Advertising to Children - Coursework Example

I would like to thank my interviewees for giving up their valuable time to speak to me during their hectic schedules. I also appreciate all the support and guidance offered by my tutor and lecturers. This help has been invaluable to me. My dissertation aims to explore the current problems pertaining to marketing trends involved with advertising aimed at the young audiences and small children. It is reported that Food companies alone spend a whooping $10 billion annually on advertising aimed at young children and this is alleged to have caused the American children to consume almost a third of their daily calories from junk food.

The problem of advertising to children is not just restricted to television advertising but extends to the increased use of Internet games, product placements, character licensing and an increased use of word of mouth campaigns to increase sales of products to the young consumer base.The Food,Toy and gadget industry is adamant to defend itself upon any accusation of irresponsible advertising to little children with the likes of themes like parental responsibility and First Amendment rights.

The Paper discusses whether or not it is the sole responsibility of these corporate giants to act against self-interest or that the Government should regulate such advertising more seriously. The Dissertation aims to balance these villainous notions of the modern advertisers which have been assigned to modern marketers and whether it is time parents took responsibility for their own actions rather than laying the blame on advertising. Essentially the aim is to question the models of childhood which the are assumed in this debate by policy makers and marketers alike in order to explore the way forward for regulation and the burden of responsibility to the advertisers or the parents.

I would like to clarify at the outset that my methodology in this dissertation is largely based on a literature review of contemporary sociological perspectives on childhood and the debates that have because a part of the controversy of advertising to children. The methodology then analyses a two interviews to reconcile the findings of the literature review. The Dissertation restricts itself to the UK discourse on children and advertising and is aimed at contributing to a greater understanding the debate and policy on advertising and children, and to encourage the further practical research in this area armed with these new perspectives.

Thus this paper is an exploration into the empirical and polemical literature yet it neutrally considers both sides of the argument and ontology of advertising to children. Tongue-in-cheek social skeptics have often subscribed to the term "adults-in-waiting" or "pre-adults" when describing the modern technologically aware child (James et al., 1998). At the same time the modern marketer knows that the modern child in "independent" and a potential customer which means that certain strategies will be built by marketers and marketing researchers to capture and compete on capturing this segment of the consumer base.

(Kline, 1993).The modern marketer thus knows that small children in particular form their future preferences in their early formative stages but the older they grow the more difficult they are to convince.(Lowden, 1999). There are so many industries depending on their bread and butter for effectively capturing the children's consumer base and therefore whether its Mc Donalds or Toys r' Us ,KFC or Disney Land. These exclusively child-oriented industries have come under recent fire from media, sociologists and the political community alike and a heated debate as to their ethical premise has followed which has raised an outcry