Elizabeth S. Moore and Victoria J. Rideout
Executive Summary
Over the past 20 years, childhood obesity has become an increasingly serious health concern in the United States and around the world. Although there are many potential contributors to this problem, Congress, the Institute of Medicine, the Federal Trade Commission, and various consumer advocacy groups are focusing particular attention on the impacts of food marketing. Two comprehensive studies have been published—one by the Institute of Medicine in the United States and one by the Food Standards Agency in the United Kingdom—that try to assess marketing's contribution to childhood obesity through reviews of published empirical research. By necessity, these reviews focus on the impacts of television advertising because this has been the primary research emphasis over time. However, though television does remain a primary medium to reach large numbers of children, interactive media have significantly expanded advertising's reach and persuasion potentials.
In recent years, the Internet has become an increasingly important marketing communications tool to reach young children (ages 2–11), thus complicating the public policy debate considerably. Articles appearing in the business press typically assume that "advergames" are a common feature of Web sites designed for and visited by children. These advertiser-sponsored video games embed brand messages in fast-paced, animated adventures and are created by a firm for the purpose of promoting one or more of its brands. When a child is exposed to food advertising online, it is a fundamentally different type of exposure than what he or she might experience in television or the print media. Web sites for children are designed to be fun, with "brand immersion" as a key objective. That marketing messages may be embedded in an advergame or other Web site activity has the effect of blurring the lines between advertising and entertainment. Advertising in this medium can be more covert, and marketer intentions may be less immediately apparent to a young audience.
Concerns about whether children have the ability and inclination to process marketing messages on the Internet critically have prompted calls for a review of these practices from public health officials, policy makers, consumer advocates, and industry groups. Despite the rapid growth of the Internet as a marketing tool, little empirical evidence has been available about online food marketing to children. The current study is an attempt to fill that gap. In this article, the authors attempt to inform decision makers about the nature and scope of these marketing practices and to identify areas that may be of concern to public policy makers.
To accomplish these objectives, the authors conducted a detailed content analysis of major food marketers' Web sites. They identified a total of 96 child-oriented brands as candidates for the study. They took several systematic steps to identify these brands and to locate relevant Web sites. A key goal in the selection process was to identify brands that had been heavily advertised to children. They reviewed television expenditure data provided by Competitive Media Reports, and they retained any child-oriented brand that was in the top 80% of advertising spending in its product category. Web sites for these brands were included in the study if they either directly targeted children or incorporated some content that would likely appeal to a young audience (up to age 12). The authors included only Web sites sponsored by a food manufacturer in the study sample (sites that accept food advertisements but are sponsored by another firm; e.g., Nickelodeon's nick.com was excluded). Using this procedure, the authors identified a total of 82 brands appearing on 77 unique Web sites. Two trained judges independently coded every page of the study Web sites. All pages of the Web sites were coded, totaling more than 4000 unique pages, including games.
Of the brands originally identified for study, 85% had a Web site with content for children. This indicates that the majority of food brands that are heavily advertised to children on television are also promoted to them through food marketers' Web sites. Children spend anywhere from a few seconds on these Web sites to well over an hour. Activities on the study Web sites were embedded in "branded environments" that were colorful, animated, and designed to entertain. Brand marks, including logos, brand characters, product packages, pictures of food items, and corporate logos, were prominently placed throughout site contents. Some of the study Web sites were simple, containing only a few activities or games, and others were elaborate, incorporating not only brand-centric games but also sales promotions, viral marketing, television commercials, membership opportunities, and media tie-ins.
The study findings provide insights into the prevalence of these types of activities, into the challenges this new advertising medium poses to young children, and into the areas in which additional protections may be needed. The report of the results focuses on elements of the Web sites of particular interest to public policy makers—namely, those that have the potential to raise concerns. In this regard, the analysis surfaced 11 policy-relevant issues. These range from the nutritional profiles of brands advertised, to overt purchase inducements, to the absence of limits on total ad exposures, to the lack of "ad breaks." Underpinning at least some of these issues are questions that mirror those raised with regard to television advertising, including children's ability to separate advertising from other content and their capacity to recognize a selling message and act on this knowledge during ad exposure. Many are unique to the Internet, thus creating a new and complex set of challenges for policy makers, who, to this point, have had limited information from which to act. The authors outline a detailed research agenda to guide future work in this increasingly prominent, yet largely uncharted domain.
Biography
Elizabeth S. Moore is Associate Professor and Notre Dame Chair in Marketing at the University of Notre Dame. She received her PhD in Marketing from the University of Florida. Professor Moore's research interests include marketing and society issues, the effects of advertising on children and intergenerational family studies. Her research has appeared in Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Macromarketing, as well as other books and proceedings. Professor Moore's research has been recognized with outstanding article awards in Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, and at the national conference of the American Marketing Association. She currently serves on the editorial board for Journal of Public Policy & Marketing. Professor Moore has testified on children and marketing issues at the Federal Trade Commission, the Centers for Disease Control, and the Institute of Medicine.
Victoria J. Rideout is a vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation and Director of the Foundation's Program for the Study of Entertainment Media and Health. Ms. Rideout oversees the Foundation's research agenda on media and children's health. She has directed numerous studies on topics, such as the health content of entertainment television; the amount, placement, and subject matter of public service advertising on television; sexual content on television; media use among infants and toddlers; the amount and nature of food advertising on television and the Internet; and teens' use of the Internet for health information. Her research has been published in Journal of the American Medical Association, Pediatrics, American Behavioral Scientist, and Health Affairs, and it has been widely reported on in the popular press. She has testified on health and media in the U.S. Congress, the Institute of Medicine, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Federal Communications Commission. She graduated with honors from Harvard University and received her MA from Syracuse University.
Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, Vol. 26, No. 2, Fall 2007
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