Children's Television Advertising: The Attitudes and Opinions of Elementary School Guidance Counselors

Abstract

Questions concerning the impact of television on children in American society have been posited since the initial presence of that pervasive medium. Recently, Brown reviewed the research in this area illustrating its continued importance (1). The issues involved in television advertising to children have not been surfaced as long but have become heated in recent years. Evidence of the importance of this area is documented well by Ward, Wackman and Wartella in their research into cognition and children's TV advertising and Barry in his extensive review of research regarding children and television advertisng (2,3). Actions by the Federal Trade Commission, Federal Communications Commission and Action for Children's Television, among other groups further testify to the significance of this issue and public opinion surrounding it. Barry and Hendricks called for more input from those sectors of society which deal with children on a day-to-day basis with the hopes that these inputs would be valuable to public policy makers in the guidance of public policy for advertisers and marketers communicating to the child audience via television (4). The authors report that the elementary school guidance counseling profession is the fastest growing among all of the helping professions and the counselor plays an important role in the observation and development of the child in the socialization process. They contend that elementary school guidance counselors, along with parents and teachers are in a unique position to observe children during their developmental years. Data obtained from this heretofore untapped segment of society can offer advertisers feedback regarding perceptions of important socialization agents who interact with children on an almost daily basis. This feedback may shed light on the process advertisers might engage in to more effectively Thomas E. Barry is Associate Professor of Marketing in the School of Business, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. His primary teaching and research interests are in marketing and advertising management and he has been an Outstanding ProfessorAward winner at SMU. Barry is a member of the American Marketing Association, Beta Gamma Sigma, Alpha Kappa Psi, Sigma Iota Epsilon and theAmerican Academy of Advertising. His writings have appeared in the Journal of Advertising, Journal of Advertising Research, European Journal of Marketing, California Management Review and Journal of the Academy of Marketing Sciences, among others. His present research interest is children's television advertising. He received his Ph.D. from North Texas State University in 1971. He has consulted for the Dallas-Ft. Worth Regional Airport, Long Lines Division of AT&T, University Computing Company, Neiman-Marcus and other Dallas area organizations.