Abstract
Children’s exposure to unhealthy food marketing is one factor contributing to childhood obesity. The impact of marketing on children’s weight likely occurs via a cascade pathway, through influences on children’s food brand awareness, emotional responses, purchasing and consumption. Thus, building emotional attachments to brands is a major marketing imperative. This study explored Australian children’s emotional attachments to food and drink brands and compared the strength of these attachments to their food marketing exposure, using television viewing as a proxy indicator. A cross-sectional face-to-face survey was conducted with 282 Australian children (8–12 years). Children were asked to indicate their agreement/disagreement with statements about their favourite food and drink brands, as an indicator of the strength and prominence of their brand attachments. Questions captured information about minutes/day of television viewing and the extent that they were exposed to advertising (watched live or did not skip through ads on recorded television). For those children who were exposed to advertisements, their age and commercial television viewing time had significant effects on food and drink brand attachments (p = 0.001). The development of brand attachments is an intermediary pathway through which marketing operates on behavioural and health outcomes. Reducing children’s exposure to unhealthy food marketing should be a policy priority for governments towards obesity and non-communicable disease prevention.
Highlights
Children’s exposure to marketing for unhealthy foods and beverages is widely accepted by leading international health organisations to be a causal factor contributing to childhood overweight and obesity
The effects of marketing exposure on children’s diet and health outcomes are likely to occur via a cascade pathway, such that repeated exposures lead to food brand recognition, brand affect or emotional responses, which in turn lead to food purchase and, consumption behaviours [4]
Brand attachments appear to be an important part of the cascade of effects in food marketing and are an intermediary pathway through which marketing operates
Summary
Children’s exposure to marketing for unhealthy foods and beverages is widely accepted by leading international health organisations to be a causal factor contributing to childhood overweight and obesity. The World Health Organization’s (WHO) Commission on Ending Childhood Obesity confirmed that the evidence on the impact of unhealthy food marketing on childhood obesity is unequivocal [1]. Reducing children’s exposure to this marketing is a global priority for obesity and non-communicable disease prevention [1,2,3]. The effects of marketing exposure on children’s diet and health outcomes are likely to occur via a cascade pathway, such that repeated exposures lead to food brand recognition, brand affect or emotional responses, which in turn lead to food purchase and, consumption behaviours [4]. Children and adolescents are a major target market for the food and beverage industry, given their. Public Health 2019, 16, 2358; doi:10.3390/ijerph16132358 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph
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