Children's attitude towards television advertisements and their impact on family purchase decisions

Abstract

Children have come to constitute a very important consumer group that influences family purchases of various products in many ways. Marketers pay special to this group recognizing them as a primary market, an influencing market, and a future market. Due to dramatic changes taking pace in the society regarding technology, information processing and changing media environment, children especially the 8-14 year olds are growing up much faster, are more connected and more informed than any other generation before them. The rise of dual income of parents, increase in working women, reduction in family size, rise in number of televisions in household especially children s bedrooms, more commercial pressure, arrival of new products in the market above all due to presence of immense media environment, children are able to experience consumption and purchasing at a much faster rate than ever before .Marketing targeted at children, including infants, often based on highly sophisticated and manipulative psychology, has its main focus through television commercials. The centrality of television in children s lives is indicated by the fact that 9 out of 10 children watch it almost every day. No, socializing agent has attracted more attention than mass media especially television, in children consumer behaviour literature. Many advertisements broadcasted on television are creations of brilliant minds which aim to persuade people to buy. These advertising messages get across the children minds due to the beautiful audio and visual effects. Advertising influences children purchase request and family dynamics. The earlier literature reported that television commercials affected children s attempts to influence parental purchase purchasing, calling advertising a and#8213;vehicle for unhealthy persuasion.and#8214; The present study is an attempt to investigate children purchase request affected by television advertisements.