|
Article Excerpt
This study examines how food marketers use advergames, custom-built and branded online games, to promote food products to children and provides the nutritional content of the food products featured in the advergames. The results reveal that food marketers use advergames heavily, with candy and gum or food products high in sugar most frequently appearing in the analyzed games. Children are often invited to "play with" the foods integrated as active game components. Finally, despite the educational benefits of interactive games, fewer than 3% of the games analyzed in this study appear to educate children about nutritional and health issues.
**********
I am deeply concerned about the current unhealthy trend toward poor nutrition and childhood obesity, which the Institute of Medicine has linked to the prevalence of television advertisements for fast food, junk food, sugared cereals, and other foods wholly lacking in nutritional value. If this trend continues, our children could be the first in generations to enjoy shorter life expectancies than their parents (U.S. Rep. Edward J. Markey 2007).
The food, beverage, and restaurant industries spend $1.6 billion annually to promote their products to children and adolescents, with overall marketing expenditures for those brands of nearly $10 billion (FFC 2008b; Institute of Medicine of the National Academies 2006). Concurrently, over the past two decades, the United States has experienced a dramatic increase in childhood obesity. According to the 2003-2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 17% of U.S. children and adolescents aged two to nineteen years are overweight (National Center for Health Statistics 2007). Overweight children have an 80% likelihood of remaining overweight into adulthood, with a higher rate of morbidity and mortality (American Obesity Association n.d.). Researchers and policy makers are currently debating the role of food advertising in the childhood obesity epidemic (Hastings et al. 2003; Institute of Medicine of the National Academies 2006).
Accompanying the rise in childhood obesity and the proliferation of food marketing activities targeted at children are public concerns about the effects of such marketing on children's health. Food marketers have answered these concerns with several efforts. Kellogg Company, for example, decided not to advertise low-nutrient foods on television and other media aimed at children younger than age twelve (Teinowitz 2007). In a statement released in response to the Kellogg decision (see above), Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA), the chair of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, gave public voice to concerns about the potential influence of children's advertising on childhood obesity (Markey 2007).
The concerns about the relationship between food advertising and childhood obesity are based on the assumption that children, unlike adults, are unable to comprehend the concept and persuasive intent of advertising. Researchers have found that children learn to distinguish programming (e.g., cartoons) from advertisements on television at around age four or five (John 1999; Wilcox et al. 2004), but it is not until age twelve or later when children are said to develop the capability to defend themselves against advertisers' claims (John 1999). Given this vulnerability to advertising, frequent exposure to television ads for nutritionally poor food products has the potential to influence children's poor eating habits.
Children are now exposed to food advertising through new online techniques. Among the most interactive of these new tactics aimed specifically at children is the advergame, a custom-built online game designed to promote a company's brand (Chester and Montgomery 2007; Mallinckrodt and Mizerski 2007; Moore and Rideout 2007; Weber, Story, and Harnack 2006). According to the 2007 American Kids Study conducted by Mediamark Research & Intelligence (2007), a majority (78.1%) of children aged six to eleven years who went online in the thirty days prior to the survey (65.9% of all respondents aged six to eleven years) reported playing online games. In another study, NPD Group (2007) found that among all child garners aged two to seventeen years, approximately half play games five hours or less per week and the other half play six to sixteen hours or more per week. It seems natural for food marketers to want to tap into this enthusiasm. The Veronis Suhler Stevenson's communications industry forecast has indicated that total U.S. spending on advergames was estimated at $264 million in 2006 and is expected to grow to $676 million by 2009 (Johannes and Odell 2007). Some marketers are actively promoting advergames through various media such as television commercials, print ads, and banner ads to attract children (Johannes and Odell 2007). More notably, some advertisers (e.g., Coca-Cola Company) are diverting their advertising dollars from television to games and other nontraditional advertising media (Grover et al. 2004).
However, advergames create some concerns when used to target children (Mallinckrodt and Mizerski 2007; Moore and Rideout 2007). It has been argued that if younger children have difficulty distinguishing advertising messages from the content of television programming where content and advertisements are separated from each other, those children may also have difficulty distinguishing advertising messages from the content of advergames when advertising messages are often integrated into the story line of the game (Moore and Rideout 2007). Moreover, the immersive and interactive nature of advergames has the potential to influence children's preferences for the food brands embedded in the advergames, even when they understood the persuasive intent of the advergames (Mallinckrodt and Mizerski 2007). Recently, Weber, Story, and Harnack (2006) and Moore and Rideout (2007) conducted content analyses of food marketers' Web sites aimed at children and found that many food Web sites targeting children used advergames.
This study extends previous studies by conducting a more extensive analysis of the content of advergames. The current study first examines how food brands are integrated in advergames to promote the food brands to children. Second, given the educational benefits of interactive games, the current study also examines to what extent food marketers use advergames to educate children. Finally, this study also reports on the product category and nutritional content of foods featured in advergames. The findings of this study will lay the groundwork for future empirical studies exploring the impact of advergames on children's food preferences for, purchases of, and consumption of food products. Additionally, the FTC and Department of Health & Human Services (2006) have requested that the academic community provides policy makers with research-based insights into new interactive food advertising and marketing strategies targeted at children. The findings of this study will provide the food industry and policy makers with a more complete picture of food advergames aimed at children.
CHILDREN'S UNDERSTANDING OF TELEVISION ADVERTISING
Over time, children develop knowledge about persuasion, product, and advertiser. This knowledge, called persuasion knowledge, helps children "recognize, analyze, interpret, evaluate, and remember persuasion attempts and select and execute coping tactics believed to be effective and appropriate" (Friestad and Wright 1994, 3). Wright, Friestad, and Boush (2005) explain that knowledge of persuasion--and thus the ability to process and defend against persuasive messages--is learned, socialized, domain specific, and continually evolving. This learning--spurred by the motivation to manage an increasingly complex world--becomes more refined as the child matures.
Children's understanding of advertising is thought to develop in age-related stages, as explored in a number of empirical studies focusing on television. To understand television advertising, it is believed that children must first learn to distinguish programming (e.g., cartoons) from commercials, a skill that begins to emerge around age four or five (John 1999; Wilcox et al. 2004). However, even after children begin to recognize the difference between advertising and other programming content, they have difficulty discerning the persuasive nature of advertising messages before age seven or eight (Moses and Baldwin 2005; Wilcox et al. 2004). Some researchers also posit, moreover, that even after children begin to recognize the persuasive nature of advertising, they still do not develop the capability to defend against advertisers' claims until age twelve or later (John 1999).
In one early study (Robertson and Rossiter 1974), elementary school children were asked a series of questions probing their understanding of the information and persuasion functions of television commercials. While the proportion of children who identified information functions remained relatively constant, persuasive intent was more likely to be noted by the ten- and eleven-year-old age group (99%) than by the six- and seven-year-old children (52.7%). Blosser and Roberts (1985) also showed both commercial and noncommercial content to children aged four through eleven years and came to a similar conclusion. After viewing excerpts from television news and television commercials, the older children were able to correctly identify the persuasive intent of the advertisements, while the younger children could not.
Given children's vulnerability to advertising, the role of television food advertising...
|
