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Children's understanding of television advertising: The impact of host-selling.

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Children's understanding of television advertising: The impact of host-selling.

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Content CHILDREN'S UNDERSTANDING OF TELEVISION
ADVERTISING: THE IMPACT OF HOST-SELLING
by
Dale Lyman Kunkel
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(Communication Theory and Research)
October 1984
UMI Number: DP22384
All rights reserved
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UMI
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UMI DP22384
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UNIVukSI'I'Y Uh SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY PARK
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90089
Dale Lyman ICunkel
under the direction of h}.f. Dissertation
Committee, and approved by all its members,
has been presented to and accepted by The
Graduate School, in partial fulfillment of re
quirements for the degree of
CM
*84-
This dissertation, written by
2
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Dean
Date ...November984
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
Chairperson
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF TABLES.......................................... iv
LIST OF FIGURES........................................ vi
Chapter One. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM ............ 1
Discriminating programs from commercials • • • • 2
Persuasive intent attribution ................... 3
Emergence of public interest 4
Impacts of host-selling ................ 8
Chapter Two. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE.............. 13
Children's use of television..................... 15
Exposure to commercials .......................... 19
Commercial content ................................. 20
Impact of celebrity endorsers ................... 22
^Discriminating programs from commercials .... 25
^Recognizing persuasive intent ................... 32
Children's responses to commercials ............ 38
Hypotheses.......................................... 40
Discrimination ................................. 41
Persuasive intent ............................ 45
Attitude..................................... 47
Chapter Three. METHOD . . . . . . . . 50
Subjects.......................................... 50
Experimenters ..................................... 53
Procedure.......................................... 54
Stimuli............................................ 56
Measures............................................ 58
Chapter Four. RESULTS............................. . 63
Scoring............................................ 63
/ Program/commercial discrimination ..... 63
f Persuasive intent ............................ 65
V Attitudes towards products ................ 68
Preliminary considerations . ..................... 69
Discrimination between programs and
commercials..................................... 72
Recognition of persuasive intent ................ 82
Attitudes towards products ....................... 92
Summary...............................................107
Chapter Five. DISCUSSION ............................ 109
Influence of host-selling commercials ......... 110
Influence of program content alone .............. 115
Age differences in children's understanding
of commercials ............................ 117
li
APPENDICES................................................. 126
APPENDIX As PHOTOGRAPHS USED FOR PROGRAM/
COMMERCIAL DISCRIMINATION
MEASURES............................ 126
APPENDIX Bs PHOTOGRAPHS USED FOR PERSUASIVE
INTENT MEASURES .................... 137
REFERENCES................................................. 148
I
iii
LIST OF TABLES
Table Page
1 Age Differences in Children's Ability
to Discriminate Program from
Commercial Content in Applied
Story-Telling T a s k ....................... 74
2 Age Differences in Children's
Recognition of Commercial Content
with Direct Questioning ................... 76
3 Log-Linear Analysis of Children's
Ability to Discriminate Program from
Commercial Content in Applied Story-
Telling Task ..................... 77
4 Age x Treatment Differences Across Both
Program/Commercial Discrimination
Measures................................ . 79
5 Log-Linear Analysis of Children's
Recognition of Commercial Content
with Direct Questioning ................... 80
6 Age x Treatment Differences in Children's
Understanding of Persuasive Intent -
First Choice of Photo Representing
Int en t........... 83
7 Age x Treatment Differences in Children's
Understanding of Persuasive Intent -
Second Choice of Photo Representing
Intent ................................... 85
8 Consistency of Responses in Children's
First and Second Choices of Photos
Measuring Understanding of Persuasive
I nt en t..................................... 86
9 Age x Treatment Differences in Children's
Understanding of Persuasive Intent - Two
Measures Combined .......................... 87
10 Analysis of Variance Summary Table
Assessing Influence of Treatment and
Age on Children's Understanding of
Persuasive Intent .......................... 89
Table Page
11 Children's Responses to Television
Program Intent Measure . .............. 91
12 Treatment x Age Differences in Children's
Liking of the Advertised Cereal ......... 93
13 Treatment x Age Differences in Children's
Willingness to Make Purchase Influence
Requests for the Advertised Cereal . . . 95
(14' I Influence of Program and Commercial
Content on Children's Cereal Brand
Preference............................. 96
15 Cereal Brand Preference Across Both
Versions of Non-Host-Selling
Treatment................................ 98
16 Comparative Influence of Ad and Program
Both Separately and Together on
Children's Cereal Brand Preference . . . 100
17 Analysis of Variance Summary Table for
Children's Liking of Cereal by
Treatment and A g e ........................105
i
18 Analysis of Variance Summary Table for
Children's Willingness to Make Purchase
Influence Requests for Advertised Cereal
Products................ 106
v
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure Page
1 Interaction of Treatment x Age on
Children's Liking of the Advertised
Product........................................103
2 Interaction of Treatment x Age on
Children's Willingness to Make
Purchase Influence Requests for
the Advertised Product ................... 104
vi
CHAPTER I
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
The effects of television advertising on children
have been a topic of considerable research interest for
over a decade. Given the average child's viewing habits,
it is estimated that most children are exposed to more
than 20,000 commercials a year (Adler, Lesser, Meringoff,
Robertson, Rossiter, & Ward, 1980). Moreover, there is
ample evidence demonstrating that children are influenced
by the commercials they view. Several surveys of re
search (Adler et al. 1980? Atkin, 1980? Comstock,
Chaffee, Katzman, McCombs, & Roberts, 1978? Federal Trade
Commission, 1978? Roberts & Bachen, 1981? Wartella, 1980)
document that television commercials are at least moder
ately successful at generating positive attitudes towards
products, that young children often request advertised
products, and that such requests tend to be positively
related to the amount of exposure to commercials for the
advertised product.
1
The effects of television advertising on children
are, to some extent, dependent on the relevant cognitive
abilities and social knowledge which children are able to
bring to bear in their processing of and responses to
commercial messages. Along these lines, two important
abilities have been identified which greatly influence
children’s processing of television advertising, thus
potentially mediating the effects of such content on
child viewers.
Discriminating programs from commercials
The first of these is the child’s ability to recog
nize the difference between programs and commercials.
Studies assessing young children’s ability to discrimi
nate programs from commercials have tended to provide
somewhat different results according to the particular
research methodology used. Specifically, studies which
have asked children to verbally express the difference
between these two types of content (Blatt, Spencer, &
Ward, 1972; Ward & Wackman, 1973; Ward, Wackman, &
Wartella, 1977) have generally found that children below
the age of about 5-6 years respond with some confusion
about the differences. In contrast, studies incor
porating non-verbal techniques to measure children's
commercial/program discrimination have found such ability
present in children as young as 3 years (Donahue, Henke,
& Donahue, 1980; Levin, Petros, & Petrella, 1982). While
2
the latter studies suggest that some children may be able
to draw perceptual distinctions between programs and
commercials at a very young age, these findings say
nothing about recognition of the conceptual distinctions
between the two.
The most crucial difference which exists between
programs and commercials is the commercials intent to
persuade the viewer. Although it is a necessary pre
requisite, merely being able to discriminate a commercial
from adjacent programming does not at all guarantee that
the child viewer will be able to recognize the persuasive
nature of commercials, which leads to the second im
portant ability to be examined regarding children's
processing of television advertising.
Persuasive intent attribution
This ability is generally referred to as persuasive
intent attribution, or more simply put, the ability to
recognize the selling intent of commercials. Such
ability, when properly applied, may allow the child
viewer to process the information contained in television
advertising through a sort of "cognitive filter," recog
nizing that advertisers' claims are often exaggerated and
that products tend to be presented in the best possible
light.
In one of the earliest studies in this area,
Robertson and Rossiter (1974) found the development of
3
persuasive intent attribution to be positively related to
age. They hypothesized that the ability to recognize
persuasive intent would depend upon children drawing a
number of prior cognitive distinctions, including: (1)
discrimination between programs and commercials? (2)
recognition of an external source (sponsor)? and (3)
perception of an intended audience for the advertiser's
message. Their interviews with 289 first, third, and
fifth grade boys supported this hypothesis and under
scored the importance of children's level of cognitive
development in attributing persuasive intent to commer
cials .
Since recognition of both an external source and an
intended audience require some ability to take the
perspective of another, an ability which Piaget (1950,
1952) argues only blossoms at about age 7-8 (when the
child reaches the stage of concrete operations), it is
not surprising that younger children generally perform
poorly at this task. Numerous subsequent studies have
corroborated these early findings, establishing that a
substantial number of children below age 7-8 fail to draw
upon persuasive intent in their processing of the TV
commercials they are exposed to.
Emergence of public interest
As research on children's understanding of television
advertising grew throughout the 1970's, the issue began
4
to gain the attention of public policymakers interested
in protecting the welfare of children. With the accumu
lation of studies documenting the facts that a substan
tial proportion of young children might not recognize
commercials as something different than programs and that
even more children almost certainly did not understand
commercials' persuasive intent, parents and public
interest groups began clamoring for change in children's
television advertising policy (Choate, 1980; Ward, in
press). After much debate about which governmental body
should take the lead in this area, the Federal Trade
Commission (FTC) was finally singled out in 1978 as the
most appropriate agency to tackle the problem. Based on
research which indicated that a substantial number of
young children were unable to recognize the persuasive
intent of television advertising, the Commission proposed
regulations which would place severe restrictions on
television advertising to children. This proceeding
generated a number of research studies pertinent to the
proposed regulations.
At the time of the FTC inquiry, when research
interest in this area was at its peak, the National
Association of Broadcasters (NAB), an industry group
including almost all television stations across the
country among its membership, had in place a series of
5
self-regulatory guidelines regarding advertising prac
tices for children. Among other areas, these guidelines
limited the amount of commercial time permissable during
children's programming, required an audio-visual "separa
tion device" to be placed between children's programs and
commercials to help child viewers discriminate between
the two, and prohibited a number of specific practices
such as host selling (i.e., having a character appear in
ads presented adjacent to program content in which the
same character is featured).
However, as a result of an antitrust lawsuit (U.S.
vs. N.A.B., 79-1549, U.S. District Court for the District
of Columbia), all such NAB guidelines pertaining to
advertising practices were ruled to be an illegal
restraint of trade and therefore had to be abandoned.
Thus, broadcasters are now technically free to present as
many commercials as they wish on children's programs, to
drop their program/commercial separators, and to present
ads which feature well-known program characters selling
products during the commercial breaks on their program.
Although many broadcasters have maintained their previous
policies in the former two areas, a growing number of
stations have begun to present ads which feature charac
ters from the adjacent program content (Forkan, 1984),
resulting in increasing public concern regarding the
6
impact which such practice may have on children*s under
standing of commercials (Margulies, 1984).
All three national television networks maintain that
their policies still prohibit host-selling commercials.
For example, NBC's broadcast standards manual prohibits
commercial messages "presented by a children's program
personality, host, or character, whether live or
animated, within or adjacent to the programs in which
such personality, host, or character regularly appears"
(National Broadcasting Company, 1984). However, even
with network policies such as this, there still remain
ample opportunities for host-selling commercials to find
their way onto the television set. For instance, it is
common industry practice for networks to leave some
commercial time open for local affiliate broadcasters to
fill, and it is possible that host-selling situations may
result from advertising placed at this level rather than
from that placed through the networks. Also, independent
stations unaffiliated with any national network generally
offer a greater amount of weekday programming which
appeals to children (primarily reruns of cartoons and
network programs which are popular with children), and
these broadcasters have the discretion to place ads
adjacent to programs featuring the same characters if
they so desire. Although no systematic analysis of the
amount and origin of host-selling advertising to children
7
has been conducted since the NAB guidelines have been
dropped, it is probable that the majority of these cases
originate from independent broadcasters. Regardless of
the actual amount of host-selling advertising being
presented at the present time, the mere fact that this
type of commercial is now an acceptable format makes this
area an extremely important one to examine in terms of
its influence on child viewers.
Impacts of host-selling
Unfortunately, the implications of this change in
broadcast policy are not yet clear. During the time when
most research on children*s television advertising was
conducted, NAB guidelines prohibited the practice of host
selling, which probably accounts for the fact that vir
tually no studies have been conducted along these lines.
Conventional wisdom suggests that, at the time when young
children are just learning to discriminate between pro
grams and commercials, continuity of a major character
across these two types of content may act to blur the
distinctions between them. A thorough review of the
existing literature, however, reveals only a single study
(Atkin, 1975) which directly addresses this situation.
Atkin presented a Flintstones cereal commercial to 3
to 7 year old children in one of three conditions:
embedded within a Flintstones program (adjacency group),
embedded within a different program shown after viewing
C l
8
the Flintstones program (nonadjacency group), and em
bedded within a different program shown by itself (con
trol group). After the treatment, the experimenter asked
the children whether they remembered seeing the
Flintstones characters eating cereal (they did so only in
the commercial, not in the program), and if so, whether
it was during the program or a commercial. The results
indicated that 25% of the adjacency group who recalled
the Flintstones eating cereal thought they did so during
the program. However, a comparison of the results
between the adjacent and nonadjacent and control condi
tions revealed no significant differences in children's
program/commercial confusion; in fact, the nonadjacent
group experienced slightly greater confusion than the
adjacent group.
Unfortunately, interpretation of Atkin's results are
confounded by several factors. The fact that the
children's program/commercial confusion was examined in a
fashion requiring recall rather than allowing for
measurement at the time at which it was actually mani
fested suggests that part of any possible confusion
effect may have been overlooked by the study. Indeed,
substantially fewer children in the Flintstones program
groups were able to recall the cereal-eating event as
compared to children in the control group, and were
therefore excluded from further questioning. Also,
because the study grouped children from ages 3 to 7
together for analyses, substantial confusion on the part
of the younger children may have been masked by the lack
of confusion on the part of the older ones. Thus, al
though these results demonstrate that some young children
may experience confusion in discriminating between pro
grams and commercials, there is no strong evidence in
support of the hypothesis that the use of program charac
ters in adjacent commercials contributes to this problem.
In their highly regarded National Science Foundation
report on children and television advertising, Adler,
Friedlander, Lesser, Meringoff, Robertson, Rossiter, and
Ward (1977) issued a call for further research on the
"confusion effect" caused by the adjacent presentation of
programs and commercials featuring the same character.
The conspicuous absence of any such studies since that
time undoubtedly reflects the research community’s per
ception of this question as a non-issue due to the NAB1s
longstanding prohibition of such a practice. Now, how
ever, with the forced abandonment of the NAB's guidelines
and the subsequent reemergence of host selling on
children's programs, research in this area should be
considered a high priority.
The study which follows will provide direct assess
ment of children's ability to discriminate programs from
commercials when both types of content feature the same
10
primary characters. It will also assess two other
closely related dimensions of children's processing of
television advertising which could be affected by the
practice of host-selling: their ability to attribute
persuasive intent to commercials and their attitudinal
response to the commercials' appeals. These areas will
be explored by comparing children's understanding of and
reactions to the same commercials presented in both a
host-selling and non-host-selling format. Finally, the
role of developmental differences in all three of the
above areas will be examined by comparing children of two
age groups who, on the basis of differences in their
general cognitive abilities, can be expected to process
this type of advertising differentially. The groups to
be compared will be younger children aged 4-5 years and
older ones aged 7-8 years. The results of this research
should provide important information regarding the
impacts of host selling on children's understanding of
and responses to this type of television advertising.
For the purposes of this study, the term "host-
selling" will refer to commercials that feature well
known personalities or characters and that are broadcast
directly adjacent to a program featuring these same
personalities or characters. The term derives from the
early days of television when commercial messages were
often incorporated directly into a program. Years ago,
11
it was not uncommon to have the "host" or star of a show
simply interrupt the flow of the program for a moment,
deliver the advertiser's message, and then resume the
entertainment portion of the show without a single camera
cut. Although this style of host-selling is no longer in
practice, continuity of a featured character in adjacent
program and commercial content is basically a modern day
equivalent to this original form. It certainly presents
the same sorts of issues in terms of potential confusion
for children attempting to understand the separate and
distinct nature of advertising and program content.
CHAPTER II
REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
While the influence which television program content
exerts on the lives of children has received substantial
research attention since the early days of the medium,
the study of the relationship between children and tele
vision advertising is a much more recent development.
Indeed, by the time that researchers even began to study
children's understanding of television advertising in
earnest in the early 1970's, major conclusions based on
volumes of evidence were already being drawn regarding
the impact of program content on children's social
behavior (Surgeon General's Scientific Advisory Committee
on Television and Social Behavior, 1972). Now, after
roughly ten years of active research in the area of
children and television advertising, much knowledge has
been generated and many important conclusions have been
drawn.
The studies in this area have blossomed in such
diverse directions that a single review chapter cannot
13
hope to encompass the entire body of research. The focus
herein, then, will be on the primary areas which can be
expected to bear most directly on the effects of host-
selling ads on children. In order of discussion, these
include: the impacts of celebrity endorsers on children;
children’s ability to discriminate programs from commer
cials; children's recognition of the persuasive intent of
commercials; and children's attitudinal response to
commercials.
Some common threads running throughout the discussion
of all the pertinent areas of research will recur
throughout this chapter. One is the issue of measure
ment, and the question of which studies using which
measurement techniques provide more accurate or valid
assessments of children's capabilities in terms of their
processing of television advertising. Another important
consideration cutting across all areas is the role which
developmental differences play in determining children's
understanding of and response to commercials. Undoubted
ly the most important factor along these lines is the
child's level of cognitive development in terms of the
relevant skills and abilities which the child viewer is
able to bring to bear on the task of processing the con
tent which is viewed.
Before exploring the pertinent research regarding
children's understanding of and response to commercials,
14
however, a foundation is necessary for placing television
in general and television advertising in particular in
the proper perspective in the lives of children. There
fore, we will first review children's basic television
viewing habits and then discuss what these patterns
suggest in terms of children's exposure to television
advertising.
Children's use of television
Given the vast amount of research which has focused
on the study of television's effects on children, it is
almost paradoxical that so little attention has been paid
to the empirical examination of children's television
use. Basically, only three primary sources of data exist
in this area, and two of them are at least a decade old.
Schramm, Lyle, and Parker (1961) provided the earliest
comprehensive examination of children's television usage
patterns. Several studies (Greenberg, Ericson & Vlahos,
1972; Lyle & Hoffman, 1972a,b; and Murray, 1972, among
others) commissioned by the U.S. Surgeon General's
Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social
Behavior also explored children's television usage in
depth. And finally, data regarding children's television
usage have been continuously collected by the A.C.
Nielsen Company since 1950, although this research is
primarily intended for the use of TV broadcasters and
thus reports children's viewing behaviors in only three
15
basic categories: ages 2-5, 6-11, and 12-17 years.
While other studies will be cited, the picture of
children's TV usage presented here will primarily be a
combination of the views these three sources provide.
Moreover, all of the research reported in this section
will be limited to studies examining the television view
ing habits of American children, since both people-
oriented and television-oriented differences across
cultures render most cross-national comparisons invalid.
Of course, one of the problems inherent in comparing
different studies purporting to examine the same phenome
non is the usual lack of a common definition of terms.
"Television viewing" can be used to refer to a wide range
of behaviors, from rapt attention focused exclusively on
i
the television set to viewing accomplished simultaneously
with other activities such as talking, eating, and play
ing (Salomon & Cohen, 1978). Since it would be virtually
impossible to iron out all of these differences within
the studies reviewed, the account presented must be a
rather general one, but one which should still approxi
mate the average child's patterns of television usage.
Along with the above qualification must go the caveat
that the "average" child is a rare animal. Indeed, vari
ability in children's television usage across individuals
has been found to be quite large. For example, reports
of average daily viewing time started at less than 15
16
minutes for some children and peaked at more than 4 hours
for others in a single sample of sixth graders (Schramm
et al., 1961). Children's viewing patterns have also
been demonstrated to vary considerably from day to day
and season to season, as well as from individual to
individual. Nevertheless, important general patterns of
use are clear, and the amount of time children spend
viewing television far surpasses that spent in any other
single activity.
By most reports, children's purposive television
viewing begins between the ages of 2 to 3 years (cf.,
Anderson, Alwitt, Lorch, & Levin, 1979), although they
are certainly exposed to the medium at a much earlier
age. Schramm et al. (1961) report that by age 3, roughly
one-third of their sample made "regular use of the
medium," with this figure jumping to two-thirds by age 4
and surpassing 90% by age 6. These figures, of course,
must be considered conservative estimates today given the
increased penetration of TV sets into the home since 1961
and the overall increase in television viewing across all
age groups in the last twenty years (although recent data
indicate a slight drop in children's television viewing
over the last two years, cf., Neilsen, 1982, 1983).
Presently, estimates of amount of time spent view
ing indicate that just over 3.5 hours per day, or
approximately 25.5 hours per week, are the norm for 2-5
17
year olds (Neilsen, 1983). According to the same source,
the average for children ages 6-11 years is only slightly
lower at just under 3.5 hours per day or approximately 24
hours per week. Seasonal distribution indicates that
during the school year, children under 6 tend to be
heavier viewers than those 6 years of age and older
(Adler et al., 1980).
Differences have been noted with respect to the time
of day at which children of different ages view televi
sion. Again, relying heavily on Neilsen data (1976, as
cited in Comstock et al., 1978), we find that preschool
children are highly likely to watch in the morning, while
6-11 year olds are more likely to watch in the after
noon. The evening prime-time hours are the period of
heaviest viewing for 6-11 year olds, although 2-5 year
olds also view in large numbers during the afternoon and
early evening hours. Most all youngsters tend to view at
least some children's programs during Saturday morning
hours, with preschool age children noted to watch the
most. Lyle and Hoffman (1972b) found that, according to
mothers' reports, two out of three 5-7 year olds watch
1-1/2 hours or more before noon on Saturdays, with over
half of this group reported to watch 2-1/2 hours or more.
It is also important to note that a great deal of
children's, television viewing is of programs intended
18
primarily for adults. Although children generally com
prise only a small minority of the total audience for
most adult programs, the actual number of children watch
ing a given national network adult entertainment program
is still impressive. According to Neilsen (1983), the
average child audiences (ages 2-11) for a given segment
of the five most common adult program types were as
follows: adventure - 3.3 million; situation comedy - 3.2
million; suspense/mystery - 2.0 million; general
drama - 2.0 million; and feature film - 1.9 million.
Also, because these are average figures, the most popular
programs within each genre can be assumed to have
attracted substantially greater numbers of children.
Overall, it is clear that large numbers of children are
i
regularly exposed to virtually all types of program
content.
Exposure to commercials
Converting these viewing patterns into terms reflect
ing amounts of television advertising viewed, it has been
estimated that the average child sees approximately 55
commercials a day (Adler et al., 1980; Federal Trade
Commission, 1978). This translates into more than three
hours worth of commercials each week or about 20,000 a
year for the typical viewer between the ages of 2 and
12. Naturally, because this figure is an estimate for
the average child, many may see considerably more.
19
As was outlined above, a substantial amount of
children's television viewing consists of programs pri
marily intended for adults. Correspondingly, much of the
television advertising content children see is likely to
be adult-oriented, both in terms of the product featured
and the form which the commercial message takes. How
ever, because most adult-oriented ads feature prTxiucts
and appeals of limited salience to children, and thus
t
children tend to be less interested in them, concern
about the influence of advertising On children has
focused primarily on commercials designed specifically
for the child audience (Choate, 1980; Rossiter, 1980).
Accordingly, the focus here will be specifically on
commercials that are designed primarily for the child
audience, for it is these commercials which are most
likely to be closely attended to and to have significant
effects on children.
Commercial content
According to Barcus (1978), the most widely cited
authority in content analysis of television programming
for children, over 80% of all advertising directed to
children falls within four product categories: toys,
cereals, candies, and fast-food restaurants. Although
the relative proportions of these types of commercials
fluctuate seasonally and differ somewhat when comparing
network affiliate stations to independent broadcasters,
20
these four categories consistently account for the vast
majority of children's television advertising content.
Within children's advertising, a number of techniques
are utilized to attract the viewer's attention to a com
mercial. The most common approaches employ repetition,
unusual sound and/or visual effects, animation, violent
activity, magic, and fantasy (Barcus, 1980). Examples of
these techniques include speeded-up or slowed-down sound
tracks and visuals, mixing of animated fantasy characters
with live actors, and visual transformations which turn
one object into another right before the viewer's eyes.
Once attention is established, the commercial's
product appeals are presented. Most often, these consist
of subjective attributions pertaining to the product
about which the consumer may or may not agree. These
typically include claims such as "is fun," "tastes
great," "the best," and so on. Much more rare is the
presentation of any information about the product which
can be related to an objective evaluative criterion, such
as price, size, ingredients, and the like.
According to Winick, Williamson, Chuzmir, and Winick
(1971), 80% of children's commercials employ an "on-
camera" presenter. That is, only 20% portray no visible
source, although auditory cues are generally present.
Estimates of the frequency of real-life celebrity
endorsers in children's commercials have ranged from 2%
21
(Winick et al., 1973) to 5% (Barcus, 1978). However,
animated product presenters, who often fulfill the role
of celebrities for children, have been reported to
inhabit 42% of all children’s commercials (Winick at el.,
1973) and up to 80% of children’s cereal commercials
(Barcus, 1978) . Although it is impossible to know the
precise proportion of ads with celebrity figures because
of the way in which the available data have been
reported, it appears safe to assume that at least half of
all children's ads feature well-known figures.
Impact of celebrity endorsers
If one accepts that a well-known children's program
character is similar to a celebrity, at least in the eyes
of children, then the presence of such a figure in a
commercial may be an important factor in and of itself in
understanding children's processing of these types of
ads. With this consideration in mind, it is important to
understand the effects which celebrity endorsers are
likely to generate when they are included in commercials
in general.
Research conducted by social psychologists has con
sistently demonstrated that a source with high credi
bility is more persuasive than one with lower credibility
(Haas, 1981; Hovland & Weiss, 1951; McGuire, 1969).
Although a celebrity may or may not be considered highly
credible in terms of ability to judge a particular
22
product, by virtue of their celebrity status these
figures are consistently rated high in terms of com
petence, trustworthiness, dynamism, and the like (Atkin &
Block, 1983). Thus, these authors argue, audiences for
the most part tend to perceive celebrities as credible
sources regardless of the product in question. Atkin and
Block note, however, that despite the frequent use of
celebrity endorsers in commercials, there is little
published research regarding their effectiveness. It
could be added that even less than a little has been
written about the impacts of celebrity endorsers on
children. Only two studies were found to have explored
this area with children.
Atkin (1975) studied the influence of two versions of
the same commercial for cookies: one with an astronaut
hero endorser and one incorporating a "man on the street"
figure. Surprisingly, the results indicated virtually no
difference in effect in terms of children’s desire for
the advertised product. However, the unexpected result
is probably related to the fact that 40% of Atkin's
sample rated their liking of astronauts at the lowest
point ("not much") on a three point scale. Perhaps the
group was atypical or the astronaut figure was not
likable (it is not clear if the astronaut liking measure
ment was pre- or post-treatment). Nevertheless, as Adler
et al. (1980) note in their dismissal of the study's
23
results, "there is little doubt that endorsement effects
on children exist."
In the other available study in this area, Ross,.
Campbell, Wright, Huston, Rice, and Turk (in press)
presented two versions of a model race car commercial to
8 to 14 year old boys. One version included a celebrity
endorsement featuring a famous race driver and the other
did not. The results indicated that exposure to the
celebrity endorser led to a significant increase in
children's preference for the advertised toy across the
entire age range. However, although the 11-14 year olds
evidenced greater awareness of the persuasive intent of
the ads and were more skeptical of the claims presented
in them than the younger children, these factors did not
act to diminish the older group's desire for the adver
tised product.
This outcome is consistent with results reported in
Adler et al. (1980), who cite four unpublished studies
(apparently papers by students affiliated with various of
the authors) that have demonstrated a significant posi
tive change in children's affect toward an advertised
product as a result of a celebrity appearance or endorse
ment in the product's commercials. The effects are most
often reported to be tied to the character's likability
or the child viewer's identification with the featured
character. With only a single exception, then, all of
24
the available evidence in this area suggests that
celebrity endorsers do enhance a product's appeal to
children, a finding consistent with general persuasion
theory which holds that credible sources enhance per
suasive appeals.
Discriminating programs from commercials
Given the similarities in terms of production values
and types of characters found in much of children's
programming and advertising content, it is obvious that
these factors do little to assist the child viewer in
differentiating programs from commercials. Indeed, for
young children who are just learning to differentiate
program content from commercial advertising, either
perceptually or conceptually, such similarity across both
of these forms may act to blur the distinction between
them. Moreover, the recent television industry trend of
bringing popular children's products to life by present
ing them in animated program content (e.g., "He-man and
the Masters of the Universe," "Monchhichis," "Pac-man,"
and "Strawberry Shortcake") may be acting to further
exacerbate this situation (Cherubin, 1984; Forkan, 1984).
Unfortunately, only a small number of studies have
focused directly on children's ability to perceive
commercial messages as separate and distinct from program
content. While many studies exploring children's under
standing of television advertising have been conducted,
25
most of these tend to explore children's ability to
recognize persuasive intent as the important dependent
measure, frequently overlooking measurement of the
discrimination factor completely. In those studies which
have examined children's ability to distinguish programs
from ads on any basis, three primary types of measurement
approaches have been utilized: visual attention shifts,
direct verbal questioning, and non-verbal performance
tasks.
In terms of children's visual attention to commer
cials, Ward, Levinson, and Wackman (1972) found that 5-12
year olds' attention tended to drop at the onset of a
commercial, but they noted that the smallest decrease
occurred among the youngest (5-7) viewers. The re
searchers speculated that the younger children's greater
stability in attention patterns across both the program
and commercial content might represent evidence that
these children experienced difficulty in discriminating
between the two.
In a similar study, Wartella and Ettema (1974)
utilized 12 different commercials which varied in terms
of their visual and auditory complexity and measured 3-8
year old children's visual attention to the different
stimuli. Wartella and Ettema, however, suggested a then
unique hypothesis: that children's attention to commer
cials was determined primarily by stimulus complexity and
26
that the younger, more perceptually bound viewers would
be more attracted to more complex perceptual stimuli. As
was hypothesized, the researchers found a consistent
pattern where the younger viewers1 (3-4) visual attention
varied according to the changes in perceptual, as opposed
to cognitive, aspects of the content. That is, increases
and decreases in their attention patterns were found to
be related to increases and decreases in the perceptual
complexity (primarily auditory) of the television commer
cials rather than to the onset of a commercial succeeding
program content. Subsequent research (Alwitt, Anderson,
Lorch & Levin, 1980; Anderson & Levin, 1976; Levin &
Anderson, 1976) both confirmed and extended the role of
stimulus complexity in directing children's attention to
television. Thus, with children's attention to televi
sion clearly tied to perceptual rather than conceptual
cues, this approach was in essence laid to rest as a tool
for assessing children's discrimination between programs
and commercials.
In terms of direct verbal questioning, studies by
Blatt et al. (1972) and Ward, Reale, and Levinson (1972)
provided some of the earliest assessments of young
children's ability to discriminate commercials from pro
gram content. These studies asked children to describe
verbally what commercials are and how they might differ
from television program content. The results indicated
27
that children as young as 5^8 years olds could identlfy
the term "commercials" and that their recognition of the
difference between commercials and programs was primarily
based on either affective ("commercials are more funny")
or perceptual ("commercials are short and programs are
long") cues. Overall, however, these studies found, as
Ward, Reale, and Levinson noted, that more than half of
the children between 5-8 years of age exhibited "low
awareness of the concept of commercials, frequently
explaining them as part of the show" (p. 486) .
Critics later argued that young children's limited
verbal abilities might be acting to mask their true
competence in discriminating television advertising from
program content since most researchers had relied on
children's verbal reports to measure such ability. Thus,
subsequent studies tried to overcome the potential short
comings of verbal responses in measuring children's
ability to discriminate programs from ads by utilizing
nonverbal measurement techniques. For example, Giannino
and Zuckerman (1981) asked 4, 7, and 10 year old children
to match photographs of popular characters featured in
children's commercials with the products they presented.
Even the youngest group demonstrated proficiency at this
task, although they exhibited little ability to discrimi
nate pictures of program characters from commercial
characters. The youngest group also evidenced little
28
ability to articulate either what a commercial was or how
it differed from a program.
In another study designed to circumvent children's
limited verbal capacities, Levin et al. (1982) showed
short segments of both program and commercial content to
3 and 5 year olds and simply asked them to identify each
as "program" or "commercial." The design also included
three different treatment conditions: one presenting
video only, one audio only, and one with both combined.
Although virtually no difference emerged across the three
conditions, the study did document that the group as a
whole could correctly discriminate between programs and
ads about 2/3 of the time.
In one of the few studies to assess directly
children's ability to discriminate between television
programs and commercials while taking into account the
presence of a network commercial/program separation
device, Palmer and McDowell (1979) showed kindergarten
and first grade children (approximately 5-7 years of age)
videotapes of two Saturday morning children's programs
with commercials included. Subjects in the study were
assigned to one of four groups: three of these viewed
the programs with separators from one of the three
television networks and the fourth acted as a control,
viewing the programs and commercials with no separation
device. At predetermined points, the tape was stopped
29
and children were asked whether what they had just seen
was "part of the show" or a "commercial," and how they
could tell. While there was some slight variance in the
effectiveness of the three networks' separators, the most
interesting result of the study was the finding that
children in the control group performed as well as or
better than children in the three treatment groups in
correctly discriminating between program and commercial
content. Averaging the results across all four experi
mental groups, children correctly identified a commercial
about 64% of the time in one program, and about 55% of
the time in the other.
In a similar study using only boys as subjects,
Ballard-Campbell (1983) reported virtually the identical
findings as Palmer and McDowell. This study found that
4, 6, and 8 year olds evidenced virtually no difference
in discrmination ability as a result of the presence or
absence of a standard network commercial separation
device. Across both of these conditions, correct dis
crimination was found 55% of the time for 4 year olds,
65% for 6 year olds, and 71% for 8 year olds. To explore
whether separation devices different from those typically
used by the networks might be more effective in helping
children discriminate program and commercial content,
Ballard-Campbell also presented a specially designed
device to the children in his study. This separator
30
introduced the commercial with the words "OK kids, get
ready for a commercial. Ready? Here comes a commer
cial." At the same time, a red stop sign was shown.
After the commercial, the children saw a green "go" sign
and were told, "The commercial is over. Now let’s go
back and see the program again." Children from all three
age groups who viewed this separator demonstrated sig
nificantly better performance in the program/commercial
discrimination tasks than same age children who saw
either the network separator or no separator at all. The
4 year olds improved to 76% correct discrimination, the 6
year olds to 80%, and the 8 year olds to 91%.
Overall, studies in this area lead us to several con
clusions. First, the studies indicate that a substantial
proportion of children about age 6 or below do not dis
criminate well between children's program and advertising
content. Second, although the use of commercial/program
separation devices is clearly a well-intentioned act on
the part of broadcasters, the available research on the
effectiveness of the separators suggests that their use
may not be achieving the desired effect. Finally, while
some minor differences have emerged, research utilizing
strategies to avoid reliance on children's limited verbal
capacities in measuring their ability to discriminate
programs from commercials has generally failed to produce
any dramatic evidence of children possessing a greater
31
degree of competence in this area than that demonstrated
by the earlier more verbal approaches.
Recognizing persuasive intent 4^
If we accept that a commercial is a persuasive mes
sage, then it must be recognized that its primary purpose
is in some way to influence the attitudes and related
subsequent behavior of the viewer who sees it. This is
in contrast to informative messages, which generally have
no goal of generating such effects, but rather try to
impart knowledge to cause the receiver to better under
stand arid retrieve information about a given topic.
For> an adult, the recognition that a given piece of
television content is a commercial generally means that a
particular strategy is implemented for processing the
information contained in the advertisement (McGuire,
1969). According to Roberts (1983), these strategies
include at least the following four considerations:
(1) that the source has other perspectives, hence other
interests, than those of the receiver; (2) that the
source intends to persuade; (3) that persuasive messages
are, by definition, biased; and (4) that biased messages
demand different interpretation strategies than do pri
marily informational messages. Similar conceptions of
the processing of commercial messages have also been
offered by Christenson (1982), Robertson and Rossiter
(1974), and Rossiter and Robertson (1974), among others.
32
Of course, to take these considerations into account in
the processing of incoming communication requires the
cognitive skills and abilities necessary to accomplish
such interpretational strategies. Thus, in attempting to
understand children's processing of television commer
cials, the importance of considering their available
cognitive abilities pertinent to the above considerations
should be readily apparent.
There is a good deal of literature on the development
of children's social cognitions which suggests that
development of the ability to engage in role-taking does
not begin to mature until at least middle childhood (cf.,
Flavell, 1977; Selman, 1971; Shantz, 1975). This corres
ponds well with the transition from the preoperational
period to that of concrete operations (about age 7-8) in
Piaget's stage theory (Flavell, 1963), which holds that
children do not begin to recognize the perspective of
another until reaching the stage of concrete operations.
Since role-taking ability is a fundamental prerequisite
for the considerations proposed by Roberts, there is a
strong theoretical basis for the argument that children
below the age of about 7-8 years will experience diffi
culty in recognizing the persuasive intent of television
commercials.
For the most part, research findings have generally
corroborated the importance of this theoretical
33
consideration in predicting children's understanding of
the purpose of advertising. Results of numerous studies
indicate that below age 6, the vast majority of children
are not aware of the persuasive intent of commercials.
Between 6-7 years, the majority of children usually
demonstrate some awareness of the selling intent of ads,
with variation in the level of understanding probably
resulting from the use of different measurement tech
niques and interpretational strategies both across and
within the various studies in the area. For example,
Ward et al. (1977) found dramatic differences in the
proportion of 4-5 year olds who "understood" the selling
intent of commercials according to the way in which the
researcher's question was stated. The following ques
tions elicited correct responses from the indicated
proportion of their sample: "What is a commercial?" -
10%; "What do commercials try to do?" - 22%; "What does
this commercial for X want you to do?" - 62%. This
pattern of increased awareness as the questions become
more specific and concrete is the trend found in most
research in -this area.
Typical of many studies in this area, Ward and
Wackman (1973) interviewed children aged 5-12, asking
them "Why are commercials shown on TV?" Rather than
conduct the analysis of responses by age, however, the
researchers used other measures to categorize children
34
into three levels of cognitive ability, with the lowest
level equivalent to Piaget’s preoperational child.
Fifty-three percent of the 5-6 year olds and 41% of the
7-8 year olds were categorized as "low" in cognitive
level. After coding children's responses to the question
measuring understanding of the purpose of commercials, it
was found that cognitive level predicted a low level of
understanding of the persuasive intent of commercials 75%
of the time. Ward and Wackman concluded that "the low
cognitive level children cannot abandon their own
perspective and take the perspective of the advertiser
when viewing commercials" (p. 127).
In a similar study using open-ended interviews with
first, third, and fifth grade boys, Robertson and
Rossiter (1974) found the development of persuasive
intent attribution to be positively related to age.
Their results indicated that 53% of the first graders
demonstrated an understanding of persuasive intent,
compared to 87% of the third and 99% of the fifth
graders. Other studies using comparable interview
techniques (Donahue, Meyer, & Henke, 1978; Rossiter &
Robertson, 1974; Ward et al., 1977) have produced simi
larly consistent findings.
Once again, however, the issue of measurement
techniques was raised and a new group of studies using
non-verbal assessment of children's persuasive intent
35
awareness was generated. In these studies, researchers
attempted to present children with the opportunity to
demonstrate awareness of commercials' persuasive intent
without having to rely on their verbal capabilities to
mediate or convey such knowledge. For example, Donahue
et al. (1980) asked 3 to 6 year old children to choose
between two pictures, one of a mother and child buying
cereal at the store and one of a child watching televi
sion, to indicate what the character in the commercial
wanted them to do. Their results indicated that at least
70% of each group and 80% of their sample overall
selected the correct picture indicating understanding of
persuasive intent. Macklin (1983) produced similar
results using this type of measurement, although
Ballard-Campbell (1983) added a third picture alternative
to this type of task and found dramatically different
results.
In Ballard-Campbell's study, children viewed two toy
commercials and were asked after each to select the
picture that showed what the commercial most wanted them
to do. Alternatives consisted of a picture of a mother
and child buying the advertised toy, a child playing with
the toy, and a child watching television. Results
indicated that only 13% of the 4 year olds and 33% of the
6 year olds chose the correct alternative (buying
picture) both times, although the 8 year olds performed
36
substantially better (80% correct on both). While the
number of studies is insufficient to draw any definitive
conclusions, Ballard-Campbell1s results suggest that the
apparently high recognition of persuasive intent demon
strated by younger children in other nonverbal studies
may be more an artifact of the limited number of reason
able alternatives available, rather than an indication of
awareness of persuasive intent.
From a different perspective, Roberts (1983) offers
an objection to those who argue that nonverbal approaches
such as those just described are a more valid measure of
children's understanding of commercials' intent. Roberts
questions whether simple recognition that a commercial is
intended to sell a product reflects an adequate under
standing of the fundamental nature of advertising. He
argues that the most important dimension in recognizing
persuasive intent is the recognition that a commercial
"systematically emphasizes components to enhance yielding
and deemphasizes components that impede yielding" (p. 27)
and that this type of understanding is not measured in
many studies which focus solely on selling intent.
Although he does not carry this point further, in essence
Roberts is suggesting that recognition of selling intent
and persuasive intent are two different abilities, with
one (presumably selling intent) potentially existing
prior to the other in young children. Unfortunately, the
present state of research does not allow this dilemma to
be resolved. It would certainly be interesting, though,
to see a study separate and measure both these types of
awareness in children and examine the relative influence
of each on their subsequent information processing
strategies and attitudinal response to commercials.
To summarize, then, most studies in this area indi
cate that at least half of the children aged 6 and below
generally are unable to recognize the underlying purpose
of television commercials. While a few studies utilizing
nonverbal measurement techniques indicate a much higher
level of understanding of commercials' selling intent for
children as young as three years of age, both methodo
logical and conceptual weaknesses cast doubt on the
validity of these findings. Overall, the weight of the
evidence suggests that the ability to recognize the
persuasive intent of television advertising is not well
developed until at least age 7 to 8.
Children's responses to commercials ^
Children's understanding of commercials' persuasive
intent, however it is defined in various studies, has
consistently been demonstrated to influence subsequent
attitudes and, to a lesser extent, behavior towards an
advertised product. Children who evidence an awareness
of the purpose of advertising tend to express much more
skepticism and distrust of advertisers' claims than
________________________________________________________________ 38_
children who lack this understanding (Roberts,
Christenson, Gibson, Mooser, & Goldberg, 1980? Robertson
& Rossiter, 1974; Ward et al., 1977). Although these
attitudes toward commercials are generally applied to
children's evaluations of specific commercials (Goldberg
& Gorn, 1974; Robertson & Rossiter, 1974; Ward et al.,
1977), this is not always the case.
In a study of the impact of the large numbers of toy
commercials viewed by children during the holiday season,
Rossiter and Robertson (1974) measured first, third, and
fifth grade boys' Christmas gift requests once in early
November and then again just before Christmas. The sub
jects' cognitive and attitudinal defenses against commer
cials, which included recognition of the persuasive
intent of commercials and how much children believed
advertisers' claims, were also measured. Although
children with the strongest defenses selected fewer tele
vision promoted toys in November than the other children,
by late December these children became just as likely to
select advertised products for gifts as the children with
weaker defenses. That is, when confronted by a heavy
barrage of commercials, children tended to be positively
influenced in favor of advertised products regardless of
their understanding of the purpose of advertising and any
related skepticism toward advertised products.
Applying the underlying principle which this study
suggests, that factors in the message environment may act
to enhance advertising's influence on children, it seems
reasonable to expect that a somewhat parallel effect
could emerge as a result of children's exposure to
host-selling ads. That is, while children's ability to
understand the nature and purpose of commercials may
sometimes act to mediate the effects of such content on
them, the host-selling format, like the Christmas toy
commercials, may be one where children's "defenses" are
more consistently overcome. To examine this question and
the related considerations it generates regarding
children's processing of host-selling commercials, we now
turn to the task of predicting the effects of this type
of advertising on children.
Hypotheses ^
Hypotheses for the present study have been drawn for
three major outcomes: children's ability to discriminate
commercials from programs, children's ability to recog
nize persuasive intent in commercials, and children's
attitudinal response to commercials. For each ability
and response, comparisons will be made for the same com
mercials presented in both a host-selling and non-host-
selling format. In addition, the role which develop
mental differences play in children's understanding of
40
and response to host-selling commercials will also be
considered.
Discrimination. Does the presence of the same char
acter in both a commercial and the adjacent entertainment
programming make it more difficult for young children to
discriminate between these two types of content? Only
one published study has examined this question (Atkin,
1975). Although Atkin’s results were equivocal, they did
suggest that younger children experienced some confusion
in discriminating commercials from programs when the same
characters were featured in both. The underlying cause
of any such confusion is likely to be related to young
children’s perceptual boundedness.
Drawing upon Piagetian cognitive development theory
(Flavell, 1963? Piaget, 1950, 1952), we know that
children below the age of about 7-8 years (in the pre-
operational period of development) possess a high degree
of centration related to their perceptual boundedness.
That is, these children tend to center on the perceptu
ally salient surface attributes of a stimulus object,
often ignoring other pertinent dimensions which are not
as immediately captivating. This tendency is demon
strated in the young child's inability to recognize
conservation in the physical world, but it also extends
to the social environment as well. As Flavell (1963)
notes:
41
We have seen that cognition about non-social
phenomena begins with surface appearances alone
and only later gets beneath the surface to
construct an inferred underlying reality.
Social-cognitive development also proceeds from
surface to depth. Children begin by reading only
the most external, immediately perceptible
attributes of.... social-cognitive objects. They
pay attention to appearance and overt behavior,
but they initially do not use these or other
kinds of evidence to make inferences about the
covert social-psychological processes, meanings,
and causes which underlie them. (p. 122)
As young children emerge from the preoperational into the
concrete operations stage at about 7-8 years, they are
more likely to achieve a more balanced, decentered, per
ceptual analysis of social phenomena, which soon leads to
a greater appreciation of what Flavell refers to as "the
covert social-psychological" considerations in life.
If it is the case that young children tend to center
their focus on the surface attributes of the television
content viewed, rather than considering it at a more con
ceptual level, then it could be expected that the distinc
tion between programs and commercials would be blurred for
them by the practice of host-selling. Also, it is worth
noting that the relevant research in the area of
children's ability to discriminate programs from
commercials indicates that a substantial proportion of
children about age 6 or below have difficulty discriminat
ing programs from commercials under normal, non-host-
selling circumstances. Thus, considering both the more
42
theoretical and applied research perspectives presented
above, it is hypothesized that:
HI. Significant differences for the main effect
of age will occur, with the older children
better able to discriminate commercials from
programs in both the host-selling and
non-host-selling treatment conditions.
Due to the older children's ability to decenter and
escape the limitations of perceptual boundedness, however,
no significant treatment differences in this group's
ability to discriminate commercials from programs are
expected. That is, these children are expected to be able
to recognize commercials equally well in either the
host-selling or non-host-selling treatment. Such is not
the case for the younger subjects. Based on the younger
children's cognitive limitations in terms of perceptual
boundedness, and consistent with the previously discussed
research that documents young children's confusion about
program/commercial distinctions, it is hypothesized that:
H2. A significant interaction effect between age
and treatment will occur, with the younger
children better able to discriminate commer
cials from programs in the non-host-selling
than host-selling treatment condition, but
with no difference in this ability across
treatment conditions for the older children.
However, it should be noted that there are a number of
available formal attributes, referred to as the formal
features of television by Huston, Wright, and their
associates (Huston & Wright, 1983? Huston, Wright,
Wartella, Rice, Watkins, Campbell & Potts, 1981; Wright &
_______________________________________________ 43-
Hustonr 1981) which may act to assist the young child-
viewer in distinguishing commercials from program con
tent. According to these researchers, children can gain
important information about television strictly from its
predictable codes and formats, even when the content is
unintelligible to them. For example, young children can
often predict that a program is about to end based on
their recognition of a heightening crescendo of music
accompanied by a fading camera shot, even though they may
have no grasp of the story plot nor any understanding that
it has just reached resolution.
In commercials, there are formal features such as
greater use of loud audio, faster pace of cuts, more
peculiar voices, and unusual sound effects, all of which
may act as cues to alert children that a commercial is
somehow different from other television programming.
Thus, even if character continuity across both program and
commercial content does create some degree of confusion
for the younger children, other available cues may well
act to override such confusion and allow them to dis
criminate between the two correctly.
This line of reasoning relegates the first two
hypotheses to a somewhat tenuous status. However, even if
the overt formal attributes of commercials do provide
adequate cues for the younger child to discriminate
efficiently between commercials and program content
44
featuring the same primary characters (thereby disconfirm-
ing HI and H2), it will still be important to assess the
effects that the host-selling format generates on both
children*s ability to recognize the persuasive intent of
commercials and their attitudinal response to the adver
tised products.
Persuasive intent. As previously noted, because
children younger than about 7-8 years tend to lack the
cognitive ability to take the perspective of another, this
group evidences great difficulty in recognizing the
advertiser*s selling intent. Thus, consistent with
extensive past research which has established important
age-related differences between preoperational and
concrete operational children*s ability to attribute
persuasive intent to TV advertising, it is hypothesized
that:
H3. Significant differences for the main effect
of age will occur, with the older children
better able than younger children to
attribute persuasive intent to commercials
in both the host-selling and non-host-
selling treatment conditions.
If H2 is disconfirmed as a result of the younger
children's ability to recognize the surface attributes of
television ads and thereby to discriminate commercials
from program content efficiently, confirmation of this
hypothesis will help to make clear the fact that important
45
differences in children's understanding of host-selling
ads still remain across the two age groups studied.
However, while age differences are expected, it should
be noted that the older group of children will just be
reaching the age at which their cognitive developmental
skills should allow them to recognize persuasive intent in
television advertising. Because this ability should not
yet be fully developed or well mastered in many children
aged 7-8, the host-selling condition can also be expected
to add confusion to the information processing tasks at
hand for these children. Thus, even though these older
children can still perform well at the program/commercial
discrimination task, they should exhibit a reduced ability
to attribute persuasive intent when faced with the host-
selling format.
Accordingly, it is hypothesized that:
H4. A significant interaction effect between age
and treatment will occur, with the older
children better able to attribute persuasive
intent to commercials in the non-host-
selling than host-selling treatment condi
tion, but with no difference in this ability
across treatment conditions for the younger
children.
Confirmation of this hypothesis would be an important
finding with potentially major policy implications for the
future of host-selling, a topic which will be dealt with
in the discussion section.
46
The importance of assessing this entire dimension of
children's understanding of television commercials cannot
be overemphasized, since it is the ability to recognize
persuasive intent that acts as the linchpin in allowing
other aspects of the so-called "cognitive defense" against
undue persuasion from advertising to begin to operate.
This leads us to the third and final type of dependent
measure, that of the children's attitudinal response to
the commercials viewed.
Attitude. Measurement of children's attitudinal
response to the commercials will consider product liking,
willingness to make purchase requests, and brand prefer
ence among comparable alternatives (see subsequent method
section for further description). In the area of
children's responses to the commercials viewed in this
study, there are two separate factors to be considered in
drawing hypotheses. The first is the impact of celebrity
endorsements on children.
As was previously noted, the presence of celebrity
endorsers has generally been found to influence positively
children's attitudes towards advertised products. The
extent to which an endorsement effect is further enhanced
by the presentation of such an ad adjacent to programming
that features the endorsing character has, again, only
been examined in the single study exploring host-selling
(Atkin, 1975) . Atkin found that young children (3-7 years
47
old) expressed significantly greater desire for "Fruity
Pebbles" Flintstone cereal when they viewed the commercial
for it during the Flintstone program (adjacency condition)
as compared to a control group which viewed the ad
embedded in a Bugs Bunny program. Thus, on the basis of
Atkin's findings, it is hypothesized that:
H5. Significant differences for the main effect
of treatment will occur, with children
evidencing more positive attitudinal
response to the commercials in the
host-selling than the non-host-selling
condition.
The second aspect to consider in predicting children's
responses to the treatment conditions is the expected
difference in response to commercial appeals based on
differences in children's age and therefore their corres
ponding cognitive abilities.
There is consistent evidence that younger children who
do not understand the selling purpose of commercials are
more likely to perceive them as truthful messages, whereas
older children who can recognize persuasive intent tend to
be more skeptical and less accepting of the claims and
appeals of advertisers. As a result, younger children
tend to react in a much more positive fashion to televi
sion ads and to express higher levels of purchase requests
in general than do older children. Thus, consistent with
these findings, it is hypothesized that:
48
H6. A significant interaction effect between
treatment and age will occur, with younger
children evidencing more positive atti
tudinal response in favor of the advertised
product than older children in the non-
host-selling condition, but with no
difference between the two groups in the
host-selling condition.
However, consistent with the expectation reflected in H3
that the older children will be sufficiently affected by
the host-selling condition that they will fail to apply
their knowledge of advertising’s persuasive intent as they
normally would, it is expected that no significant dif
ferences will emerge in comparing the younger and older
children's responses to the commercials presented in the
host-selling condition. That is, both groups are expected
to be positively influenced toward the advertised products
in a similar fashion, with the influence of the host-
selling format minimizing the otherwise expected age group
differences in children's responses to the commercial's
appeals.
49
CHAPTER III
METHOD
Subjects
Participants in the study were drawn from seven sites
located throughout the greater Los Angeles area. Four of
the sites were day care centers, two were public ele
mentary schools, and one was a private elementary
school. Although the sites were not selected in any
systematic fashion, an attempt was made to include
children from various areas of greater Los Angeles who
would be likely to represent diverse socioeconomic
strata. Unfortunately, it was not possible to gather
specific information regarding the socioeconomic status
of individual subjects* families. However, the four day
care sites can be generally characterized as serving
lower-middle to upper-middle class families, the two
public schools as serving lower to lower-middle class
families, and the one private school as serving middle to
upper-middle class families.
50
Overall, 152 children participated in the study. Two
four year olds who were to be tested, one boy and one
girl, chose not to participate after the nature of the
project was explained to them. Fifty-two percent of the
sample was male, and 48% female. Two age groups were
utilized: 4-5 year olds and 7-8 year olds. The younger
group consisted of 36 four year olds and 36 five year
olds. Fifty-four percent were male, and 46% female. The
older group was comprised of 53 seven year olds and 27
eight year olds, evenly split between males and females.
The ethnic origin of the sample reflects the wide
racial diversity of the Southern California area. Based
on the subjects* physical appearance and surname, 44% of
the sample was identified as Caucasian, 22% black, 17%
hispanic, 11% Asian, and 5% other (primarily of mixed
racial origin). All children of each ethnicity were
competent in the English language.
A visual inspection of the data was performed to
assess the distribution of gender and ethnicity across
the four treatment groups (two treatments x two ages).
Boys and girls were evenly spread throughout these groups
with no cell containing more than 55% of one sex. Over
all, ethnicities were also well distributed across the
cells in proportion to their numbers in the sample. All
ethnic groups were represented within +/-10% of their
expected proportions in each treatment cell, with the
following exceptions (expected % in parentheses):
(1) Younger/Host-Selling - No exceptions
(2) Younger/Non-Host-Selling - Caucasians
overrepresented: 65% (44%)
(3) Older/Host-Selling - Caucasians
underrepresented: 27% (44%)
(4) Older/Non-Host-Selling - Caucasians
underrepresented: 33% (44%)
The underrepresentation of Caucasians in cells 3 and 4
was primarily compensated for by about equal numbers of
blacks and hispanics, though their proportions did not
exceed the 10% range. The Asians did not vary more than
5% from their expected proportions in any of the treat
ment cells.
At each site, all appropriate aged children were
invited to participate in the research. However, only
those whose parents completed informed consent per
missions forms were actually tested. Approximately 2/3
of the children at each site returned completed consent
forms. There was no indication from any source that any
parents failed to complete the form because they con
sciously chose not to allow their child to participate.
Rather, the excluded children usually reported forms were
lost, parents forgot or didn't bother reading it, and so
on. At five of the seven sites, all children who
returned permission forms were tested. At the two public
52
schools, however, time constraints imposed by the school
administrators kept a total of approximately 10 children
who had returned consent forms from being tested.
Exper imenters
Data for the study was collected by seven inter
viewers. Three of the interviewers were male and four
female. One of the females was hispanic and the
remainder of the group was Caucasian. Three were
graduate students in communications, two in education,
and the other two had bachelor*s degrees and extensive
experience working with children as teachers. All had
undergone approximately two hours of training and
role-playing practice for the interview procedure prior
to the beginning of actual data collection.
It was necessary for at least one of the interviewers
to introduce the videotape treatment session to each
group of children and to supervise them during the
viewing, so this individual could not be blind to the
treatment condition being tested. Also, upon initiating
the field work, it was found that all school and/or pro
gram administrators either wanted or required more than
one adult in the room at all times for the protection of
the children (a recent rash of school-related child
molestation cases was receiving considerable attention at
the time). With these considerations in mind, it was
decided that all interviewers (there were never more than
53
four at a time) would remain in the room while the
children viewed the tape, and thus none of the experi
menters was blind to the treatment. At the completion of
the treatment, subjects and interviewers were randomly
matched without regard for either's sex or ethnicity.
Procedure
Children who participated in the study were randomly
assigned to view one of four different videotapes pre
pared for the study. The viewing was conducted in a
quiet room at their school or afterschool care site with
groups of up to four children at a time. Only same age
children viewed together, and most groups included both
boys and girls. Immediately after viewing, each child
was individually interviewed by one of the seven
researchers.
Two of the four videotapes presented both program and
commercial content featuring the same primary charac
ters. These tapes were referred to as the host-selling
treatment. The first of these tapes featured a
Flintstones cartoon for program content, and the second
utilized a Smurf cartoon. The remaining two videotapes
represent the non-host-selling treatment. These two
tapes included the identical content elements as in the
host-selling tapes, with the only difference between the
treatment conditions being the reversed presentation of
the two commercials such that the Flintstones commercial
54
is viewed with the Smurf program content and the Smurf
commercial with the Flintstones program content. Thus,
the first two tapes (host-selling condition) present
continuity of featured characters across both program and
commercial content, while the second two tapes (non-host-
selling condition) present the identical material ordered
so that discontinuity of characters across the program
and commercial elements occurs. This, of course, would
be the most common situation children encounter in
everyday TV viewing.
The two stimulus tapes created for each treatment
condition were used in rotation so that the first group
of subjects at each site assigned to each condition had
an equal chance of viewing either one. Those who
followed were then shown the other tape, and then the
process was repeated in the same fashion until all
subjects had been tested. Each subject participating in
the study viewed only one of the two stimulus tapes for
the treatment condition to which s/he was assigned.
This approach was utilized for two reasons. First,
it was felt that the use of commercials for two different
brands of sugared cereals presented in a host-selling
format should allow for greater generalizability of the
results than would be possible with just a single ad or
single brand. At the same time, the utilization of the
same two program and commercial elements across the two
55
treatment conditions (only their groupings are changed)
acts as a control for any unique effects that might be
attributable to any particularly attention-getting
program or commercial segment, since any such effects
should be equally distributed across both treatment con
ditions .
Stimuli
Each tape featured a self-contained cartoon segment
which lasted approximately 11 minutes, followed by a
standard network commercial/program separation device
lasting about 5 seconds, and then a 30 second commer
cial. All of the content was taped off the air, and
although it was drawn from a single television network
(NBC), it is equally representative of the children's
program and advertising content presented by all three of
the commercial networks.
In the Flintstones cartoon, Barney inherits some
unattractive property and with Fred's help sells it to a >
neighbor family at a steep price, only to learn later
that oil was found under the land and the owner would
become rich. The commercial/program separation device
which follows is the same one used by the NBC television
network on actual broadcasts of the Flintstones program.
It lasts approximately 5 seconds, presents a still
graphic of the star characters of the program, and
includes a male voiceover which states, "The Flintstones
Comedy~Sfrow w 1 ll~be rigITfr~back after these messages." 7^
The commercial which follows features Fred and Barney,
the main characters in the preceding program, promoting
Fruity Pebbles, a sugared cereal product marketed pri
marily for children. Barney approaches Fred dressed as a
traveling salesman and explains to him about the "fruity
delicious" flavor of the cereal. Although Fred is
anxious to have some, Barney eats it all while explaining
about it, thereby angering Fred who chases him away. The
commercial is fully animated, and both the characters*
physical appearances and voices are exactly the same as
those portrayed in the program content.
The second host-selling videotape presented a Smurf
cartoon and commercial. The cartoon content featured a
story about Smurfette becoming attached to a pet mouse
and the emotional difficulty she encounters when the pet
unexpectedly dies. She runs away from her home village
and is followed and rescued from the danger of the wilds
by other Smurfs. Again, the standard commercial/program
separation device used by the NBC network followed. The
format is identical to the separator for the Flintstones,
only it features Smurf characters. The 30 second commer
cial which follows features the Smurf characters promot
ing Smurfberry Crunch cereal, another sugared cereal
product marketed primarily for children. In the commer
cial, the Smurfs are all working at a factory producing
i 57
Smurfberry Crunch cereal when the machinery goes haywire
and will not stop making cereal. After the machine is
finally stopped, one of the Smurfs asks what they should j
do with all of the cereal. Papa Smurf replies, "Eat it,
of course," and they all do. Again, the featured char
acters' appearances and voices are exactly the same as in
the adjacent program content.
All of the tapes used were broadcast quality and the
segments were professionally edited together so that they
appeared exactly as they would over an actual television
broadcast.
Measures
There are three types of dependent variables that
were measured: children's ability to discriminate
program from commercial content; children's ability to
recognize the persuasive intent of the commercials
viewed; and children's responses to the product appeals
in the commercial.
The first of these variables, children's ability to
discriminate commercials from program content, was
assessed in two ways, both directly and indirectly.
Initially, each child was shown five 5 x 7 inch color
photographs, four depicting parts of the cartoon story
just viewed and one depicting the commercial that accom
panied the program content (copies of all photographs
used for the program/commercial discrimination measure
are included in Appendix A). The child was then told:
Here are some pictures from parts of the TV
program we just watched. I want you to put these
pictures in the right order and use them to tell
me what happened in the story we just watched.
You don't have to use every picture, but I want
you to be sure to tell me about all of the
important parts of the story we just watched.
The interviewer then wrote down whether: (1) the child
included the picture of the commercial in the photographs
he or she used to tell the story; (2) the child spontane
ously noted that the picture of the commercial was not
part of the story or that it was a commercial; or (3) the
child ignored or made no reference to the picture of the
commercial. If a child ignored or omitted the photo of
the commercial in retelling the story, the interviewer
would ask the child to explain why it was left out.
Responses were recorded so that, whenever possible, the
child's ability to discriminate program content from
commercials could be determined.
Following this indirect measurement of children's
ability to discriminate commercials from program content,
a direct questioning approach was used so that the
children's responses could be compared on the two types of
measures. The interviewer showed the child the picture of
the commercial and said "This was the last part of what we
just saw. Was this part of 'The ________ Show, ' a commer
cial, or something else?" After the child's response, the
59
researcher probed with "How could you tell?" Responses
were written down by the interviewer.
The second dependent variable measured was children's
ability to recognize persuasive intent in the commercial
viewed. The measure utilized is an adaptation of
non-verbal measurement techniques used by Donahue et al.
(1980) and Ballard-Campbell (1983) . Each child was shown
three 5 x 7 inch color photographs (copies of all photo
graphs used for the persuasive intent measure are included
in Appendix B). One depicts a child with his or her
mother at the market in the act of buying the cereal
product the subject had just seen advertised. Another
shows the same child at home eating the advertised cereal
product. A third depicts the same child at home watching
the television. Complete complementary sets of pictures
featuring a boy and a girl were constructed so that the
picture set used would be the same sex as that of the
child being tested. The boy who was photographed was a 7
year old Caucasian, and the girl a 6 year old Caucasian.
The researcher briefly explained what each of the three
photographs depicts and then asked the child to select the
picture that shows what the "last part of what we just
watched (holding the picture of the commercial) most wants
you to do." After the child responded, the researcher
probed, asking "Why did you choose that one?" Responses
were written down by the interviewer.
60
The interviewer then told the child, "Suppose your
best friend were here and said that the picture you chose
wasn't right. What would you say then?" The interviewer
restated the descriptions of the three photographs and
then noted whether the child reinforced his/her previously
chosen alternative or a different photo was selected and
if so which one. Finally, the interviewer showed the
child the first picture from the program content, asking
"What did this part most want you to do?" The child again
chose from among the same three alternatives. This item
was included to assess whether or not children were able
to recognize that the purpose of commercials differs from
the purpose of other types of television content, such as
program content.
Finally, the third dependent variable measured was the
children's attitudinal response toward the advertised
product. This variable was measured by three closed-ended
items. The first item was a straightforward measure
asking how much the child liked the advertised product.
Pictures representing five degrees of happy and sad faces
were used to aid the child in selecting responses.
Specifically, each child was asked to tell the interviewer
how much s/he thought s/he would like "_______" cereal if
s/he could have some. Responses were measured on a five
point scale ranging from "think you would like it a lot"
to "think you wouldn't like it at all."
61
The second item asked the child whether s/he would ask!
his or her mother to buy the advertised product the next
time they went to the market together. A four point scale
on this item was obtained by asking each child whether
s/he was very sure or not very sure about an initial
yes/no response.
The third item asked the child to indicate his or her
first choice brand preference for a cereal such as those
seen in the two commercials. Children were shown 8 x 10
inch color photographs of the boxes of three different
cereal brands: Fruity Pebbles, Smurfberry Crunch, and
Sugar Crisp. All were Post cereals and had boxes with
similarly styled graphic designs, though each was clearly
distinctive from the others. For any given child, one of
the brands would have been seen in a commercial, that one
or another one would have been associated with characters
in the program just viewed, and the remaining one or two
would be highly competitive brands.
The entire interview process took approximately 15
minutes, making the total time for each child's participa
tion in the research about 30 minutes, including the time
spent viewing the treatment stimulus.
62
CHAPTER IV
RESULTS
Analysis of data collected for the study will be
presented in three sections corresponding to the three
dependent measures: children's ability to discriminate
program from commercial content, children's recognition
of persuasive intent in commercials, and children's
responses to the commercials' product appeals. Prefacing
these sections are several preliminary considerations: a
description of the scoring procedures for all items; an
examination of patterns of responses on all dependent
measures by sex, ethnicity, interviewers, and treatment
sites; and an assessment of the comparability of the two
versions of the television stimuli utilized in each
treatment condition.
Scoring
Program/commercial discrimination. The first item
measuring children's discrimination between programs and
commercials was the performance task in which children
were presented with a group of five photographs and asked
63
to use as many as they would like to retell the story in
the program they had just viewed. The photographs in
cluded four pictures from the program content and one
from the commercial viewed in the treatment stimulus. In
using the pictures to retell the story, each child
could: (1) include the commercial photograph as part of
the story; (2) ignore the commercial photograph and
retell the story using only the program content photo
graphs, or; (3) note that the commercial photograph was
not part of the story or that it was a commercial and
exclude it from the photos used in retelling of the
program. Since children*s ability to discriminate the
program and commercial content was conceptualized as a
dichotomous variable, these responses ultimately had to
be transformed into a bivariate coding scheme which would
separate those who could discriminate from those who
could not.
Dichotomizing the children was accomplished by
putting into the non-discrimination group those children
who included the commercial photograph as part of the
story and by putting into the discrimination group those
who excluded it and noted either that it was not part of
the story or that it was a commercial. The remaining
children who excluded the commercial photograph in the
task but who offered no indication as to their reason
64
were grouped according to their responses to the follow-
up question by the interviewer, "Why was this one left
out?" Those children who responded that the photograph
was not part of the story or was a commercial were
included in the discrimination group, while those whose
response indicated a belief that the commercial photo
graph represented part of the program's story content
were assigned to the non-discrimination group. The few
remaining children, whose response to the probe did not
make clear whether they felt the photograph was part of
the program story or a commercial, were dropped from the
analysis of this item. This was the case with 12
children.
The second item to measure children's program/
commercial discrimination was a more straightforward
question. While being shown the picture of the commer
cial content viewed, each child was asked whether that
part was "part of the Flintstones (or Smurfs) Show, a
commercial, or something else." Again, responses were
dichotomously coded, with children responding that it was
a commercial assigned to the discrimination group and
those indicating it was part of the show or something
else assigned to the non-discrimination group.
Persuasive intent. The second dependent variable,
children's ability to recognize persuasive intent, was
primarily assessed with two items which were combined for
65
analysis. In the first item, children were presented
with three photographs, one of a child watching TV, a
second of a child buying cereal with his/her mother, and
a third of a child eating cereal. While holding a pic
ture from the commercial content, the interviewer asked
each child, "What does this part of what we just saw on
TV most want you to do?"
The three photographs were rank ordered according to
the degree of persuasive intent recognition that each
reflected. Since the buying photograph (child buying
cereal with mother at market) presented a fuller repre
sentation of the advertiser/product/consumer purchase
relationship, children selecting this picture were judged
to have the greatest persuasive intent awareness and were
assigned a score of 3. Children selecting the eating
photograph (child at home eating cereal) demonstrated
knowledge that the commercial was intended to get the
viewer to the end state of using the product, but over
looked consideration of the actual purchase process and
thus were assigned a score of 2 on this item. Children
selecting the extraneous photograph of a child watching
TV were assigned a score of 1. This scoring procedure is
consistent with that utilized in two previous studies,
Ballard-Campbell (1983) and Donahue et al. (1980).
Following this item, each child was asked what they
would say if their best friend told them that the picture
66
they had just selected was not correct, in effect giving
the child the opportunity to change or reinforce his or
her initial response. Scoring was the same as for the
preceding measure. The scores for the two items were
combined by doubling the value of each child's initial
response and summing that result with the score of the
child's second response. This strategy was selected over
simple summing for two reasons. First, it was felt that
children who first selected the best response but subse
quently changed to a less correct one should score higher
than those who changed from a less correct response to a
more correct one. Second, it was felt that scores should
not give equal weight to the second response when it was
possible that children might in some way interpret the
follow-up question as a suggestion by the researcher that
they ought to change their answer. According to this
scheme, subjects could be assigned a score ranging from 9
to 3, with the higher scores reflecting greater under
standing of persuasive intent.
A third item in this area presented children with a
representative picture of the program content they had
just seen and asked them to indicate what they thought
this part of what they had watched on TV most wanted them
to do. This measure was designed to assess the extent to
which children could recognize that there are different
reasons for programs and commercials being presented on
67
television. The children selected their responses from
among the same photographs used for the previous two
items. The most correct response would be the picture of
the child watching TV, since the other two alternatives
involve the purchase and use of advertised products.
However, because this item did not directly relate to
children's understanding of the persuasive intent of com
mercials and also because there was no correct response
hierarchy among the two incorrect alternatives, it was
not incorporated along with the two preceding measures
for analysis. This measure was included as an explora
tory item, and thus only the distribution of responses
will be reported.
Attitudes towards products. The third dependent
variable, children's attitudinal response to the commer
cial viewed, was assessed with three items. The first
was a measure of children's liking of the advertised
product on a 1 to 5 scale, with higher scores reflecting
a more positive attitude toward the product.
The second was a measure of children's willingness to
make purchase influence requests to their mothers for the
advertised product. Children were first asked whether or
not they would make such a request and then questioned as
to whether they were very sure or not about their reply.
The two responses were combined together and assigned a
68
score between 1 and 4, with the higher scores represent
ing reports of more willingness to make purchase in
fluence requests.
The third measure in this area was an item asking
children to select their preference of cereal from among
three comparable brands, including the one they had just
seen advertised and two comparable alternatives. The
choices were Fruity Pebbles, Smurfberry Crunch, and Sugar
Crisp. The responses were not scored per se, but they
were coded and analyzed according to whether the child*s
selection was a cereal: (1) associated with the
characters in the program content; (2) associated with
the characters in the commercial content; (3) associated
with characters in both the program and commercial con
tent, or; (4) not related to characters from either the
program or commercial content. These relationships vary
for the Fruity Pebbles and Smurfberry Crunch cereal
according to the version of the treatment stimuli that
each child viewed, but Sugar Crisp was not included in
the program or commercial content in any of the treat
ments .
Preliminary considerations
Prior to any analyses, frequency distributions on all
dependent measures were compared across the various
ethnicities and data collection sites sampled, across the
various interviewers used in the study, and across the
69
two sexes to insure that none of these factors introduced
any systematic influence into the results. When the dis
tribution on a measure for a given subgroup fell within
20% of the same distribution for the remainder of the
sample as a whole (in terms of the percent of children
selecting each possible response), that group was deemed
to be within an acceptable level of consistency.
Applying this criterion, no differences were observed
for either interviewer or site. Considering ethnicity,
the only differences exceeding these ranges occurred with
Asian subjects (N=22) on three dependent measures. On
the first persuasive intent recognition measure, Asians
were 22% less likely to select the eating photograph than
the rest of the sample as a whole. The remaining Asians
split about equally between the other two alternatives.
On the second persuasive intent measure, the same group
was 21% less likely to select the eating picture. On
this item, most of the remaining Asians selected the
watching TV photograph, making them 27% more likely to
select that alternative than the average of all other
subjects combined. Finally, on the item measuring will
ingness to make purchase influence requests of mothers,
the Asian children were 27% less likely to respond "yes,
very sure" as compared to the rest of the sample. How
ever, they were 25% more likely to respond "yes, but not
very sure." Although these differences are worth noting,
70
their importance is mirTirtTized by the following considera-
tions: (1) the number of Asians in the sample is small;
(2) the Asians are well distributed across the treatment
cells, never varying more than 5% from their expected
proportion; and (3) their discrepancies in responses are
not aberrant, only slightly exceeding the established
consistency criterion. Thus, the differences noted do
not appear dramatic enough to have any major influence on
the outcome of the analyses, and they will not be con
sidered further.
Although previous research provides no evidence that
gender differences should be expected, this variable was
also assessed. In comparing differences across gender in
this study, the consistency of responses was quite strik
ing. On many items, response distributions were within
5% of each other, and in no case did variance between the
two groups exceed the previously stated criterion.
Nevertheless, all analyses reported in this study were
also conducted including sex as a variable. As expected
based on visual inspection of the data, no significant
main effects or interactions involving gender emerged.
For this reason, boys and girls are combined in all
analyses reported herein.
Prior to analyzing the data collected for the study,
it was also necessary to establish that the two different
71
programs and commercials used in each of the two treat
ment conditions did not generate any differential ef
fects. A comparison of means and response frequency
distributions (as appropriate for the measure) for the
younger and older groups indicated strong consistency
across the two versions used in each treatment condition
for all but a single measure. On the discrimination
measures, variance across the two versions was less than
10% in terms of response frequencies. Means for measures
assessing persuasive intent recognition and children's
response to the commercials were also consistent, with
all comparisons within .5 of one standard deviation and
in most cases closer to .25. Attitudinal responses were
consistent on the first two measures, but on the third,
children's cereal brand preference, an inconsistency
emerged within the non-host-selling condition. It will
be examined in depth in the report of results. Overall,
however, these comparisons clearly establish the equiva
lence of the two versions of each treatment condition,
and thus all analyses for the study, with a single excep
tion, were conducted by combining the two versions pre
sented in each treatment condition.
Discrimination between programs and commercials
The first expectation in this area was that, con
sistent with prior research, the older children would be
better able to discriminate programs from commercials
72
regardless of the form in which the commercials were
presented. Specifically, it was hypothesized that:
HI. Significant differences for the main effect
of age will occur, with the older children
better able to discriminate commercials
from programs in both the host-selling and
non-host-selling treatment conditions.
Two different measures were used to examine this
hypothesis. The first, whether children could demon
strate discrimination in their retelling of the program
they had seen, indicated that, as expected, the older
children were much more proficient than the younger ones
in correctly distinguishing the two types of content.
Once children's responses were dichotomized according to
discrimination or non-discrimination, it was found that
52.7% of the older children correctly perceived the dis
tinction, compared to 27.5% of the younger group (see
Table 1). It is also interesting to note that, of the
children who did omit the commercial photo in the story
telling task, over three times as many older than younger
children (31.1% vs. 9.2%) spontaneously noted they did so
because the picture represented a commercial.
The second measure in this area, a straightforward
identification question, indicated a similar trend of
more competence by the older children, but with dramatic
ally different findings regarding the actual level of
discrimination for the older and younger groups. This
73
Table-i
Age Differences in Children's Ability to
Discriminate Program From Commercial Content
in Applied Story-Telling Task
% Children Younger
Noting not part of story 6.1
Noting is commercial 9.2
Noting both above 3.0
Ignoring commercial photograph,
discriminating after questioning 9.2
TOTAL - DISCRIMINATION 27.5
% Children:
Including in story 67.7
Ignoring commercial
photograph, no discrimination
after questioning 4.8
TOTAL - NON DISCRIMINATION 72.5
N = 65
Older
8.1
31.1
8.1
5.4
52.7
47.3
0
47.3
74
NOTE: Seven younger and 5 older children were dropped
from the analysis because their responses could
not be clearly categorized as reflecting discrimi
nation or non-discrimination. Missing data = 1
older child who did not choose to complete the
task.
74
measure, where children were shown a picture of~the com-
mercial content and simply asked to categorize it as a
part of the program, a commercial, or something else,
indicated that 91.3% of the older children recognized the
commercial content, compared to 83.3% of the younger
group (see Table 2). Comparing the two measures, this
item consistently estimated children*s ability to dis
criminate programs from ads to be dramatically better
than did the story-telling task. An assessment of the
factors which might account for the differences on these
two measures will be covered in the subsequent discussion
section.
To analyze these data, a log-linear analytic tech
nique assessing all possible main effects and interac
tions was conducted separately for each of the two dis
crimination measures. Log-linear analysis utilizes a
series of Chi-square comparisons which test the contribu
tion of each specified factor and its interaction with
all other factors in predicting performance on a
dependent measure.
For the story-telling measure of discrimination, the
analysis indicates that comparisons at both the one
factor and two factor levels yielded significant dif
ferences (see Table 3). At the one factor level, it is
clear that the discrimination responses produced the
significant difference, which simply means that
75
Table 2
Age Differences in Children's Recognition of
Commercial Content with Direct Questioning
% Children identifying
commercial photo as: Younger
Commercial
83.3
TOTAL - DISCRIMINATION
Part of program 7.0
Something other than 9.7
program or commercial
TOTAL - NON DISCRIMINATION 16.7
Older
91.3
5.0
3.7
8.7
76
Table 3
Log-Linear Analysis of Children's Ability
to Discriminate Program from Commercial
Content in Applied Story-Telling Task
Test that K+l and higher factor interactions are 0
K-factor df Pearson Chi-square prob.
O-mean 7
1 factor 4
2 factor 1
3 factor 0
26.22
14.82
0.51
0.00
.000
.005
.475
1.000
Test that all K-factor interactions are simultaneously 0
1 factor 3
2 factor 3
3 factor 1
11.40
14.30
0.51
.010
.003
.475
Effect df
Marginal
Association
Chi-square prob.
Age 1 0.57 .452
Treatment 1 0.06 .802
Discrimination 1 10.77 .001
Age x Trmt 1 0.00 .945
Age x Disc 1 8.66 .003
Trmt x Disc 1 5.22 .022
Age x Trmt
x Disc 1 0.51 .475
77
significantly more children gave one response than the
other. At the two-factor level (the equivalent of main
effects), age proved to be a highly significant predictor
of children's discrimination scores. A review of the
distribution of these scores (see Table 4) demonstrates
that, as predicted, the older children performed markedly
better than the younger ones in discriminating programs
from commercials across both treatment conditions.
Analysis of the second discrimination measure, which
utilized a direct questioning approach, yielded somewhat
different results (see Table 5). As with the first mea
sure, children's responses to the second discrimination
item were distributed such that one response was signifi
cantly more likely to occur than the other. For this
i
| item, however, age did not prove to exert a significant
I
I influence on children's ability to discriminate programs
from commercials. Thus, the data provide limited support
for the first hypothesis, with only one of the two mea
sures utilized yielding the predicted significant rela
tionship.
The second hypothesis about program/commercial dis
crimination was that younger children would be particu
larly vulnerable to confusing the program and commercial
content when confronted with commercials presented in a
78
Table 4
Age x Treatment Differences Across Both
Program/Commercial Discrimination Measures
Younger Older
Host- Non-host Host-
selling selling selling selling
% children correctly Non-host
discriminating:
Story-telling task 24.2 63.9 42.1 31.3
33 38 32 36
Direct questioning 76.3 85.4 91.2 97
38 41 34 39
79
Table 5
Log-Linear Analysis of Children's
of Commercial Content with Director
Recognition
Questioning
Test that K+l and higher factor interactions are 0
K-factor df Pearson Chi-square prob.
O-mean 7 101.89 .000
1 factor 4 8.25 .083
2 factor 1 0.18 .671
3 factor 0 0.00 1.000
Test that all K-factor interactions are simultaneously 0
1 factor 3 93.64 .000
2 factor 3 8.07 .044
3 factor 1 0.18 .671
Marginal
Association
Effect df Chi-square prob.
Age 1 0.41 .522
Treatment 1 0.23 .631
Discrimination 1 93.00 .000
Age x Trmt 1 0.03 .853
Age x Disc 1 2.05 .153
Trmt x Disc 1 6.01 .014
Age x Trmt
x Disc 1 0.18 .671
80
host-selling format. Specifically, it was hypothesized
that:
H2. A significant interaction effect between
age and treatment will occur, with the
younger children better able to discrimi
nate commercials from programs in the
non-host-selling than host-selling treat
ment condition, but with no difference in
this ability across treatment conditions
for the older children.
The data, however, do not bear out this hypothesis.
For the first measure, all children experienced a decline
in ability to discriminate program from commercial con
tent as a function of the host-selling treatment, with
the older children somewhat more affected than the
younger ones (see Table 4). On the second measure,
declines in commercial recognition resulting from the
host-selling format were roughly equivalent for the two
age groups. The log-linear analysis of the predicted
two-way interaction effect on children's discrimination
scores failed to reach significance for either measure
(see Tables 4 and 5).
A review of the log-linear analysis results does
indicate, however, that there was a significant main
effect of treatment on children's ability to discriminate
between programs and commercials on both measures. Thus,
while it was hypothesized that only the younger children
would be substantially confused by the host-selling
format in terms of differentiating programs from
81
commercials, the data indicate that both the younger and
older groups of children were significantly affected.
This finding will be considered further in the subsequent
discussion section.
Recognition of persuasive intent
Due to the younger children's lack of cognitive
development in terms of recognizing the perspective of
another, it was expected that this group would experience
more difficulty overall in recognizing advertisers' per
suasive intent. Accordingly, it was hypothesized that:
H3. Significant differences for the main effect
of age will occur, with the older children
better able than the younger children to
attribute persuasive intent to commercials
in both the host-selling and non-host-
selling treatment conditions.
Data pertaining to this hypothesis came from two
different items. The first item asked children to select
one of three pictures which best represented what s/he
thought the commercial most wanted them to do, and
responses were coded in a range from 1 to 3. A compari
son of means on this measure (see Table 6) indicates a
trend in the predicted direction (younger = 2.07, older =
2.26), although the difference noted between the age
groups is not large. On the second measure, where
children were given a chance to change or reinforce their
initial response, the difference between the group means
82
Age x Treatment
Table 6
Differences in Children's
Under stand ing of Persuasive Intent -
First Choice of Photo Representing Intent
Mean S.D. N
Younger children: 2.07 .64 71
Non host selling 1.97 .60 37
Host selling 2.18 .67 34
Older children: 2.26 .65 80
Non host selling 2.19 .66 41
Host selling 2.33 .63 39
range = 1 to 3
higher score = more understanding
83
"irTcreased”sFigIvtly (see Ta&Ie~77^ again in the predicted
direction (younger = 2,00, older = 2.24).
Before proceeding to the analyses that used the two
scores combined, it is worth noting the extent to which
children tended to either change or reinforce their
initial responses. Comparisons of consistency of
responses on these measures are presented in Table 8.
Among older children, 46-58% (depending upon which
response they initially chose) stayed with the choice
they first made, while this range was 47-67% for the
younger group. Of those who initially selected the most
correct alternative (buying cereal), the younger children
were slightly more likely than older to change their
choice on the second measure (53% vs. 46% change), pos
sibly indicating younger children's lesser degree of con
fidence in this choice as a correct response. Overall,
in terms of consistency of choice, the younger children
showed the least amount of confidence in the buying
picture as compared to the other alternatives.
Means for the combined scores for these items are
presented in Table 9. Again, the predicted trend of
greater persuasive intent recognition by the older
children is evident, with means of 6.11 for the younger
group and 6.56 for the older one. A 2 x 2 analysis of
variance assessing the effects of both age and treatment
on children's persuasive intent recognition revealed a
84
Table-7
Age x Treatment Differences in Children's
Understanding of Persuasive Intent -
Second Choice of Photo Representing Intent
Mean S.D. N
Younger children: 2.00 .66 70
Non host selling 1.95 .66 37
Host selling 2.06 .66 33
Older children: 2.24 .64 80
Non host selling 2.24 .66 41
Host selling 2.23 .63 39
range = 1 to 3
higher score = more understanding
85
Table 8
Consistency of Responses
*
in Children* s
First and Second Choice of Photos Measuring
Understanding of Persuasive Intent
N % N %
selecting selecting staying staying
first first with choice with choice
Younger:
buying
cereal 17 23.9 8 47.1
eating
cereal 42 59.2 28 66.7
watching
TV 12 16.9 7 58.3
Older:
buying
cereal 24 30.0 13 54.2
eating
cereal 45 56.2 26 57.8
watching
TV 11 13.8 5 45.5
86
Table 9
Age x Treatment Differences in Children's
Understanding of Persuasive Intent -
Two Measures Combined
Mean S.D. N
Younger children: 6.11 1.66 70
Non host selling 6.36 1.81 33
Host selling 5.89 1.55 37
Older children: 6.56 1.67 80
Non host selling 6.69 1.73 39
Host selling 6.43 1.64 41
range = 3 to 9
higher score = more understanding
main effect for age at £ < .05, indicating a significant
difference exists between the mean scores noted above
(see Table 10)• Thus, although the difference between
the two groups is not large, the data provide support for
the third hypothesis.
The fourth hypothesis, and second expectation in this
area, relates to the predicted treatment effects of the
host-selling condition, but the rationale behind the pre
diction is once again primarily rooted in cognitive
development theory. As previously noted, it is expected
that the conceptual distinction that must be drawn be
tween programs and commercials to recognize persuasive
intent in advertising will be more difficult when the
same characters deliver the messages in both types of
content. Since the older children should just be at the
point where they are beginning to attribute persuasive
intent to commercials, the added complexity of the host-
selling format is expected to negatively impact them more
strongly than the younger children who generally lack the
ability to recognize persuasive intent in commercials
under the best of circumstances. Accordingly, it was
hypothesized that:
88
Table 10
Analysis o£ Variance Summary Table Assessing
Influence of Treatment and Age on Children's
Understanding of Persuasive Intent
Source of variation MS df F P
Main effects
Treatment 4.42 1 1.34 ns
Age 14.23 1 4.31 .04
Interaction
Treatment x Age .33 1 .09 ns
Residual 3.30 147
89
H4. A significant interaction effect between
age and treatment will occur, with the
older children better able to attribute
persuasive intent to commercials in the
non-host-selling than host-selling treat
ment condition, but with no difference in
this ability across treatment conditions
for the younger children.
The data, however, are hot consistent with this
i
hypothesis. Both measures of persuasive intent demon
strate strong consistency across the two treatments for
the older group, indeed as much as if not more than that
evidenced by the younger children (see Tables 6 and 7).
The same trend is naturally reflected in the age by
treatment means for the two measures combined (see
Table 9). As shown in Table 10, the interaction term in
the 2 x 2 analysis of variance conducted for these data
was not significant. Clearly, the data do not support
Hypothesis 4.
Also included in this area was an exploratory item
i
(asking children to indicate what they thought the program
content, rather than the commercial, most wanted them to
do. The responses indicate that almost all of the older
children selected the watching TV photograph (see
Table 11) suggesting that they are able to recognize that
|the program content does not intend to sell products, the
concept that was reflected to a greater or lesser extent
in the other two response alternatives. However, this
recognition is not nearly as well demonstrated by the
90
--------------- Table- II---------------
Children's Responses to Television
Program Intent Measure
% Selecting: Host Non-Host
Selling Selling
Younger:
watching TV 36.8 50.0
eating cereal 42.1 35.3
buying cereal 21.1 14.7
N = 38 34
Older:
watching TV 82.5 92.3
eating cereal 15.0 2.6
buying cereal 2.5 5.1
N = 40 39
91
younger as compared-to ol~der children. The younger group
was much more likely to attribute selling intent to the
program content, especially in the host-selling treatment
condition, than was the older group. There is also a
slight trend across children of both ages to select more
selling-oriented responses in the host-selling than
non-host-selling condition, with this tendency somewhat
more pronounced in the younger group.
Attitudes towards products
In terms of children's attitudinal response to the
commercials, it was expected that the host-selling format
would enhance an already expected celebrity endorsement
effect and that the result would be a strong positive
reaction on the part of all children toward the adver
tised product. Specifically, it was hypothesized that:
H5. Significant differences for the main effect
of treatment will occur, with all children
evidencing more positive attitudinal
response to the commercials in the
host-selling than the non-host-selling
condition.
Three measures of children's responses to the commer
cials' appeals were gathered. The first, a measure of
children's liking of the advertised cereal product,
indicated virtually no difference between means (4.59 vs.
4.56) across the two treatment conditions (see
Table 12)• Children viewing the commercials in both the
host-selling and non-host-selling conditions consistently
92
Table 12
Treatment x Age Differences in Children's
Liking of the Advertised Cereal
Host selling treatment
Younger
Older
Non host selling treatment
Younger
Older
range = 1 to 5
higher score = more liking
Mean S.D. N
4.59 1.12 79
4.57 1.25 38
4.61 .86 41
4.56 .83 73
4.94 .24 34
4.23 1.01 39
93
liked the product a lot. The second item was children's
reported willingness to make purchase influence requests
to their mothers. Again, there was little difference
across the treatment conditions (see Table 13), although
the children in the host-selling group reported slightly
more willingness to make such requests than did those
seeing the same commercials in the non-host-selling
format (3.67 vs. 3.48). Two treatment by age analyses of
variance were run, one for each of these two items, and
neither yielded significant main effects for treatment.
The third measure in this area was an item assessing
children's cereal brand preference. Consistent with the
previous two measures, very little difference was
observed in terms of the influence of the commercials
presented in the two different treatment conditions.
While children in both groups were much more likely to
favor the cereal featured in the commercial they had
viewed as compared to two comparable alternatives, there
was only a slight increase in their preference for the
advertised brand as a function of the host-selling
format. In the non-host-selling group, children chose
the advertised brand 61.6% of the time, compared to 67.1%
in the host-selling condition (see Table 14). Overall,
none of the three measures provide support for the fifth
hypothesis.
94
Table 13
Treatment x Age Differences in Children's
Willingness to Make Purchase Influence
Requests for the Advertised Cereal
Mean S.D. N
Host selling treatment 3.67 .82 79
Younger 3.68 .86 38
Older 3.66 .79 41
Non host selling treatment 3.48 .91 73
Younger 3.82 .46 34
Older 3.18 1.20 39
range = 1 to 4
higher score = more willingness
95
Table 14
Influence of Program and Commercial
Content on Children's Cereal Brand Preference
Host-Selling Non-Host-Selling
% children all all
preferring: children younger older children younger older
brand
associated
with
commercial
content 67.1 57.9 75.6 61.6 52.9 69.2
other two
brands 32.9 42.1 24.4 38.4 47.1 30.8
N = 79 38 41 73 34 39
96
Dueto the consistency with which children responded
to both of the versions within the two treatments for all
other measures in this study, it is surprising to find
that the two commercials created differential effects on
children's cereal preference across the two versions in
the non-host-selling condition. As Table 15 reveals, the
Smurf ad in the context of the Flintstone program had a
greater impact on all children than the Flintstone ad
seen during the Smurf program.
Since children in the non-host-selling condition also
had a chance to select a cereal product associated with
characters in the program content they had just viewed,
the cereal preference measure in this condition provides
an opportunity to examine the influence of program con
tent alone, rather than the combined effect of programs
and ads, on the marketing of related products. The
results also indicate differential effects from this
perspective (see Table 15). Children who viewed the
Smurf program were more likely to select the cereal
product related to the program than were children who saw
the Flintstone program, with this difference being quite
substantial in the younger group (47% Smurfs vs. 12%
Flintstone). Comparing the separate influence of pro
grams and ads in this condition, it is interesting to
note that younger children who saw the version with the
97
Table 15
Cereal Brand Preference Across Both
Versions of Non-Host-Selling Treatment
Flintstone program/
Smurf ad
younger
Smurf program/
Flinstone ad
older
% children
preferr ings older younger
Fruity Pebbles 12 20 41 63
Smurfberry Crunch 65 75 47 32
Sugar Crisp 24 12
20 17 17 19
98
Smurf program and™Flintstones commercial were actually
more likely to choose the Smurfberry Crunch cereal than
the brand they had just seen advertised, Fruity Pebbles
(47% vs. 41%). The influence of the program content is
even more impressive when the actual market position of
the three cereal products the children could choose from
is considered. In terms of total market share (all
cereal sales), Smurfberry Crunch has 0.4%, Fruity Pebbles
0.7%, and Sugar Crisp 1.3% (Weisskoff, 1984). As
Table 16 demonstrates, however, the overall influence of
advertising on children's cereal preference is much
stronger than that of program content. Moreover, the
market expectation figures included in this table under
score the importance of advertising and/or developing
program/product relationships in selling products to
children. Possible explanations for the differential
effects noted here will be considered in the subsequent
discussion section.
The sixth hypothesis overall, and second in the area
of children's responses to the television commercials
viewed, is based on the expectation that older children
are generally less influenced by television advertising
than younger ones. Accordingly, the younger children in
the non-host-selling condition (which most closely
approximates the average viewing situation) were expected
to be more easily persuaded in favor of the advertised
99
________
Comparative Influence of Ad and Program
Both Separately and Together on Children's
Cereal Brand Preference
% children Program Ad Program Market
choosing: & Ad Only Only Expectation*
Fruity Pebbles 67.5 52.8 16.2 29.2
Smurfberry Crunch 66.7 70.3 38.9 17.7
* Market expectation derived from calculating relative
strength of market share among the three cereals chose
from.
100
product than the older group. However, the host-selling
format was predicted to eliminate this difference by
overcoming the older children's normal defenses against
commercial persuasion, thus acting to influence both
groups of children about equally. Specifically, it was
hypothesized that:
H6. A significant interaction effect between
treatment and age will occur, with younger
children evidencing more positive atti-
tudinal response in favor of the advertised
product than older children in the non-
host-selling condition, but with no dif
ference between the two groups in the
host-selling condition.
On the first measure, children's liking of the
advertised product, the hypothesized trend is evident.
Means for liking in the non-host-selling condition (see
Table 12) indicate the younger children report substan
tially greater liking than the older group (4.94 vs.
4.23). When faced with the host-selling format, however,
liking in the older group increases and the difference
between the older and younger groups diminishes. The
second measure, children's willingness to make purchase
influence requests, indicates a similar trend (see Table
13). Younger children indicate substantially more
willingness to request the advertised product than the
older children in the non-host-selling condition (3.82
vs. 3.18). In the host-selling condition, the younger
group drops slightly, but the older group evidences a
101
substantially more positive attitude toward the product.
The interaction effect suggested by the results of these
two measures is clearly represented in Figures 1 and 2.
Two way (treatment x age) analyses of variance were
conducted for each of these measures. Each yielded
results indicating significant interaction effects
occurred (see Tables 17 and 18).
Results from the final measure in this area,
children's brand preference, do not support Hypothesis 6
as did the other measures. Surprisingly, the older
children were more favorable towards the advertised
product than the younger ones in both the host and
non-host-selling condition (see Tables 14 and 15).
However, as will be noted in the discussion section,
interpretation of the results from this final measure is
somewhat confounded by the necessity of comparing
children's preference between two celebrity endorsed
products when the children in the non-host condition had
just viewed either program or commercial content for both
products immediately prior to indicating their product
preference. With this limitation in mind, and given the
significance of the two preceding analyses, the weight of
the evidence clearly seems to fall in favor of support of
Hypothesis 6.
102
Figure 1
Interaction of Treatment x Age on Children's Liking
of the Advertised Product
5- 4.94
older children
younger children
4.61
4.57
Liking
4- 4.23
Non Host
Selling
Host
Selling
Treatment
103
________
Interaction of Treatment x Age on Children's
Willingness to Make Purchase Influence Requests
for the Advertised Product
Willingness
to make
purchase
influence
requests
4-
3-
3.82
3.18
older
3.68
3.66
children
-------younger
children
Non Host Host
Selling Selling
Treatment
104
Table 17
Analysis of Variance Summary Table for
Children's Liking of Cereal by Treatment and Age
Source of variation MS df F
Main effects
Treatment .03 1 .03 ns
Age 1.05 1 1.21 ns
Interaction
Treatment x Age 3.23 1 3.71 .01
Residual .87 147
105
Table-18
Analysis of Variance Summary Table for
Children's Willingness to Make Purchase
Influence Requests for Advertised Cereal Products
Source of variation MS df
Main effects
Treatment
Age
Interaction
Treatment x Age
Residual
.71
1.73
4.95
.71
1
1
1
147
1.00 ns
2.43 ns
6.97 .01
106
Summary
In the area of children's discrimination of program
from commercial content, the results of this study indi
cate that the older children are more efficient at this
task than younger children in both the host- and non-
host-selling conditions, although the differences between
the groups reached a level of significance on only one of
the two measures utilized. It was hypothesized that the
younger children would be particularly vulnerable to con
fusing program and commercial content in the host-selling
condition, and thus would experience a drop in discrimi
nation ability as compared to their performance in the
non-host-selling condition. The data, however, did not
support this hypothesis. Interestingly, a significant
main effect of the treatment on both the younger and
older children combined was observed, with both age
groups demonstrating less ability to recognize a com
mercial when it was presented in a host-selling format.
Consistent with prior research, it was found that the
older children were significantly better able to attri
bute persuasive intent to commercials than the younger
ones across both the host-selling and non-host-selling
conditions. No evidence was found to support the hypo
thesis that the older children's ability to recognize
107
persuasive intent was diminished by the host-selling
treatment.
In terms of the effects of host-selling commercials
on children's attitudinal responses to such advertising,
no main treatment effect emerged for children's liking of
the product, willingness to request the product, or brand
preference for the product. However, in comparing the
responses of younger and older children across the two
treatments, it was found that, as hypothesized, a sig
nificant interaction effect occurred. While the younger
children demonstrated a much more positive attitudinal
response to the non-host-selling commercials than did the
older children, commercials presented in the host-selling
format influenced both the younger and older groups about
equally in favor of the advertised product.
108
CHAPTER V
DISCUSSION
As a result of recent changes in the regulatory
climate governing television broadcasting, the presenta
tion of hostselling commercials during children's pro
gramming has now become a viable form of television
advertising. In marked contrast to earlier FCC guide
lines which required broadcasters to treat children as a
special audience (Federal Communications Commission,
1974), television stations today have almost total
autonomy in determining their responsibilities in broad
casting to children. Although each of the three national
networks maintains that their internal policies continue
to prohibit host-selling, there are already instances of
this type of advertising on non-network stations which
are "slipping through the cracks" left in the void of the
discarded NAB guidelines. Moreover, the growing trend in
children's program content of creating close associations
between program characters and products marketed to
children makes the child-viewer's task of discriminating
109
program from commercial content in many cases potentially
more difficult than ever before. With these considera
tions in mind, assessment of the impact of host-selling
commercials on children is clearly an important task.
Influence of host-selling commercials
This study explored three dimensions of children's
understanding of and response to host-selling commer
cials. In the first area, children's ability to dis
criminate programs from commercials, it was hypothesized
that the younger children (4-5 years) would be more
negatively impacted by the host-selling format than older
children (7-8 years) in terms of their ability to dis
criminate programs from commercials. That is, a
"confusion effect" created by the presentation of
adjacent program and commercial content that both feature
the same primary characters was expected to emerge in the
younger group of children, whose discrimination ability
was thought to be less well developed than that of the
older children. The results, however, indicate that the
impact of the host-selling format on children's ability
to distinguish programs from commercials is at least as
strong in the older as in the younger group. Children in
both age groups evidenced significantly less proficiency
in discrimination in the host-selling as compared to the
non-host-selling format on both items measuring this
ability.
110
These results suggest that concern regarding
children's ability to recognize host-selling commercials
as advertising content should be focused not only on
younger children, who tend to evidence some difficulty in
distinguishing programs from commercials in general, but
also on children up to at least 8 years of age (the
oldest children included in the present study)• Even the
7-8 year old children, who demonstrated substantial
ability to recognize commercials under normal (non-host-
selling) viewing circumstances, evidenced markedly less
correct program/commercial discrimination when faced with
a host-selling situation.
It should also be noted that all of the stimulus
tapes used in the research included standard network
commercial/program separation devices so that the experi
mental treatment would correspond as closely as possible
to children's actual viewing circumstances. The use of
the separators, however, did not appear to influence the
outcome of the results. Consistent with previous
research, few children referred to the separators in
explaining how they knew that certain content was a
commercial, even though the separators had been viewed
along with the commercial in the stimulus tape just
minutes earlier. Since the separators used in the
present study featured the characters from the adjacent
program content, as do virtually all network separation
111
devices, it is not surprising that they seemed to help
children very little in discriminating commercial from
program content. Based on Ballard-Campbell's (1983)
finding that a more distinctive separation device can
generate greater commercial/program discrimination
ability in children, it seems possible that such a
separator, especially one featuring different characters
than those featured in both the adjacent program and
commercial content, might act to improve children's
discrimination ability when viewing host-selling commer
cials. This possibility would be worth exploring in
future research in this area.
In the second area examined in the study, children's
understanding of the persuasive intent of commercials,
the results provided no direct evidence to suggest that
the host-selling format had any impact on children's
ability to recognize persuasive intent. Virtually no
differences emerged between the host-selling and
non-host-selling groups for either the older or younger
children in terms of this ability. Overall, children
from both age groups most frequently selected the eating
i cereal picture to indicate what the commercial most
wanted them to do. While this result reflects some
I
degree of awareness of the purpose of advertising on the
part of the children, such awareness clearly focuses on
product use or consumption rather than on the actual
112
product purchase transaction. Less than one in four of
the older and even fewer of the younger children selected
the buying cereal picture on the first persuasive intent
measure•
Although it might be argued that some children who
selected the eating cereal picture may have also had an
awareness that product purchase necessarily precedes use
and is also an integral part of the commercial's intent,
the children's verbal explanations about why they chose
their response do not support this argument. While
several children who selected the buying picture made
reference to the eating picture as also being an appro
priate alternative and then discussed each of their
relative merits, the opposite situation never occurred.
That is, no child who selected the eating picture offered
any suggestion that s/he also considered the buying
picture as being about equally correct.
Finally, an exploratory item produced evidence that
children of both age groups are somewhat more likely to
attribute persuasive intent concepts to the program
content in programs with host-selling commercials than to
those with non-selling-host ads. This finding suggests,
as did the results regarding children's discrimination of
programs from commercials, that some degree of confusion
about the boundaries of programs and ads is generated
when children view host-selling commercials. However,
113
because the differences noted were not large and there
are no other known data measuring this type of concept,
this finding must be viewed with caution.
The third area explored, children's attitudinal
response to the commercial viewed, produced the most
interesting results of the study. Findings in this area
did not support the hypothesis that all children would
respond more positively to a commercial when it was
presented in a host-selling format, as compared to the
more typical non-host-selling approach. In fact, the
younger children's responses were virtually identical
regardless of format. However, substantial increases in
both the older children's liking of the advertised
product and their willingness to make purchase influence
requests were found in the host-selling condition, creat
ing a significant treatment by age interaction effect.
These outcomes suggest that the 7-8 year olds are much
more positively influenced by host-selling commercials
than by the same ads placed next to programs featuring
different characters than the product presenters.
Unfortunately, the results of the present study do
not make clear the causal factors underlying this ef
fect. Although host-selling commercials were found to be
significantly more difficult for the older children to
discriminate from program content, as compared to com
mercials in the non-host-selling format, it is not clear
114
that this difference in and of itself is enough to
account for the more substantial attitudinal differ
ences, The uncertainty results from the fact that the
younger children also evidenced significantly less abil
ity to discriminate programs from commercials due to the
host-selling format, yet failed to demonstrate any cor
responding attitudinal effects as did the older group.
And since no differences in the older children's ability
to recognize persuasive intent emerged as a result of the
host-selling treatment, one can only hypothesize as to
the factors likely to account for the older children's
more positive attitudinal response. However, regardless
of the nature of causation, this outcome lends further
weight to the previous statement that concern regarding
the impacts of host-selling commercials on children must
focus on older as well as younger age groups.
Influence of program content alone
The present study also offered an opportunity to
compare the influence of program content with that of
commercial advertising on children's preference for
products associated with either of the two types of
content. This was accomplished by comparing children's
cereal brand preferences in the non-host-selling condi
tion, where their choices included: (1) a brand asso
ciated with the commercial content; (2) a brand asso
ciated with the program content, and; (3) a comparable
115
alternative brand not associated with either the program
or commercial. The results for this measure indicated
that the two versions of the treatment (Flintstones
program/Smurf commercial, Smurf program/Flintstones
commercial) generated differential effects in the younger
children which are worthy of closer examination. The
findings indicated that both the older and younger
children who viewed the Flintstones program and Smurf
commercial were most heavily influenced by the commercial
content, favoring Smurfberry Crunch cereal 75% and 65% of
the time, respectively. However, the alternative version
in which children viewed the Smurf program and
Flintstones commercial produced somewhat different
results. While 63% of the older children selected the
I brand advertised in the commercial, only 41% of the
I
j younger children did so. In fact, even more of the
l
| younger children (47%) indicated a preference for the
I
brand associated with the program content, Smurfberry
Crunch•
This latter result suggests that the relationship
between program content and subsequent preference for
i related products (even when no actual advertising for the
product is seen) may be quite strong. Moreover, the
estimation of this effect in the present study can be
considered quite conservative, since the alternatives
children could select from included a popular brand of
116
cereal that they just seen advertised before indicating
their preference and a third brand with an even larger
market share than either the program-related or commer-T
cially advertised products. It is not clear whether the
younger children prefer the program-related cereal in
this case (Smurfberry Crunch) because the product's name
is more closely tied to the program characters than is
the case with the Flintstones cereal product (Fruity
Pebbles), or because the Smurf characters are more
appealing to younger children in general, or because of
some other factor. However, it is clear that, at least
in the present case, the viewing of program content may
produce virtually the same effect as that of a commercial
advertisement on children's subsequent preference for
related products. This finding will undoubtedly add fuel
to the fire for those who argue that children's programs
developed in conjunction with the marketing of related
products are in essence program-length commercials.
Further research focusing specifically on this area of
concern is called for, however, before any strong con
clusions can be drawn.
Age differences in children's understanding of commercials
Consistent with prior research, the present study
found that, overall, the older children demonstrated sub
stantially greater ability to discriminate programs from
117
commercials than the younger children. However, a sur
prising outcome emerged when the results of the two
different items assessing this ability were compared to
one another. Although purporting to measure the same
thing, these two measurement items yielded substantially
different estimates of the extent to which children were
capable of correctly discriminating program and
commercial content.
The first measure was an attempt to assess discrimi
nation ability indirectly without sensitizing the sub
jects by providing cues regarding the actual focus of the
research. Accordingly, this item inferred discrimination
or nondiscrimination based on whether or not each child
included a photograph depicting commercial content when
asked to use pictures in retelling the story in the
program just viewed. If a child possessed a conceptual
understanding of the difference between programs and
commercials, it was felt that this knowledge would be
applied to the story-telling task and thus the commercial
photograph would be omitted. To insure that the task was
equally clear to all the children, the interviewers read
the same instructions to each child verbatim. The
instructions emphasized that the task was to retell the
story content in the program just viewed. Additionally,
the children were specifically told that they need not
use all the five available pictures, so that they would
118
feel no undue pressure to include the commercial
photograph merely because it was available for the task.
Results produced by this item yielded substantially lower
estimates of children's program/commercial discrimination
ability than a complementary item which simply asked each
child to categorize a representative photograph of the
commercial content just viewed as either "a commercial,
part of the Flintstones (Smurfs) Show, or something
else." Moreover, the predicted age difference in dis
crimination ability was found to be significant for only
the applied story-telling task.
One possible explanation for the discrepancy would be
that some children who recognized the commercial content
and correctly identified it as such when directly ques
tioned included the commercial photograph in retelling
the story because they did not properly understand the
nature of the story-telling task. According to this
explanation, some children who recognized the commercial
content may have included that part in retelling the
story only because they thought that the task called for
them to retell all that they had viewed, rather than just
the story in the program content. The likelihood of this
occurring, however, was minimized by the careful instruc
tions given to the children, and by an additional "check"
of having each child verbally explain the story using the
photographs which s/he selected. Any time a child
119
selected the commercial photograph to use in the task,
s/he was asked to explain what was happening in this part
of the "story," and this provided an opportunity for the
child to spontaneously demonstrate any knowledge that the
picture represented a commercial and not a part of the
story- Only those children who included the commercial
photograph in retelling the story and whose verbal
descriptions were consistent with the perception that the
scene was part of the overall story content were cate
gorized as being unable to discriminate the commercial
content.
An alternative explanation for the discrepancy
between the two discrimination items would be that some
children who included the commercial photograph in the
story-telling task were not clear as to whether the com
mercial was truly separate from the program content, but
when provided with a prompt which focused their thinking
on the program/commercial distinction, then chose to
describe it as a commercial. In other words, these
children may be able to apply the label "commercial" cor
rectly when they see product-oriented content, but they
may still not realize that such a commercial message is
conceptually different and totally separate from program
content. Consistent with this interpretation, many
children who failed to demonstrate discrimination of the
120
story-telling task but who properly identified the com
mercial when directly questioned indicated that they
could tell it was a commercial because "they told you
about cereal" or provided similar comments noting recog
nition of the product. Thus, it may be the case that
some young children who recognize that television mes
sages featuring products are called commercials do not
necessarily fully grasp that such messages are con
ceptually different from the story elements contained in
program content. This possibility, if correct, poten
tially could account for some of the divergence in
previous studies which have found substantial differences
in children's understanding of television advertising
according to the framing of the research questions.
Also consistent with prior research, the results of
the present study indicate that children 7-8 years of age
perform significantly better than children aged 4-5 years
at recognizing persuasive intent in television commer
cials. However, even though children of both age groups
found it somewhat more difficult to differentiate com
mercial from program content in the host-selling format
than in a normal viewing (non-host-selling) situation, no
comparable effect in terms of persuasive intent attribu
tion was discovered. Both treatment groups within each
age range performed about the same in recognizing the
commercial's selling intent.
121
Other consideration in interpreting the results
While the influence of program content on children's
cereal brand preference may have been conservatively
estimated, there are other factors worth noting that may
have acted to enhance the strength of children's
responses to the advertised products. First, the fact
that the children made their product preference selection
immediately after viewing the program and commercial was
a necessary though probably unrealistic aspect of the
study. Had the measurement of this variable been post
poned so as to approximate children's everyday experience
of delays before accompanying parents to the market, it
is possible that the attitudinal response measures would
have produced somewhat different results. Also, the
order of testing of the dependent variables was not
rotated across the subjects and thus all children re
sponded to the attitudinal items only after being asked
several previous questions relating to the commercial
content. It is possible that the initial questions may
have acted to sensitize the subjects to the commercial
content and in some way acted to enhance or detract from
any positive effects which the commercial generated.
Unfortunately, it is impossible to know the actual in
fluence which these factors have produced in the present
study.
122
Other limitations regarding the interpretation of
results involve the specifics of both the stimulus
material and sample population studied. Although the
overall findings of the present research were consistent
across the two programs and commercials examined, both
examples of each type of content were fairly similar.
The programs and commercials were all animated and
featured characters well known to the children. Also,
both commercials represented only a single product type.
Variations in any of these aspects of the content studied
could potentially produce results which differ from the
present study. Finally, the sample was drawn from only
the Southern California area, and the lack of comparable
research conducted in different geographical regions
I
j suggests that caution is in order in terms of generalize
i ing the results to all American children.
Conclusion
To review, this study provides evidence consistent
with prior research that demonstrates the importance of
developmental change for children's understanding of
television advertising. Specifically, the older
children's ability to discriminate programs from commer
cials was consistently found to be greater than that of
the younger children, with the difference reaching sig-
I
[ nificance on the more applied of the two measures. The
123
same trend emerged in terms of children's recognition of
persuasive intent in commercials, where the difference
between the two groups also proved to be significant. In
terms of the unique effects of the host-selling format,
the results indicated that host-selling commercials are
more difficult for children aged 4-8 to identify as com
mercial content than is standard advertising. Finally,
it was also demonstrated that children aged 7-8 years are
more likely to be favorably influenced towards products
by host-selling commercials than by advertising presented
in a non-selling format.
While the general lack of comparable research to
corroborate these findings makes drawing hard and fast
conclusions difficult, the present study takes a large
step toward establishing that the host-selling commercial
is a form of advertising that can be expected to influ
ence certain children more than other commercial formats.
This is not a surprising outcome. Indeed, the self-
regulatory prohibition of this type of advertising was
maintained for many years ostensibly because of just such
expectations. Nevertheless, in the face of diminishing
j self-regulatory policy on the part of the broadcast in
dustry, and in a political environment where government
is retreating from virtually any content-related broad
cast regulation, empirical evidence specifically demon
strating the unique influence of host-selling commercials
124
on children may be crucial in determining the future of
this type of advertising.
From a theoretical perspective, further research in
this area is called for to explore the causes underlying
the 7-8 year olds' more positive response to commercials
presented in the host-selling format, as well as to
determine the upper limit of the age range so in
fluenced. In terms of policy considerations, additional
studies are needed to both confirm and extend the find
ings produced by the present research. Given the dearth
of previous empirical studies in this area, it is clear
that much further research establishing the differential
effects of host-selling commercials on children will be
necessary to generate any future policy decisions regard
ing host-selling. Even then, the policy implications
that can be drawn will depend in large part on one's
values and attitudes toward broadcast regulation. Hope
fully, the present study will help to create an impetus
for further research in this area and provide an im
portant step in working towards a fuller understanding of
the effects of host-selling television commercials on
children.
125
APPENDIX A
PHOTOGRAPHS USED FOR
PROGRAM/COMMERCIAL DISCRIMINATION MEASURES
H M H H tw im iu i
127

129

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136
APPENDIX B
PHOTOGRAPHS USED FOR
PERSUASIVE INTENT MEASURES
137

139

144
145
146
147
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Asset Metadata

Creator Kunkel, Dale Lyman (author)

Core Title Children's understanding of television advertising: The impact of host-selling.

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag business administration, marketing,mass communications,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor [illegible] (committee chair), [illegible] (committee member), Greenfield, Patricia M. (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c17-713996

Unique identifier UC11344547

Identifier DP22384.pdf (filename),usctheses-c17-713996 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier DP22384.pdf

Dmrecord 713996

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Kunkel, Dale Lyman

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA