Positive and Negative Impact of Television Advertisement on Children - Research Proposal Example

Research Proposal: Positive and negative impact of television advertisement on children Introduction: The present era might be called an era of commercialization together with consumerism (Ewen, 1976; Lee, 1993) and without any ambiguity television is its primary harbinger. Considering the fact that television runs 24 hours a day and 7 days a week; the advertisers havethe highest possibility to reach people whenever they might want through television. At this background the market is choosing television as its prime medium of advertisement. Inserting advertisement after a certain time gap within a popular television program compels the observers to watch the same. Often if he changes the channel he might get caught in another advertisement telecasted in some different channel. The channels often have their own internal agreement to telecast advertisement at the same time that eventually increases the chance of one or the other advertisement to get watched. Back from the 1970s researchers started to gain interest on the aspect of impact of advertisement among children. The marketing agencies recognized the potential of children to turn their marketing efforts a success and children became the immediate target for advertisement campaigns. One genre of researchers appointed by the marketing agencies started to explore the potential of children as the target of the advertisements and the other genre started to consider what would be the positives and negatives of such exposure to advertisement for the children. Research has revealed that once a baby is six months old he/she can identify brands through forming image of logos in their brain. Brand loyalty might set forth at an age as early as two. By the age of three a child might extend brand specific requests. Once they reach age of five they are capable of making their first purchase and by age of seven they become self-sufficient as far as purchasing is concerned (Goodwin, 2013). The audio-visual output of a television has immense appeal to children. Specifically cartoon channels, channels devoted to children programmes and children movies draw the attention of millions of children. Again if both the parents are working then they often blatantlyresponse to their child’s wants as they feel this would to some extent make up for their reduced time. The commercial entities thus get hold of a large pull of potential buyers through television and optimise the same through various advertisements. Ironically all those advertisements that are telecasted through these channels not meant specifically for children. However, the impact of those advertisements on children cannot be ignored and it is worth of consideration for a thoughtful research. Childhood is a formative period in human life; what we see and hear during our childhood leaves immense impact on our later life. At this background consideration of positive and negative impacts of advertisements on children is of specific significance. Brief Literature Review: Angela B. Pfeil (2005) has explained that why advertisements target the children. According to her over the last three decades children spending has actually doubled in every decade and actually tripled in 19990s. Back in 1968 children aged between 4 to 12 years used to spend $2.2 billion and it increased to $40 billion by 2002. Again in 1960s the children used to influence $5 billion of their parents purchase that number increased to a staggering $188 billion by 1997 (Pfiel, 2005, p.2). In a more recent research Bill Goodwin (2013) showed that this influence has even increased in recent times. He has opined that Kids influence 80% of the household purchase and in 2012 the direct buying power and influence of Kids in household purchase has reached $1.2 trillion (Goodwin, 2013). It is obvious that the manufacturers would like to influence such powerful purchasers through their advertisements. Adler (1980), Lowery and DeFleur (1988), Riecken and Yavas (1990) and Condry (1991) have given estimates for average per annum commercial exposure of USA children at background of 1980s and the number lies between 20000 to 40000. It is obvious similar result would hold for UK as well. Goldberg and Gorn (1978) carried a research to understand the unintentional consequences of television advertisements on children. The study intended to reveal three aspects; if under the influence of advertisement children choose material objects over better socially oriented alternatives; whether advertisements increases parent child conflict and whether it ultimately leads to disappointment of the children. They have considered 164 nursery school children within the age of 4 to 5 years, heralding from middle and upper middle income groups. To make the children familiar they were shown a picture of a toy at first. In order to unleash the first aspect a child is asked to choose between two children one with the advertised toy but not a nice child and another nice child but without any toy. The second aspect was revealed by asking children to choose between advertised toys and their mother chosen toys. The third aspect was revealed by asking children that whether a boy in a photograph who does not have the advertised toy is sad. The study revealed that children are more prone to toys rather than friends and are likely to choose the not so nice child with advertised toy to play with rather than choosing a nice child with no toys. Children also liked the advertised toy over their mother chosen toy and expressed their unhappiness over their parents in case they do not get the advertised toy. However the findings are not conclusive regarding the impact of advertisements as it is likely that the artificial ambience would have certain impact on a child’s behaviour. Again children usually in a temporal manner gets attracted towards new toy rather than friends and that attraction might even enable them to choose a not so nice child with a new toy over a nice child with no toy. Lastly it is hardly surprising that a child becomes disappointed on his parents if he is not given a new toy. In another study Shimp, Dyer and Divita (1976) carried a study to find out ill effects of premium oriented commercials on children. They framed two research questions; first they tried to find out if the inclusion of a premium portion in television advertisement diverts the child’s attention from the principal product and secondly they tried to find out that if the inclusion of premium portion has any impact on the actual purchase of the advertised product. A total number of 197 school students were selected from different schools and four versions of a television commercial were prepared. The study revealed that product recall ability declines with increased time to premium portion, however children not necessarily opt to purchase product with premium. Bjurstrom (2000) has explained the impact of television advertisement on children. He has considered television advertisements as he has found that most of the children have seen advertisement in television rather than through other Medias. Bjurstrom (2000) has divided the influence of advertisement in two parts namely intentional and unintentional influence and carried his research to find out their impact on the value, knowledge and attitude of children. He has expressed hic scepticism on the illustrated negative impact of television advertisement on children values and attitudes as portrayed by earlier researchers considering “consumption, violence, alcohol, smoking (cigarettes), eating habits, gender and race differences (or gender/race stereotypes)” (Bjurstrom, 2000, p.35) and opined that considering the fact that the earlier studies have mostly interviewed the mother of the children hence the negative impact is mostly a replica of their mother’s thought than that of their own. He has also supported the researchers criticising the earlier studies on impact of television advertisements on values of children. Considering the American children Young (1990) has shown that the advertisements that are pointed towards children of America and promoted food items; mostly engrossed with low nutrition foods that are high in fat, sugar, salt and cholesterol. De Bens and Vandenbruaene (1992) has depicted that advertisements have important bearing in governing the food choice of American children. Goldstein (1992) has shown that advertisements indirectly affect the smoking and drinking habit among children. In sharp contrast Smith (1990) has nullified any such association. Schneider (1987) has criticized advertisements for influencing children towards stereotype concepts regarding gender and race. Advertisements have remained conventional regarding women status in society.Macklin and Kolbe (1984) and Rajecki et al (1993) have opined that advertisements directed towards the children have become immensely stereotyped in last thirty years regarding the portrayal of men and women in society. As an example, Rajecki et al (1993) has shown that boys have been typified in toy advertisements and girls in displaying emotional content. Goldstein (1992) has also criticized the less representation of ethnic minorities in advertisements and opined that this would not do well to the children’s conception regarding the social structure. Wilson II and Gutierrez (1985) however think that with time ethnic minorities are getting better representation through advertisements than before and opined in near future to optimise the market condition more representation of ethnic minorities through advertisements would occur. De Bens and Vandenbruaene (1992) though have mentioned that it is quite arduous to segregate the impact of advertisement on children regarding food choice, gender and ethnicity and at the best it might be concluded that advertisement along with several other factors contributes in food choice, gender and ethnic stereotyping that might leave a negative impact on children. Finally Goldstein (1992) and De Bens and Vandenbruaene (1992) has opined that violence in advertisement has a short term impact on aggressive behaviour of children in United States of America and United Kingdom. Research Questions: 1) What is the impact of advertisement on the food habit of children living in UK? 2) Does advertisement leaves wrong impact on the social behaviour of children living in UK? Methods: The research would initially take into consideration an extensive literature review on the concerned topic. The literature would include books and journal articles collected from different libraries and Internet sources.Furthermore the literature would consider journal articles and books mainly written on impact of television advertisements on the children (within the age of 4 to 8 years) living in UK.The literature review would continue till it starts to generate repetitive information. This way it might be claimed that the concerned research has considered an exhaustive literature review. Then, considering the nature of the study; the current research topic would follow a qualitative research method based on primary survey with pre-determined closed and open end questionnaire. The researcher would carry the survey to avoid any intermediary bias in response of the respondents. Children living in United Kingdom and aged between 4 to 8 years would be considered through random sampling method. Considering limited time and resource as well as financial bottleneck; it is not possible to carry a holistic population survey. Sampling helps out in eradicating this problem through providing a representative manageable sample population. Qualitative research has an edge over quantitative research in social science research considering the fact that qualitative research is more capable of capturing the actual social ambience. Quantitative research often gets reduced to mere numbers and seldom considers the associated environment that might have enabled the researcher to reach a more complete finding. Unlike science; social science heralds from human life and seeks for a more humanitarian approach of research that qualitative and mixed methods are capable of providing. It is more flexible than quantitative research. Again a combination of open and closed end questionnaire would not guide the respondent to the desired answer of the interviewer and in this respect it involves less biasness problem. It has often been seen that over enthusiastic researchers frame their questions in such a manner and with such alternative answers that the respondents get caught within those answers and end up choosing from one of them, which might be far from what they have intended to say. This problem mainly happens while carrying a quantitative research with close end questionnaires. Random sampling again gives equal opportunity of selection to each respondent so it avoids any selection bias. Instead of random sampling if any other sampling method is used then the sample population might not be representative of the entire population and can suffer from selection bias. Random sampling on the other hand allocates same probability of selection to each respondent and therefore remains far from the allegation of biasness. The census data for UK would provide a sample frame for the concerned study and from the population of 4 to 8 years old children; the required sample population would be selected.Again, primary survey is more appropriate for qualitative research than secondary data or response consideration. Primary survey generates on field data and is easier to verify; often there is chance of getting back to the respondent or ask him the same question twice in case of any ambiguity with the respondent’s first response. Secondary data is bereft of these advantages, hence apart from the sample frame determination; secondary data has no role to play in the current research. It is worth mentioning that before the field survey, pre-test and pilot study would be done to avoid ambiguous questions and to minimise opportunity as well as financial costs. Ethical Issues: Before the initiation of the interview of the children permission from their parents would be taken and parents would be briefed regarding the concerned research. In case parents refuse to grant permission, that particular child would be left beyond the sample population. Names of the children and their address would not be disclosed. The interviewer would not be persuasive and under any circumstance would not force the children to provide answer or participate in the interview. Children would be asked questions suitable to their age. During the interview the children could withdraw at any point, either at their own will or if deemed necessary by their parents without showing any cause. The children might not give answer to any particular question and the interviewer has to accept the same without showing any discontent or hard feelings towards the children. Potential problems: The concerned research might face a few problems during the survey. The children might not understand the questions, the interviewer might interpret the response in his own way and that might not always reflect the right answer by the children. Often the answer of the children might be a reflection of what their parents think of the advertisement, instead of their own feelings. Considering the huge population of UK, chances are there that the sample population might go beyond the manageable level. Brief Conclusion: As revealed by the literature that there are severe ambiguities among researchers regarding the true impact of the advertisement on the children. All most all the researches done so far on the concerned domain suffers from limitations that cannot be ignored. All the researchers agreed that it is extremely hard to segregate the impact of advertisement on children from other impacts. At this background the proposed research is expected to reveal many interesting horizons. References 1. Adler, R. (1980), Children’s Television Advertising: History of the Issue,Edward,I, Palmer,L. & A. Dorr (eds): Children and the Faces of Television. Teaching, Violence, Selling. New York & London: Academic Press 2. Bjurstorm, E. (2000), Children and Television Advertising, ANDI, available at: http://www.andi.org.br/sites/default/files/legislacao/59%20-%20Children%20and%20Television%20Advertising_0.pdf (accessed on April 23, 2014) 3. Condry, J. (1989), The Psychology of Television. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 4. De Bens, E. & Vandenbruaene, P. (1992), TV Advertising and Children. Part IV, Effects of TV advertising on children. Centre for media, opinion, and advertising research, UniversiteitGent 5. Ewen, S. (1976): Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture. New York: McGraw Hill. 6. Goldstein, J.H (1992),Television Advertising And Children. A Review of Research. Prepared for Toy Manufacturers of Europe. Brussels. 7. Lee, M. J (1993), Consumer Culture Reborn. The cultural politics of consumption. London & New York: Routledge. 8. Lowery, S. A & DeFleur, M. L (1988), Milestones in Mass Communication Research. Media Effects. New York & London: Longman. 9. Macklin, C. M (1987): Preschoolers’ Understanding of the Informational Function of Television Advertising, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 14. 10. Pfeil, A.B. (2005), Going Places with Youth Outreach, New York: American Library Association 11. Rajecki, D W; Dame, Jill Ann; Creek, Kelly Jo; Barrickman, P J & Reid, Catherine A (1993): Gender Casting in Television Toy Advertisments: Distributions, Message Content Analysis, and Evaluations, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Vol. 2, No 3. 12. Riecken, G. & Yavas, U. (1990): Children’s General, Product and Brand-Specific Attitudes Towards Television Commercials. Implications for Public Policy and Advertising Strategy, International Journal of Advertising No. 9. 13. Smith, G.(1990), The Effect of Advertising on Juvenile Smoking Behaviour, International Journal of Advertising, No. 10 14. Schneider, C. (1987), Children’s Television. The Art, the Business, and How It Works. Chicago: NTC Business Books. 15. Goodwin, B. (2013), the Undeniable Influence of Kids, Packaging Design, available at: http://www.packagingdigest.com/packaging-design/undeniable-influence-kids (accessed on April 23, 2014) 16. Shimp, TA (1976), An Experimental Test of the Harmful Effects of Premium-Oriented Commercials on Children, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 3 No. 1, pp. 1-11 17. Wilson II, C. C & Gutiérrez, F. (1985), Minorities And Media. Diversity and The End of Mass Communication. London & New Dehli: Sage Publications. 18. Young, B. M (1990), Television Advertising and Children. Oxford: Claredon Press/Oxford University Press. Read More