Children's consumption behavior in response to food product placements in movies

Abstract

Almost all research on the effects of product placements on children has focused on brand attitudes or behavioral intentions. Drawing on the important difference between attitudes or behavioral intentions on the one hand and actual behavior on the other, this paper tests the effects of brand placements on children's food consumption. Children from 6 to 14 years old were exposed to an excerpt of the popular movie Alvin and the Chipmunks, including placements for the product Cheese Balls. Three versions were created: one without placements, one with moderate placement frequency, and one with high placement frequency. Results showed that exposure to high‐frequency product placements exerted a significant effect on snack consumption, but no effect on brand or product attitudes. These effects were independent of children's ages. The findings are of great importance to consumer behavior scholars, nutrition experts, and policy regulators. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Impact of Marketing and Advertising on Food Behaviours: Evaluating the Evidence for a Causal Relationship

“…A number of randomised controlled studies, discussed in this paper, have shown significant effects on children's food behaviours after showing them unhealthy food advertising on TV [57,59,[63][64][65][66]79]; in advergames [67,69,70]; as product placements; [71,72] and as branding in the form of celebrity endorsements [73,75]. The one longitudinal study included in this paper also confirms this relationship [46].…”

“…Given the choice of three similar snacks, 45% of children consumed the advertised product after high frequency exposure compared with 31% after lower frequency product placement and 18% in the control condition (p<0.05) [71]. Similarly, combined exposure to McDonald's food product placement plus McDonalds TV advertising saw children's (n=483, 9-15 years) intention to consume fast food increase from 18% (control condition) to 47% (single exposure) to 54% (p<0.05) [56].…”

“…This included studies that manipulated exposures to TV advertising [56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66], Internet advergames [67][68][69][70], product placement in movies [71,72], brand endorsers [28, 29, [73][74][75] and premium offers [76,77].…”

“…Two European studies have shown the effect of product placement in movies on subsequent soft drink selection [72] and food choice and consumption [71]. After watching a two minute movie, children (n=57, 11-12 years; n=48, 6-7 years) who were exposed to a Pepsi product placement were more likely to choose Pepsi as a drink (p=0.04) [72].…”

“…As reported above, the majority of these studies examined the acute, short-term effects of marketing on children's food behaviours (3-12 years). Many utilised between-subject study designs with children randomised to conditions (n = 63 -1302) [56,[60][61][62][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77]; the remainder within-subject, counterbalanced designs with randomisation to condition order with a washout-period of more than two weeks (n=42-281) [ As previously mentioned, conducting experimental studies in this domain over longer periods is methodologically challenging and expensive [39] and, as such, research of this nature is limited. Two studies, however, give insight to the longer effects of food advertising exposure.…”