Question

How does culture affect how children react to marketing messages? With the same strategy of targeting children and parents work in America is it would in Europe? What does everyone think? Why?

Answer 1

Children’s reaction to marketing can be factored to two key elements. The message of the marketing campaign and the culture background. Studies and reports (From APA org website) shows that the reaction of children on advertisement usually have the intended effect.

Advertisers market to children mainly through various media such as TV and shows. Given that children are often at formative years of their psychological development, this tends to create a positive brand association with the children. This obviously makes the children want to have the product. However, the end result often depend on the culture.

Based on the product and the culture there may be different equation of relationship between children and parents. Naturally children does not have the ability to purchase the product by themselves. Nevertheless, the children ask for the product from their parents in most cases. If the power distance in the culture is great, in that case the children may not ask for the product a lot. However, in low power distance countries there will be a lot more demand for the product. Thus the end result of children behavior depend on the culture to a great extent.

In the USA, the power distance is low. This means that children and the parents often closely interact and thus if the child likes a product marketed to them they will ask for the product to be purchased. The same effect can be seen in European countries. However, things may be different in high power distance countries like China, and Middle-east. While we understand this, we also need to consider the effect of the product itself.

Consider the example of tobacco in advertising. In countries where tobacco is widely consumed and parents often smoke in front of their children, the children will likely form a positive association with tobacco brands. On the other hand in restrictive countries, that may not be the case.

Thus we see there is a three pronged influence on children from marketing. It depends on the marketing message, culture and the product itself.