Food advertising and its potential influence on child-parent purchase dynamics (2013)

Undergraduate: Katherine McIlwain

Faculty Advisor: Heidi Hennink-Kaminski
Department: Journalism & Mass Communication

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As young waistlines have expanded in the past 30 years, food marketing to children has become a focus of frequent criticism for its role in encouraging unhealthy eating habits in young people. However, children are not likely the actual buyers of products they see advertised on television ¿ instead, it is their parents that make the purchases, often under the pressure of their child's requests.
The purpose of this study was two-fold: (1) to explore how children, in response to food advertising, interact with their mothers to influence purchase decisions; and (2) to understand the reasoning behind mothers' acceptance or refusal of their child's requests. In-depth interviews were conducted with eight mothers and their children to explore how both parties react to food marketing and how they interact regarding the food purchases that are made in their household. Then, grounded theory strategies were used to analyze the data and develop overall themes in the study¿s results. Ultimately, research results indicated that there was a wide range of media diets, actual diets and interactions between mother and child regarding food purchases within this sample. Overall, however, this study indicated that ¿pester power¿ is a largely in-store phenomenon, that mothers attempt to act as counteradvertisements to the marketing their children are exposed to, and that even at a young age, these children are already becoming keenly aware of their developing role as consumers.