Kids as stakeholders in business

Abstract

Reviews how business can interact with children in a commercially viable but ethically acceptable way. Explains why children are generally regarded as consumers and stakeholders: their increased spending power, ability to make consumer choices, influence over family purchasing decisions, and media and brand awareness. Moves on to concerns about how business treats children as consumers, expressed in the term “corporate defiance”: these concerns include the marketing of unhealthy foods, enticement of children by brands onto chat room internet sites, illegal employment of children, and a general parental dislike of companies treating children as consumers (for instance because it undermines their control over their children). Outlines UK regulations protecting children, issues in self‐regulation, examples of good practice, and critically examines the defences used by business over marketing to children: it’s a free market, the importance of choice, the non‐critical influence of advertising, the generality of pester power, and the effectiveness of self‐regulation.