Food advertising to children
A critical evaluation of public, governmental and corporate responsibilities in Germany
©2014
Academic Paper
48 Pages
Summary
With increasing levels of child obesity, the food industry and its advertising techniques are ever more in the centre of public and academic discussion. While such discussion is complicated by the subjectivity of ethical understanding, the existing body of research also lacks evidence for the actual effects of child-directed advertising. In order to advance a solution in the persisting conflict, this paper critically examines public, governmental and corporate responsibilities. A reflection of theoretical and empirical research is therefore complemented by the collection of primary data – drawn from qualitative interviews with children and their parents. As means of implications for practice, the author drafts an organisational concept, namely the ‘Initiative for the responsible use and creation of children’s food advertising’.
Key Takeaways
Table Of Contents
LIST OF FIGURES
Cover picture
Copyright Anna Lena Hallmann, 2012
Fig. 1 Legal enactments that concern children's food advertising in
Germany...21
Fig. 2 Persuasive tactics: Capri Sonne TV commercial...27
Fig. 3 Persuasive tactics: Nesquik Knusperfrühstück TV commercial...27
Fig. 4 Persuasive tactics: Ferdi Fuchs Mini Würstchen TV
Commercial...27
Fig. 5 Nutritional information: Capri Sonne, Nesquik Knusperfrühstück and
Ferdi Fuchs Mini Würstchen...28
LIST OF APPENDICES
Appendix A Code of conduct for children's advertising by the
Deutscher Werberat...47
Appendix B Web links to the discussed TV commercials...49
11
1
INTRODUCTION
There are times when you intuitively feel that something is going terribly wrong:
[...] Multicoloured packaging screaming for attention in the cereal shelf, in
merely endless rows of confectionary, even in the dairy section and the meat
counter. The products are often not even identifiable as food because they are
hidden behind pictures, dazzling colours, letterings, drawings, logos [...] In such
moments, you ask yourself what assumptions children may have about food, what
value they assign to it, what they know about food production and quality features,
what type of food they will consume by the time they are adults. And you suspect
that the answers will not be pleasant.
Thilo Bode, founder and executive director of Foodwatch e.V., 2012
1
The introductory words, as given in a recent report on the food industry (Foodwatch, 2012,
p.4), reflect longstanding concerns about child-directed food marketing. Ever since marketers
began targeting children, public and academia have found themselves in a heated discussion
about the topic (Preston, 2004). The debate on children's advertising ranges from whether it is
ethical to target children in the first place (Bakir and Vitell, 2010), to the criticism of specific
persuasive tactics and misguiding claims (Rozendaal, Buijzen and Valkenburg, 2011). Most
frequently, the discussion has been centred on child-directed advertising for food and
beverages. The reason why food advertising presents such a sensitive area is because it is
suspected to contribute to poor dietary habits (Yu, 2011, pp.87-88). With increasing levels of
childhood obesity, researchers around the globe have started investigating advertising's
contribution to this trend (Kelly et al., 2010).
Foodwatch's recent report on child-directed food marketing and the subsequent discussion
between consumer activists and the industry illustrate the topic's substantial relevance in the
German market. In the report, Foodwatch blames the food industry for primarily marketing
food and beverages that that are high in fat, sugar and salt (Foodwatch, 2012, p.13). In order
to promote such products, Foodwatch argues, the industry draws on manipulative advertising
techniques. More precisely, food advertising is accused of deceiving parents and seducing
children to consume "unhealthy" food, which ultimately leads to child obesity (Foodwatch,
2012, p.8). The report claims that, while the industry rejects taking responsibility, the German
1
This quote was translated into English from the following German original: ,,Es gibt diese Momente, in denen
man intuitiv spürt, dass etwas furchtbar falsch läuft: [...] Quietschbunt schreit es von den meisten Verpackungen
im Frühstücksflockenregal, in den schier endlosen Reihen, in denen sich Süßwaren stapeln, selbst in der
Joghurt- oder Wurstabteilung. Oft sind die Waren gar nicht mehr als Lebensmittel erkennbar, sondern versteckt
hinter Fotos, grellen Farben, Schriftzügen, Zeichnungen, Logos. [...] In solchen Momenten fragt man sich,
welche Vorstellung Kinder wohl von Lebensmitteln haben, welchen Wert sie ihnen beimessen, was sie über ihre
Herstellung und ihre Qualitätsmerkmale wissen, welche Lebensmittel sie selbst einmal als Erwachsene
konsumieren werden. Und man ahnt, dass die Antworten wenig erfreulich sein werden." (Foodwatch, 2012, p.4)
12
legislation equally fails to enforce consumer protection. As Foodwatch concludes, in the food
market, the average German consumer largely stands without defence and rights.
On the other side of the discussion, the food industry considers Foodwatch's criticism as
inappropriate. As the Zentralverband der Deutschen Werbewirtschaft e.V. (Central
Association of the German Advertising Industry; ZAW) argues, child obesity is not solely a
problem of food promotion. Instead, multiple factors, such as a deficit in physical activity as
well as the overall socio-economic environment contribute to weight increase (ZAW, 2012).
The industry further notes that the classification of food as "unhealthy" is illegitimate. In
response to the alleged lack of consumer rights, the ZAW points to several legal enactments
that do serve consumer protection. Moreover, it emphasises the work of the industry's self-
regulatory body, the Deutscher Werberat (German Council of Advertising), which has
established a voluntary code of conduct to guide the creation of children's advertising (ZAW,
2012).
The contrast between the arguments of the two parties reflects a large disagreement about the
responsibility and regulation of food advertising to children. Not least, such disagreement is
the result of a significant lack of scientific evidence for the causes and effects with regards to
such advertising. As long as such research gaps exist, the resulting conflict works to the
disfavour of children and concerned parents, as well as the advertising profession, which
continuously suffers from image degradation (Drumwright and Murphy, 2009).
Taking this dilemma into consideration, the work in hand aims to investigate some of the
research gaps in order to advance a solution of the conflict. More specifically, this paper
focuses on researching the actual effects of food advertising on children in Germany, and the
potential influencing factors on those effects. For that purpose, the author dedicates the
second chapter of this study to the examination of the status quo of child-directed food
advertising in Germany by drawing on the existing body of theoretical and empirical research.
This examination demands insights from various fields of research, such as philosophy,
politics and developmental psychology. Moreover, the status quo investigates the alleged lack
of consumers' rights by critically evaluating the current legal and self-disciplinary instruments
of advertising regulation in Germany.
Complementary to the examination of the status quo, this paper collects primary data through
parent and child interviews. The qualitative data, which is presented in chapter three, is aimed
to add to a more detailed understanding of children's responses to food advertising. More
precisely, the interviews research children's understanding of persuasive techniques, and their
13
assumptions about the nutritional content of advertised food. Since the existing research
indicates that parents may have an influence on such responses (Carlson, Laczniak and
Wertley, 2011), the interviews also focus on obtaining insights on parents' attitudes towards
child-directed advertising and their actual influence on children's responses.
While this paper leads to the conclusion that persuasive tactics and misguiding claims in food
advertising can have potentially harmful effects on children, the primary and secondary data
collection also strongly points towards how such harm may be effectively prevented and
counteracted.
In chapter four, those findings are summarised and discussed with regards to their
implications for practice. For that purpose, the author recommends the foundation of an
independent agency, the "Initiative für den gesunden Umgang mit Lebensmittelwerbung für
Kinder" ("Initiative for the responsible use and creation of food advertising to children"),
which aims to use this paper's findings to protect children from the harmful effects of food
advertising. In order to describe the initiative's purpose and tasks in detail, chapter four also
includes a mission statement of the "Initiative für den gesunden Umgang mit
Lebensmittelwerbung für Kinder".
In chapter five, the author critically evaluates her research and makes suggestions on how
future research may advance the findings provided in this paper.
14
2
THE STATUS QUO OF FOOD ADVERTISING TO CHILDREN
IN GERMANY
2.1
Advertising to children as reflected by theoretical and empirical research
2.1.1
Ethical considerations
Since the initial references in the late 1950s, research on advertising to children has grown in
both scope and depth. As a review of theoretical and empirical research shows, the subject
demands insights from various fields of study, including law, politics, paediatrics and
developmental psychology. However, most fundamentally, the debate on children's
advertising is rooted in a debate on advertising ethics (Turk, 1979; Preston, 2004;
Livingstone, 2009). According to Cunningham (1999, p.500), advertising ethics is defined as
a set of values that determine "what is right or good in the conduct of the advertising
function" and "it is concerned with questions of what ought to be done".
In the discussion about children's advertising, two different sets of ethics collide: the ethical
values of the advertising industry versus the values of children's advocates (Turk, 1979).
Within this scenario, the advertising industry is represented by advertisers, agencies and the
media (Murphy, 1998, p.318). Children's advocates, on the other hand, include governmental
agencies, consumer activists and parents. Because of the conflict's entanglement with ethics,
emotional involvement from both sides has often complicated an objective examination of
children's advertising (Turk, 1979, p.4).
The industry's behaviour is assumed to be mainly driven by economic welfare (Robin, 2009,
p.141), and hence various researchers have questioned the ethicality of the advertising
business. Early on in the discussion on advertising ethics, the profession has been condemned
as a manipulative tool that creates demand with the purpose of absorbing increased production
(Galbraith, 1958). Later, it has been accused of "polluting" the "psychological and social
ecology" in a way that "raises moral alarm" (Pollay, 1986, p.19). Most recently, anti-
capitalistic consumer activists have labelled advertising as sheer "brain damage" (Adbusters,
2007).
In response to the criticism, many authors have pointed to the informational, social and
cultural values that advertising offers. As Caccamo (2009, p.302) argues, advertising presents
a form of social communication which is vital to the human development. Moreover,
advertising is assumed to play a significant role in the economic socialisation of consumers,
i.e. in their education on how to participate in the current market system (Ward, 1974). As
Preston (2004, p.364) explains, advertising informs consumers about "the ways of
15
consumption", which is in turn "inevitable and necessary given the economic system".
Kirkpatrick (1986, p.43) even sees advertising as a basis for human survival because it
stimulates "rational selfishness" and independent thinking. He also claims that it cannot be
immoral to pursue one's own selfish interests, and hence discharges advertising of its moral
responsibility. However, Kirkpatrick's argument certainly presents an extreme.
A dominant tenor in philosophy agrees that behaviour is unethical if its outcome serves one
party, but harms another (McGann, 1986). This argument is ever more supported when
vulnerable groups, such as children, are concerned (Preston, 2004). As Livingstone (2009)
suggests, advertising to children is harmful, i.e. unethical, under two conditions: firstly, if the
child is unaware of the persuasive character of the advertisement, and secondly, if the
persuasion goes against the child's interest. This literature review will give examples from
research that demonstrate to what extend child-directed advertising meets Livingstone's
criteria and why food advertising is often in the centre of this discussion.
2.1.2
Food advertising to children and its potential effects
With increasing buying power and significant influence on the family's purchase decisions,
children have inevitably become a lucrative target market for advertisers. The children's
market is usually defined by children from ages six to thirteen (Medienpädagogischer
Forschungsverbund Südwest, 2011). In Germany, the buying power of this age group
currently totals 3.2 billion (Egmont Ehapa Verlag, 2012). Moreover, empirical studies
provide evidence that children influence their parents' purchase decisions. Especially in-store,
children have been found to successfully enforce their product requests (Ebster and Wagner,
2009). While parents are often unaware of the subtle influence of their children, marketers
spend large budgets on child-directed advertising (Bakir and Vittel, 2009). Most commonly,
such child-directed advertising is defined by the following circumstances: the advertisement is
channelled through media which is rated for children (LeBlanc Wicks, Warren, Fosu and
Wicks, 2009), and the advertisement features children using or consuming the product
(Roberts and Pettrigrew, 2007).
Despite the increasing use of online and mobile media, a recent study on children's media use
patterns reports that television remains the most important medium to reach children
(Medienpädagogischer Forschungsverbund Südwest, 2011). The study further notes that, on
average, both girls and boys watch TV for nearly 100 minutes per day. Whereas children's
programmes from public-law broadcasters, such as the kids' channel KiKA, are free of ads,
private broadcasters are authorised to show twelve minutes of advertising per hour
16
(Landeszentrale für Medien und Kommunikation, 2012). Based on their average TV
consumption, this implies that children are exposed to up to 75 TV advertisements in a day.
Several studies have found that food is the most advertised product in children's programmes,
accounting for 70% of the total number of advertisements (Kelly et al., 2010). Findings also
include that the majority of food advertisements feature non-core food products, such as
cereals, chocolate, confectionary, and carbonated beverages (Dibb, 1996). According to
dietary guidelines, products are categorised as non-core if they are "relatively high in
undesirable nutrients, including fat and sodium, or energy" (Kelly et al., 2010, p.1731). In
fact, it is suggested that the food range presented in advertising stands in direct opposition to
nutritional recommendations given by health care experts (Zuppa, Morton and Mehta, 2003;
Foodwatch, 2012). In Germany, 87% of all TV food advertisements in children's programmes
are for non-core food products (Kelly et al., 2010, p.1731).
Due to the inflated promotion of non-core food and beverages, advertising has been named
one of the major contributors to increasing levels of childhood obesity (WHO, 2006).
Increasing weight among children also presents a problem in Germany, where an estimated
15% of children and adolescents is categorised as overweight, and 6.3% as obese (Robert
Koch Institut, 2008, p.41). Besides excessively promoting non-core food, advertising has been
accused of disregarding healthy eating practices and giving misleading information on the
nutritional value of food. According to Roberts and Pettigrew (2007), most TV commercials
feature snacking situations or solitary eating, rather than family meals. Since family meals are
considered to promote a more balanced nutrition (American Dietetic Association, 2004),
eating practices demonstrated in most food advertisements may be contributing to unhealthy
eating habits. As Brennan et al. (2008) report, advertising's reflection of a balanced nutrition
is further diffused by the use of exaggerated claims on the products' benefits. More precisely,
food advertisements frequently include explicit or implicit claims on the product's ability to
"enhance popularity, performance, mood" and overall health (Roberts and Pettigrew, 2007,
p.357). For example, chocolate advertisements were frequently found to include pictures of
milk, which may implicitly create wrong assumptions about the product's nutritional content
(Roberts and Pettigrew, 2007). Likewise, explicit nutritional claims may be misguiding if, for
example, they promote a product to be "fat-free", while undermining high sugar content
(Williams, 2005).
Further adding to the criticism on children's advertising is the increasing use of persuasive
tactics, developed to attract young consumers (Nairn and Fine, 2008).
Such persuasive tactics
include the use of emotional appeals, such as humour or peer popularity, as well as the
17
presentation of premiums, comic characters or celebrity endorsement in order to promote the
product (Rozendaal, Buijzen and Valkenburg, 2011, p.334). There is evidence from both
qualitative and quantitative studies that promotional characters attract children's attention, and
create positive attitudes as well as product recognition (Kelly et al., 2010, p.1734). Similarly,
premiums are assumed to influence children's product likings because children are unable to
distinguish between product and premium (Carruth, Skinner, Moran and Coletta, 2000).
The vast bulk of research provides evidence that advertising does substantially influence
children's beliefs, attitudes, and also their product choices (Carlson, Laczniak and Wertley,
2011). Through a qualitative experiment, Gorn and Goldberg (1982) found that children who
were exposed to non-core food commercials were more likely to choose non-core food than
children who were exposed to fruit commercials. Additionally, several studies (Goldberg,
1990; Dhar and Baylis, 2011) demonstrated that a ban of fast food advertisements was
followed by decreasing fast food consumption.
With regards to Livingstone's (2009) notion on the ethicality of child-directed advertising,
children's advertising for non-core food may be harmful in two ways. Firstly, because
children may be persuaded and misguided by tactics and claims. And secondly, because the
persuasion to consume non-core food, paired with a questionable image of eating practices,
may contribute to child obesity.
2.1.3
Influences on advertising's effects on children
In search for the link between advertising and children's consumption behaviour, research has
discussed the influence of two main factors: On the one hand, the child's ability to understand
advertising, and on the other hand, parents' rearing practices (Carlson, Laczniak and Wertley,
2011). The former, which research has labelled "advertising literacy", describes the
understanding of the persuasive character of advertising (Livingstone and Helsper, 2006).
More specifically, advertising literacy includes three different levels of understanding: the
ability to distinguish advertising from other media content, the awareness that advertisers
intend to change attitudes and influence purchase behaviour, and lastly, the competence to
critically evaluate the advertised product (Rozendaal, Buijzen and Valkenburg, 2011, pp.329-
330).
Since children's cognitive development is usually determined by their age, age has also been
considered an important determinant of advertising literacy (Livingstone, 2009). Rozendaal,
Buijzen and Valkenburg (2011), for example, provide evidence that children's advertising
literacy is gradually developing between the ages of eight and twelve years. Confirming prior
Details
- Pages
- Type of Edition
- Erstauflage
- Publication Year
- 2014
- ISBN (eBook)
- 9783954897254
- ISBN (Softcover)
- 9783954892259
- File size
- 827 KB
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2014 (July)
