Advertising, Purchase Requests and

Over the past two decades, marketers of toys and children's products have developed a diverse spectrum [Page 48]of strategies to reach the child consumer. An important explanation for the increased interest in children is that the marketing world has discovered that today's children represent three different markets. First, they form a primary market. They have considerable amounts of money to spend on needs and wants of their own, which qualify them as a significant primary market. Children, however, also form an influence market in that they have considerable influence on family purchases. Not only do they give direction to the selection of food and snacks, they also have a say in the choice of restaurant or the make of the new car. Finally, they represent a future market. Adults often remain loyal to the brands they liked when they were children. When manufacturers influence the brand attitudes of children, there is therefore a considerable chance that these favorable attitudes will last into adulthood.

The fact that children have been discovered as three markets in one has major consequences for the commercial environment of children. For example, the amount of television advertising aimed at young children has increased considerably in the past decades. At present, there is more advertising aimed at young children than at teenagers. In addition to advertising, marketers of children's products increasingly utilize other, less obvious marketing practices that usually create less irritation among parents and adults, such as sponsoring of children's media entertainment or product placement. The frequent drinking of Coca-Cola in some comedies or soaps is an example of product placement.

To what extent does exposure to advertising increase children's purchase requests? The studies that have been conducted to date all demonstrated that children who often watch commercial television ask their parents for products more often (see Buijzen & Valkenburg, 2003, for a review of these studies). In the majority of studies, the reported correlations were around r = .30. This correlation coefficient means that children who watch commercial television at above-median levels have, on average, a chance of 65% of asking for advertised products, whereas children who watch at below-median levels have, on average, a chance of 35% of asking for products. Such a difference in the request behavior between light and heavy watchers of commercial television is, of course, very important to advertisers and marketers—certainly important enough to invest large amounts of money in extensive advertising campaigns for children's products.