Television advertising’s influence on parents’ gift-giving perceptions

Abstract

Purpose This study aims to examine factors, beyond child requests, that influence parents’ perceptions of the most important gifts to give their children by assessing the influence of television advertising on children’s programming. Design/methodology/approach Using agenda-setting as a theoretical and methodological template, a content analysis of 7,860 commercials in children’s programming was compared using a questionnaire to 143 parents of 240 children to test the transfer of salience between advertising and parents’ perceptions. The study also examined the role of child purchase requests in this relationship. Findings The product categories that most prevalently advertised on children’s television had a significant relationship with the product categories that parents perceived to be the most important to give their children as gifts. Furthermore, the results indicate that this relationship was not contingent upon parental advertising mediation or child product requests. Research limitations/implications The results are limited to a single broadcast market during the Christmas season. Strategically, the research suggests that advertising through children’s television programming may be an effective way to directly inform parents’ gift-giving consideration sets, and this target and outlet should be strategically evaluated in subsequent campaign decisions about the marketing mix. Originality/value The findings add new insights to the gift-giving literature, indicating that advertising in children’s programming may be an alternative direct influence on parents’ perceptions. This research also extends research on advertising agenda setting into the new context of commercial advertising of consumer products.

Holiday Advertising in the Borderland: The Specificity of Perception in Latgale Region (Latvia) and Pskov Region (Russia)

“…They profit by it, by advertising. 06%, neutral attitude -36.17%, negative attitude -12.77%), whereas in other groups, as mentioned before, neutral opinion dominates6 . It is noteworthy that the analysis of other demographical indicators (respondents' gender, nationality, number of underage children in family, place of residence) revealed similar tendencies for both regions that are characteristic also for the situation of the present-day society on the whole.…”

Understanding the influence of perceived susceptibility to addressable TV advertising targeting children on parents’ purchase intentions

“…The purpose of this study was to examine parents' perceptions about advertising that is directly targeted to their children via addressable TV, and to examine the intervening processes that might produce brand-favorable purchase intentions (Figure 2). Although exploring the effects of children's advertising on parents may seem counterintuitive, past research indicates that parents can be influenced by such messaging (Holiday et al, 2018b); and even as unintended audiences, they are vulnerable to media effects when they perceive the media will have an effect on others (i.e. their children) (Gunther and Storey, 2003).…”

“…Such discrepancies between adults and children have been long established (John, 1999;Lapierre, 2019;Wright et al, 2005), and there is a need to pointedly investigate children's responses to addressable advertising. However, because parents are often the ultimate gatekeepers of the purchase of children's consumer goods, they are influenced by advertising that targets children (Holiday et al, 2018b), and they are conceivably vulnerable to media effects when they perceive a media message may influence others (i.e. their children) (Wright et al, 2005).…”

Television viewing and conspicuous consumption of households: evidence from India

“…Despite their significant contributions, previous studies examining the influence of television viewing duration on viewers' conspicuous consumption leave three issues unexplored. First, while they examine the influence of television viewing on consumer attitude and behavioral intentions (O'guinn and Shrum, 1997;Shrum et al, 2005;Priya et al, 2010), consumers' socialization (Vijayalakshmi et al, 2019) and advertisement recall (Soni, 2017;Holiday et al, 2018), they fail to measure its effect on the expenditure incurred on conspicuous consumption, which has more direct relevance for firms' revenue and profits (Swait and Sweeney, 2000). Second, these studies primarily focus on individual consumers and pay little attention to households despite their influence on the decision-making process of consumers, in general (Martínez and Polo, 1999), and for BoP consumers, in particular (Chikweche et al, 2012).…”