Objective: The current study examined the impact of television and Internet food advertising on Australian parents and children.

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Purpose The purpose of this study is to answer the call for additional detailed research on factors that influence corporate social responsibility (CSR) authenticity by examining how the former is affected by the commonly reported CSR spending allocations expressed as percentages of annual profits. It integrates equity and attribution theories to propose a new construct of inequity perceptions to explain how CSR spending allocations influence CSR authenticity. Inequity perceptions form from smaller allocations that are perceived disproportionate compared to the potential reputational gains from the executed CSR communication, which, in turn, prompts lower authenticity inferences. Design/methodology/approach Three experiments were performed. Study 1 examines how different CSR spending allocations influence inequity perceptions and how the latter relate to CSR authenticity. Study 2 examines how inequity perceptions are affected by firm size. Study 3 examines whether psychological distance (being a customer or non-customer) affects information processing by predisposing customers to forming higher inequity perceptions. Findings Study 1 shows that lesser allocations produce higher inequity perceptions. Study 2 demonstrates that inequity perceptions are enhanced when numerically small allocations are reported by a large as opposed to a small firm. Study 3 shows that both customers and non-customers form similar inequity perceptions from smaller percentage allocations without support for the psychological distance effect. Research limitations/implications This study shows that the percentage of profits allocated to CSR, as well as firm size, can affect authenticity inferences via inequity perceptions. These findings point to different implications of CSR communication that features percentage allocations that multiple firms may not be aware of. Practical implications Marketers can benefit from the reported findings by understanding when and how CSR communication that features percentage allocations may be counter-productive by generating lesser CSR authenticity. Originality/value This study provides a novel perspective on how consumers evaluate CSR authenticity in a marketplace where awareness of firms’ vested interests is increasing.

Purpose Studies to date have focused on one or very few factors, rather than exploring a host of influences associated with children’s consumption of energy-dense foods. This is surprising as multiple agents are relevant to children’s food consumer socialisation (parents, peers, social norms and food advertising). This study aims to address these gaps and offers the first comprehensive empirical assessment of a wide cluster of variables. Design/methodology/approach A cross-sectional study was undertaken with children aged 7-13 years and their parents/main carers, collecting family metrics from parents and data directly from children. Structural Equation Modelling was used to estimate a series of interdependence relationships in four steps, revealing the increased explained variance in children’s consumption of energy-dense foods. Findings The inclusion of multiple potential factors increased the percentage of explained variance in children’s consumption of energy-dense foods. The models explicate which factors relate to frequent consumption in children, and clarify various indirect influences on children through parents. Originality/value For the first time, a wider range of variables was integrated to maximise the percentage of explained variance in children’s behaviour, providing policy makers and social marketers with novel insights regarding areas that need to be prioritised for consumer education. Both direct and indirect relationships were assessed. Data were collected from parents and their children to provide an original methodological contribution and richer data for investigation.

The problem of consumption of less healthy foods is complex and multiple factors need to be considered by health practitioners, social marketers and parents to address the issue of childhood obesity. Nutritional knowledge alone is not sufficient to ensure children make healthier food choices and emphasis should also be placed on persuasion knowledge education, targeting of peer norms, self-efficacy and stricter regulation of advertising aimed at children.

Although substantial research has been dedicated to children's understanding of advertising, the role of more diverse marketing purposes (attention capturing, product liking, and informative intentions) still has not been examined in relation to the activation of persuasion attribution among young consumers. Previous research has focused on one perceived advertising intention at a time, disregarding the complex nature of advertisements' purposes and how these different perceived intentions relate to persuasion attribution. It is still unclear whether viewing advertising as a source of information reduces persuasion attribution and mitigates the attention capturing and product liking evaluations when children are exposed to commercial messages. This study shows that children's comprehension of attention capturing and product liking intentions relate to higher persuasion attribution. However, perceiving advertisements as a source of information attenuates the effects of product liking and attention capturing intentions on persuasion attribution in older children (10-11 and 12-13 years) who were expected to be more critical of advertising. No such effects were observed among younger children (8-9 years). The study highlights that advertisements are evaluated in a more complex manner by children than has been previously thought. K E Y W O R D Sadvertising, attention capturing intention, children, informative intention, persuasion attribution, product liking intention

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