A character a day keeps the fruit on display: the influence of cartoon characters on preschoolers' preference for healthy food

Abstract

The objective of this research is to explore the role of cartoon characters in making fruit and vegetables more appealing to preschoolers: to this end, a sample of kindergarteners (5-6 years old) was involved, after having investigated their familiar food habits and their preferences about characters. Through a play-based methodology they were asked to select the tastiest food, choosing from fruit and vegetables, presented both with and without a sticker showing an image of their favourite characters, and branded salty and sweet snacks, presented in their traditional packaging without cartoon pictures. The findings show that characters deeply influenced children's choices in favour of healthy food, including in those children who were averse: cartoon characters can represent an incisive marketing tool to increase children's appreciation of fruit and vegetables

Beauty and the Banana: it is a commercial promotion, not a public health campaign

“…This campaign aligns with a current trend in public healthrelated research, which suggests that brand mascots and media characters can be used Bresponsibly^to promote healthy foods to children (Kraak & Story, 2016;Hanks et al, 2016;Baldassarre & Campo, 2015). The idea is to Bsteal a page out of the big brands playbook^ (Crawford, 2015), using the same marketing strategies of Big Food to promote produce (Elliott & Carruthers Den Hoed, 2016), and some encouraging studies reveal that cartoon characters may make unprocessed foods more desirable to children (Baldassarre & Campo, 2015;Droog et al, 2011;Wansink et al, 2012).…”

Food Marketing in an Obesogenic Environment: a Narrative Overview of the Potential of Healthy Food Promotion to Children and Adults

“…Of the ten studies that were found, four studies focused on studying vegetable consumption (i.e., attitude, intention, or behavior) [34][35][36][37], two studies on fruit consumption [38,39], two on fruit and vegetable consumption [40,41], and two studies focused on meal selection and food preferences including healthy choices (e.g., water, carrot sticks, strawberries, or a fruit bag) [13,42]. The marketing techniques that were used in these studies were social media influencer marketing [35,37,40], advergames [36,39], promotional characters [34,38,42], product placement [38], and television adverts [13].…”

“…The marketing techniques that were used in these studies were social media influencer marketing [35,37,40], advergames [36,39], promotional characters [34,38,42], product placement [38], and television adverts [13]. Eight out of ten studies focused on children [13,34,36,[38][39][40][41][42], one study included adults [37] and one study included adolescents [35]. All studies included participants of both sexes, with an almost equal number of both males and females in almost all studies.…”

“…Evidence in support of the proposition that healthy food promotion may help to encourage healthy eating patterns among children and adults was found in six out of ten studies. These studies demonstrated a positive effect of healthy food promotion on product attitude and purchase intention [36][37][38], food preference, choice and selection [38,41,42], or actual food consumption [34,35,37,42].…”

The Effect of the Promotion of Vegetables by a Social Influencer on Adolescents’ Subsequent Vegetable Intake: A Pilot Study

“…Previous studies have found an effect of the promotion of healthy foods on intake among adolescents [56][57][58][59]. In addition, several studies have found a neurological effect of food advertising for unhealthy foods in adolescents [53,54], but this has not yet been tested for promotion techniques for healthy foods.…”