USE OF IMAGES PERCEPTION AND RESPONSE IN CHILDREN ADVERTISING

ABSTRACT

Advertising strategies addresses the emotions of its target audience with seductive images and appeals for the sales of advertised products. Adults may have the ability of selecting those that best correspond to their real needs. However, the same does not apply to children because children are more receptive to these persuasive commercial appeals. The purpose of this study is to survey how the use of images affects the perception and response in children advertising. This was done by investigating the literature on these aspects. There is universality of applicability of a specific medium (television) as the best in reaching out to children. That is to say, if a particular medium is found to be applicable to Europe, it must not be assumed that the same is also applicable to the Nigerian audience. This study examined perception, motivational factors and other significant factors that impact consumer behaviour. This study provided the aspects that influence consumer behaviour, brand preference and what triggers off perceptual stimuli in children advertising. This was done by analyzing ads targeted at children. The study has also come to a conclusion that use of images in outdoor advertisement appealed to children to a large extent and influenced their preference for a product because good advertisement has the power to make the target audience notice and buy the product or act on the advertisement. This even works better for children given that they recall experience each time they have contact with ad.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1       Background of the Study

Advertising is a tool for communication. Every individual is exposed to advertising, whether he/she is willing to see or listen to it or not. Advertising is as old as man and man’s daily activities  revolve  around  it.  It  is  an  act  that  people  indulge  in  either  consciously  or subconsciously. This is usually carried out either by prescribing, describing or by testifying to a product or service. Recently, there has been a rapid growth at the rate children are exposed to advertisement daily. Children are bombarded with unavoidable commercial messages ranging from the television in the living room, radio in the car, billboards at the road sides, posters on the streets or sides of buses, danglers in the sales store and kiosks, magazines, stickers on the cars, customized ad on the T-shirts and polo, play stations, wall paintings, printed flyers, shopping carts, newspapers, town criers, in-flight advertisements on seatback tray tables, the backs of event  tickets,  computers  et  cetera.  Any  place  an  “identified”  sponsor  pays  to  deliver  their message through a medium is advertising. Advertisers use these media as efficient pathways into children’s homes and lives. Since early 1950s, television has become part of our culture and advertisers have taken full advantage of it and it is still the preferred medium for reaching out to children.  Children-targeted  advertisements  are  those  which  give  advice,  information  and influence them to demand a product and influence parent’s purchase. Sudharshan (1998) affirms that “children are bound to consume more in terms of food than adults because they are still growing  and  they  are  passing  through  a  phase  of  development,  they  only  achieve  final satisfaction via consumption” (p. 147).

As noted by Haynes (2015) “a major part of the global advertising effort today focuses on child consumers, both in their own right and because it is believed that consumption behaviour that characterize the adult life can be created in childhood” (p.1). In view of the above, Calvert (2008) analysed how children became consumers at different stages;

“In the first stage (birth to two years), toddlers and infants have desires and preferences, but they are not yet true consumers because they are not yet truly goal-directed in their product choices. During the second stage (two to five years), pre-schoolers nag and negotiate, asking for and even demanding certain products. At this point in their development, young children do not understand the persuasive intent of commercials; they focus on the attractive qualities of products and cannot keep their minds off the products for long. In early elementary school (five to eight years), children reach the stage of adventure and first purchases. They begin to make clearer distinctions between what is real and what is imaginary, their attention spans are longer, and they make their first purchases outside the company of their parents. In the final stage (eight to twelve years),  elementary  school  children  are  attuned  to  their  peer  groups’  opinions.  Their critical skills to assess products emerge, and their understanding of others’ emotions improves considerably” (p. 215).

Advertisers in the children’s market are sensitive to the need of identifying, monitoring and targeting specific types of child consumer as they are with the adult market. They consider whether a product involves mobilizing purchases by the child or for the child. As noted by Haynes (2015) “children are socialized from birth to be ‘consuming subjects’ and early attempts to advertise products to children were based on an advertiser’s intuitive sense of what might appeal to a child or their parents (p. 3).

The major role of advertisement is its ability to deliver messages, carefully composed from information that is usually persuasive in nature, to a targeted audience over a period of time. Advertising is defined as “the non-personal communication of information usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature about products, services or ideas by identified sponsors through the various media” (Bovee & Arens, 1992, p.7) or, according to other authors as “the paid and media intermediated attempt to convince” (Nichifor, 2014, p.2). Advertising acts as “the principal and direct force of selling; and the other items of selling are either eliminated by or subordinated to it”  (Harry,  et  al.,  1920,  p.13).    They  are  created  to  influence  human  behaviour  through persuasion.

The main objectives of advertisement are mainly to inform, to persuade and to remind a targeted audience about a particular product or service. Therefore, these objectives play the following roles; an informative ad introduces a brand new product, idea or service to a targeted audience. A persuasive ad relies on promises, guaranteeing the consumer about something or stresses on the reason-why a consumer should buy a product because most times, people don’t buy products, they buy benefits. Persuasive ad is mostly centered on the use of emotional appeal and in children advertisements they are most times loaded with a lot of bargains and promises. Bargains like half-price off, buy-one-get-one-free (BOGOF), use of coupons, and discounts.  A reminder ad draws the consciousness of a targeted audience to the product. It also reinforces a brand’s message, seeking to protect a brand against competitors.

In thinking about what to sell to children and how to sell it, advertisers have been influenced by psychologists such as Jean Piaget (1896-1980) a Swiss psychologist, who had worked on the systematic study of a child’s cognitive development. In his study, Piaget categorized childhood into four age based stages (0-2; 2-7; 7-11; and 11 to adulthood). Each stage is characterized by different types of intellectual development during which the child’s thinking became more social and complex. With this in mind, advertisers use several tactics such as repetition which involves repeating a commercial message over and over. The idea is centered on familiarizing the product to its audience thereby increasing the likelihood of purchase. Repetition helps to enhance children’s memory of the content advertised. Advertisers also use attention-getting production features such as action and movement, sound effects, and loud music.  These visual and auditory production techniques are designed to attract children’s interest to commercial content, which are seen in children’s advertisements either through the radio, television or outdoor prints. Sometimes, a branded character is commonly used in marketing campaigns. These are entertaining media characters that are associated with a company. These characters are used to promote the brand name in order to appeal to children. Celebrity endorsement is another marketing strategy used. When celebrities are used in an advertisement, children will like to identify and act alike with such individual, and therefore, would want to try the product.

In advertising, visual persuasion explores a unique visual aspect that is very important. It is a common strategy in advertising; it implies the use of imagery to influence a consumer’s attitude or behaviour.  Patrick & Hagtvedt (2008) noted that:

Eye-tracking studies have been used to show that consumers focus first on the dominant picture in a print ad before attending to verbal information. The attention a viewer pays

is facilitated by a) the size of the image, where larger pictures work better than small ones, b) the colour of the image, where a colour image works better than one in black and white, and c) the vividness of the image, where a greater number of colours work better to attract attention (p. 5).

The role and use of images in advertising cannot be down played because they are used to attract attention, stimulate curiosity, illustrate product features and benefits, create and develop a personality for a product, associate the product with certain symbols and lifestyles, and establish a brand’s identity in the minds of the target audience. Advertisers believe that any piece of advert only has a few seconds to grab a potential customer’s attention and this is the reason why visual persuasion uses powerful and interesting images to captivate a potential customer’s interest. Patrick & Hagtvedt (2008) noted that “the effectiveness of an ad is a function of what is said and how it is said. Several relative elements – the visual, the copy, the music – come together to create a successful advertisement” (p.5). The way these images are perceived and interpreted in the brain determines the reaction of the consumer.   Khan (2006) stated that “perception is the most important psychological factor that affects human behaviour. It is a process consisting of several sub-processes. These are stimulus, registration, interpretation, feedback and reaction” (p.88). Furthermore, Khan (2006) also described other factors that determine the customer’s interest as related to:

What we buy, how we buy, where and when we buy, in how much quantity we buy depends on our perception, self-concept, social and cultural background and our age and family cycle, our attitudes, beliefs, values, motivation, personality, social class and many other factors that are both internal and external to us (p.4).

O’Shaughnessy and O’Shaughnessy (2004) defined persuasion “as the process of trying to alter, modify or change the saliency of the values, wants, beliefs and actions of others’ social life which is dominated by conscious or unconscious, forceful or tangential, attempts at persuasion” (p. 5). Its main function “is to make the reader choose the work in advertised article in preference to a competitor’s article” (Harry, et al., 1920, p. 142). “Pictures can indeed be more persuasive than a thousand words” (O’Shaughnessy & O’Shaughnessy, 2004, p. 33), it captures attention better than a headline, slogan or even body copy and helps potential buyers to visualize the product or service being offered in split of seconds. Ogilvy (1983) believes that a right visual persuasive appeal is what assures a successful ad:

I have seen one advertisement actually sell not twice as much, not three times as much, but nineteen and half times as much as another. Both advertisements occupied the same space. Both were run in the same publication. Both had photographic illustrations. Both had carefully written copy. The difference was that one used the right appeal and the other used the wrong appeal (p.9).

Advertising, undoubtedly, has a lot to do with human behaviour. Various theories have been used by advert agencies in creating strong messages. These theories were originated from psychology and the behavioural sciences. These two areas of studies have the principal task of studying responses and following human behaviour.  Advertising practitioners strongly believe that when an audience is exposed to an advert, it causes changes in human cognition, emotions, and behaviour. How does this work? The first effect is to make the target audience to stop and look at the ad, thereby generating attention. “The first duty of an advertisement is to be seen, unless it can get attention, its other qualities count for nothing”. (Harry, et al., 1920, p. 82) Once

the attention is gained, the next thought of ad, is to lead to brand awareness. Reeves (1961) noted that if “the advertisement may have said five, ten, or fifteen things, but the consumer will tend to pick out just one, or else, in a fumbling, confused way, he tries to fuse them together into a concept of his own” (p.33). Establishing brand awareness is a key component of an advertisement’s effectiveness.

More so, it is believed that a good advertisement is characterized by the following features; creativity, ability to change one’s opinion, emotions, inspirational for action, persuasion, and uniqueness. Example of major theories used by advertisers includes persuasion theory and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Early interest in building a body of knowledge about persuasion theory can be traced “to psychologist Carl I. Hovland, who conducted studies during the 1940s and ’50s. Mr. Hovland was credited with undertaking the first systematic research projects on learning and attitude change and creating the discipline of persuasion theory” (Persuasion theory,

2003, para.1). Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a theory in psychology introduced by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper, which is also referred to as “A Theory of Human Motivation”. This theory was developed to help explain the connection between basic human needs and human desires.

Maslow stated that:

These physiological needs are the most prepotent of all needs. What this means specifically is that in the human being who is missing everything in life in an extreme fashion, it is most likely that the major motivation would be the physiological needs rather than any others. A person who is lacking food, safety, love, and esteem would most probably hunger for food more strongly than for anything else.  For the man who is

extremely and dangerously hungry, no other interests exist but food. He dreams food, he remembers food, he thinks about food, he emotes only about food, he perceives only food, and he wants only food (p. 36-37).

Copywriters have keyed into these theories with the goal of using advertising to persuade the target  audience  to  adopt  a product,  service or  an  idea.  Research  has  shown  that  Maslow’s hierarchy of needs remains the bedrock of fruitful psychological approaches to advertising and marketing. It illustrated that as man meets the needs at the first level, he moves toward the next level and so on. For instance, an ad campaign for a sport car is likely not to appeal to those on the first level because they are driven by the most basic of human needs: food, water and other elements of survival. It appeals more to those at the fourth level because those people at this level are driven by the needs for increased self-esteem, confidence, and respect by others. This is the reason why every ad has a target audience. This essentially means that people in different stages  of  their lives have different  need.  If  an  ad  connects  best  with  a target  audience  by appealing to their needs in a relevant, meaningful way, in such a way as to convince him that it will fulfill exactly that need.

“Every ad aims to make the target audience construe it in the way intended” (O’Shaughnessy & O’Shaughnessy, 2004, p.25). Good advertisement actually is the one that changes how people act and think. Research by O’Shaughnessy and O’Shaughnessy (2004) illustrated that whenever a “new-to-the-world product enters the market; it needs to establish visibility or a recall event with its target audience” (p. 4). These theories of advertising have explored the connection between persuasion and attitude, identifying possible responses that the receiver can give to advertising

information. Advertisers use different types of promotional mediums such as print ads (posters,

billboard, fliers, point of sale ad, magazine and newspaper ad), the television commercial and internet ad. I assume that children do not know how images in advertisement affect their perception, brand preference and response to advertisement. It is against this background that this study intends to examine the effective use of images, its perception, and response, and how well children understand the persuasive intent of advertisements in children advertisement.

1.2 Statement of Problem

The promise of betterment for the next generation has proven to be one of the most effective inducements to accept. However, advertisers have lately focused on parents (upper class, lower middle class, working class, and poor parents) and their expectations and aspirations for their children. Parents’ dreams for a better life find expression through purchase of products that make their children happy. Recently, there have been growing concern that consumer segment of most markets  has  been  covered  with  children’s  product,  resulting  to  an  increase  in  children advertising. One may ask: how effective are the images used in these advertisements? What triggers off their perceptual stimuli? In addition, this study will further interrogate, how children advertisements influence consumer behaviour, brand preference and what triggers off perceptual stimuli in children advertising and to what extent?

1.3       Objectives of the Study

This research intends to achieve the following:

(i)        To  discover  how  advertisement  influences  children’s  consumer behaviour, brand

preference and how children’s perceptual stimuli are triggered off.

1.4       Scope of the Study

This  work  focuses  on  the  analysis  of  use  of  images  used  in  children  advertisement.  The researcher is particularly interested in studying the extent to which image evoke consumers’ response in children advertisement. However, the study cannot evaluate the totality of the industries; therefore, it limits and focuses itself on some selected milk ads, noodles and juice drink advertisements.

1.5      Limitation of the Study

Due to the fact that most adverts are generic, it was difficult finding noodles ads specifically targeted at children. Comparing use of images and messages of different brands was not obtainable as it is only Indomie instant noodles that have ads for children audience.  For other noodles brands their ads are for the general consumers.  However, the advert samples of Indomie instant noodles collected served the purpose of this work.

1.6       Significance of the Study This research is meant to give an insight into what prompts the images used in children advertisement in Nigeria. It draws attention to the peculiarity of persuasion in advertisement and provides new and useful information that will serve as a guild for further studies.

₦5,000.00 – DOWNLOAD FULL PROJECT DOWNLOAD FULL PROJECT Added to cart

---

---

---

---

Related Project Topics :