Television advertising to children : exposure effect and parental influence

Many writers have implied a relationship between children's exposure to television advertising and a variety of outcomes, but most of these have not been adequately demonstrated. At the same time, consumerists have implored parents to exert influence on the quantity and quality of television viewing by their children, assuming a beneficial result. Accordingly, this research has two major objectives. The first is to explore whether or not exposure to television advertising is related to certain cognitive, attitudinal, and behavioral variables. T The second objective is to determine the importance, if any, of parental influence in mediating these effects. In this regard, parental influence t through (1) parent-child interaction, and (2) structural control of the viewing environment is of special interest.

Data for this research was generated through personal interviews with children and their mothers in the subjects' homes. A procedure of dual interviewing was utilized whereby child and parent responses were recorded simultaneously by two interviewers in different rooms, eliminating any opportunity for interaction and influencing of one subject by the other. The three primary independent variables measured include the number of hours of children's programming viewed weekly by the child ("exposure"), the frequency of parent-child interaction on the subject of TV advertising ("interaction'), and the frequency of control actions by the mother ("control'). The dependent variables included the child's understanding of the concept and purpose of commercials ('cognition'), recall of advertised brands ("recall"), attitude toward TV advertising ("attitude"), and frequency of purchase requests for products and services ('purchase requests"). The sample consisted of 222 third and fourth grade children and their mothers.

A statistical analysis of the data employed the use of t-tests, correlational analysis, and regression analysis. . The findings can be summarized as follows :

1. Cognition was not found to be related to e exposure or interaction. It was, however, correlated positively with the child's age, his/her attention level during the viewing of commercials (as compared with that during programming), parental control, and recall of advertised products.

2. Recall was not found to be related to exposure or control.

However, it was found to correlate positively with cognition and negatively with attitude toward TV advertising.

3. Attitude was not found to be related to exposure, but correlated negatively with control. The child's attitude generally correlated with that of his mother, but the magnitude of the difference between them was positively correlated with the amount of parent-child interaction. The child's attitude correlated negatively with grade level and with recall.

Finally, males' attitudes were more negative than those of females.

4. Children's purchase requests were found to be positively related to exposure, parent-child interaction, and parental

exposure to television. A negative relationship was found between purchase requests and the number of older siblings present in the household. Parental control was not found to influence the frequency of purchase requests.

This study presents strong evidence to support the claims of parents and consumerists that television advertising stimulates requests by children for products and services. It also indicates that parents who create more opportunities for such requests to occur by interacting more frequently with their children do indeed receive more requests. The findings can also be interpreted to show that parents have more influence in the formation of their children's attitudes toward TV commercials than the amount of commercials to which the child is exposed. Finally, cognition and recall appear to be a function of variables not measured in this study. A multitude of opportunities remain for the exploration of additional variables and the processes in which they operate.