How Childhood Advertising Exposure Can Create Biased Product Evaluations That Persist into Adulthood

 Tue , March 18, 2014

Research finding : 

Children’s Feelings About Brands Persist into Adulthood. 

Consumer-brand companies’ investments in child-oriented advertising provide brand benefits long after the audience has grown up ! 

 For example, people in the UK who had been exposed to the Kellogg’s Frosties character Tony the Tiger as children and the Cocoa Pops character Coco the Monkey as adults rated Frosties as more healthful than Cocoa Pops (3.84 versus 3.24 on a 7–point scale), suggesting that the participants retained warm feelings about Tony from childhood! 

Areas of concern about societal welfare . 

 The findings raise concerns about child-oriented ad campaigns for products with potentially adverse health consequences, the researchers say.

Research , courtesy :  a team led by Paul M. Connell of the State University of New York at Stony Brook.