Children's Interaction with Adult Orientated Advertising

Abstract

This paper investigates children's (aged 7-11) understanding of life assurance advertising that has been aimed at a target audience substantially older than themselves. The need for such a study is borne out of the observation that children receive, through their television viewing habits, advertising aimed at them and advertising that is not

Understanding of children's interaction with advertising messages therefore benefits from a holistic approach which also takes into account adult orientated marketing communications, and thus which concerns advertising being received by children. The advertisement that has been used in this research has been chosen because it is unlikely to be of interest to children, as it is a rather dull and distant commercial aimed at the saga age bracket. This is used to ascertain children's literacy of the advertising form, the substance being of no interest or relevance.

(7-11 year old) children's familiarity with the form of advertising resulted in rational attempts at the deconstruction of adult orientated advertising. 7-8 year old children significantly under performed 10-11 year old children in their ability to interpret adult orientated advertising when the topic and the comment are unfamiliar. When deconstructing this unfamiliar untargeted advertisement, respondents exhibited abilities and tendencies that mirror the body of research already accomplished into children's interaction with advertising that has been aimed at them

There are several implications to these findings. First, academic research into children and advertising should seek to undertake research into children's interaction with a wide variety of advertising types because that is what is being received by children. To limit research to advertising overtly aimed at children would be unrealistic. Secondly, as children are active family members regarding household purchases, their interaction with family orientated advertising requires to be accounted for. Thirdly, as children are active in family purchase decisions, their role in if not their impact upon, the economy remains largely unaccounted for.