our best to make the process standardiz ed but the sole reliability and validity of our instrument is referred to them. Despite of all t hese constraints we tried our best to follow the standard research procedures and styles for our study and hopeful that our sincere attempt will add very little value in this stream of research. References [1] Adler, Richard P., Scott Ward, Gerald S. Lesser, Laurene K. Merringoff, Thomas S . Robertson, and John R. Rossiter (1980), The Effects of Television Advertising on Children: Review and Recommendations. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books. [2] Atkin, Charles K. (1981), "Effects of Television Advertising on Children," in Ch ildren and the Faces of Television: Teaching, Violence, Selling, Edward L. Palmer and Aimee Dor r, eds. New York: Academic Press, Inc., 287-304. Anderson C.A and Bushman B.J (2002); the Ef fects of Media Violence on Society, March, 2002. [3] Beresin. V Eugene; The Impact of Media Violence on Children and Adolescents: Opp ortunities for Clinical Interventions, Develop Mentor American Academy of Child & Adolescen t Psychiatry, 2004. [4] Boddewyn, J. J. (1984), Advertising to Children: Regulation and Self-Regulation in 40 Countries. New York: International Advertising Association, Inc. [5] Blatt, J., L. Spencer, and S. Ward (1972), "A Cognitive Development Study of Chi ldren's Reactions to Television Advertising," in Television and Social Behavior (Vol. 4) , Television in Day-to-Day Life: Patterns of Use, E. Rubenstein, G. Comstock, and J. Murray, eds . Washington, DC: Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. [6] Galst, Joann and White, Mary (1976), "The Unhealthy Persuader: The Reinforcing V alue of Television and Children's Purchase-Influencing Attempts at the Super- market," C hild Development, 47. [7]

Gorn, Gerald J. and Marvin E. Goldberg (1982), "Behavioral Evidence of the Effec ts of Televised Food Messages on Children," Journal of Consumer Research, 9 (2), 200-5 . [8] Leccese, Donna (1989), "Toy Advertising and TV: A Healthy Marriage," Playthings (July), 2855. [9] Marvin E. Goldberg and Gerald J. Gorn (1987),Happy and Sad TV Programs: How They Affect Reactions to Commercials: The Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 14, No. 3 , pp. 387403 [10] Marvin E. Goldberg, Gerald J. Gorn, Wendy Gibson (1978), TV Messages for Snack a nd Breakfast Foods: Do They Influence Children's Preferences? : The Journal of Cons umer Research, Vol. 5, No. 2 , pp. 73-81 [11] Robertson, T. and J. Rossiter (1974), "Children and Commercial Persuasion: An At tribution Theory Analysis," Journal of Consumer Research, 1, 13-20. [12] S. Ward, G. Reale, and Levinson, (1972). "Children's Perceptions, Explanations, and Judgments of Television Advertising: A Further Explanation," in Television and Social Beha vior, Vol. IV, 468-490. [13] Schlinger, Mary Jane (1979), "A Profile of Responses to Commercials," Journal of Advertising Research, 14 (2), 37-46. [14] Thomas R. Donohue, Timothy P. Meyer, Lucy L.(1978), Henke Black and White Childr en: Perceptions of TV Commercials: The Journal of Marketing, Vol. 42, No. 4, pp. 3440Published by: American Marketing Association. 669

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[15] Voojis and van der Voort's; How Media Violence Affects Aggression, (1993). Thoma n. Elizabeth; Making Connections: Media's Role in our Culture of Violence, Center o f Media Literacy. [16] Ward, S., D. Levinson, and D. Wackman (1972), "Children's Attention to Televisio n Advertising," in Television and Social Behavior (Vol. 4), Television in Day-to-D ay Life: Patterns of Use, E. Rubenstein, G. Comstock, and J. Murray, eds. Washington, DC: De partment of Health, Education, and Welfare. [17] Ward, S., G. Reale, and D. Levinson (1972), "Children's Perceptions, Explanation s, and Judgments of Television Advertising: A Further Explanation," in Television and S ocial Behavior (Vol. 4), Television in Day-to- Day Life: Patterns of Use, E. Rubenstei n, G. Comstock, and J. Murray, eds. Washington, DC: Department of Health, Education, a nd Welfare [18] Ward, S., D. Wackman, and E. Wartella (1977), How Children Learn to Buy: The Dev elopment of Consumer Information Processing Skills. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications. [19] Wartella, E., D. B. Wackman, S. Ward, J. Shamir, and A. Alexander (1979), "The Y oung Child as Consumer," in Children Communicating: Media and Development of Thought, Speec h, and Understanding, E. Wartella, ed. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications. [20] Wackman, Daniel B., Wartella, Ellen B., and Ward, Scott (1977), "Learning to Be Consumers: The Role of the Family," Journal of Communication, 27 (Winter), 138-51. [21] Position Statement, 2003; Impact of Media Use on Children and Youth, Canadian Pe diatric Society, May/June 2003, p.301. http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/inde x.cfm 670