Children's Television Advertising and Brand Choice: A Laboratory Experiment

Abstract

Abstract This experiment attempts to investigate the vulnerability of children to television advertising. Subjects between six and eight years of age were exposed to commercial stimuli under varying conditions. Groups were randomly assigned to view segments of "Jeannie," a network children's show, either with an experimenter-produced commercial of a previously-unknown brand or a control ad inserted into the program context. In addition, the effects of traditional methodologies employed in related literature to one which minimizes reactance effects were studied. Children's brand choices were found to be influenced significantly by the communication of the commercial message for the previously-unknown brand.