Children 's Purchasing Decisions Are Affected By The Persuasive Nature

1496 WordsJul 22, 20156 Pages
Children’s purchasing decisions are affected by the persuasive nature used in advertising. I do not think anyone would argue the effectiveness advertising has on children. You can do an experiment all on your own by asking any 5 year old who the Vice President of the United States is. You will more than likely get a wrong answer if they give any answer at all. Now try asking that same child about any character that is associated with any major brand of cereal and I think you will probably be impressed by the knowledge they have on the subject. One would argue that is because they may love the cereal but I think it has more to do with the effectiveness of advertising. There was a study published recently on how familiar characters influence children’s judgements about information and products. It was a study done on 4 year olds and how they value messages from familiar characters. It was showing their trust in a familiar character’s testimony and how it relates to their product preferences. Children endorsed claims made by a familiar character more often than those made by a similar but unfamiliar character. They did so even in situations where they had evidence that the familiar character was unreliable. Those same Children also preferred low-quality products that had to do with a familiar character’s image over high-quality products without a character image up to 74% of the time. The control groups however preferred the low-quality products less than 6% of
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