Abstract
This study investigated whether a forewarning of advertising’s intent can increase children’s (N = 159, 8–10 years old) defenses against television commercials to lower their desire for advertised products. Two different forewarnings were tested, one for advertising’s commercial intent or warning for the promotional nature, and one for advertising’s manipulative intent or warning for the deceptive nature. Results showed that only the warning of manipulative intent prior to advertising exposure was successful in increasing children’s advertising defenses. This forewarning activated children’s attitudinal advertising literacy (i.e., skepticism toward the commercial), which in turn led to lower advertised product desire. The forewarning of commercial intent was not effective in strengthening children’s advertising defenses. These findings have important implications for interventions that aim to lower children’s desire for (unhealthy) advertised products by activating their advertising literacy.
Highlights
Today’s children face a media environment filled with advertising (Calvert, 2008; Buijzen et al, 2010)
We focused on 8- to 10-year old children, as an extensive and long established body of research in both Europe and the United States has shown that most children in this age group have acquired a basic level of advertising literacy with regard to television commercials
Because we expect that the effect of a forewarning of commercial intent on children’s advertised product desire is mediated by their conceptual advertising literacy, we formulate the following hypothesis: H2: Compared to no forewarning or a forewarning of manipulative intent, a forewarning of commercial intent leads to higher awareness of (a) the selling intent and (b) the persuasive intent of the advertisement, which in turn leads to less advertised product desire
Summary
Today’s children face a media environment filled with advertising (Calvert, 2008; Buijzen et al, 2010). Previous research on forewarnings has shown that when the intent of an advertising message is revealed (i.e., through warnings prior to exposure), people’s cognitive and affective defense mechanisms are activated, resulting in lowered persuasion such as reduced favorable thoughts, ad attitudes, or Strengthening Children’s Advertising Defenses brand attitudes (Petty and Cacioppo, 1977, 1979; Jacks and Devine, 2000; Wei et al, 2008; Lee, 2010; Boerman et al, 2012) These studies were all based on adult samples.
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