Table of contents

  Introduction  3

1  Aim  3

2  Methodological approach  4

3  Results  5

3.1  Children  5

3.2  Children and TV habits  8

3.3  Children and advertisements  11

  Conclusion  19

  References  21

  List of tables  22

  List of figures  22

Appendix 23   

  2  

Introduction

Advertisements are present nearly everywhere and at every time. Marketing is an essential component for all consumption goods or services in every thinkable sector. Advertisements can be observed everywhere and at any time. Commercials are specifically made for a particular target group depending on the product or service. But not only grown-ups are a main target group nowadays. It is also obvious that advertisements for and with children became increasingly important in the present days. Children became significant target groups because they are considered as the “consumers of tomorrow”. With advertisements children should get used to the consumption society we already live in. Obviously children are seen as serious consumers.

There exists a wide range of advertisements made for children. TV advertisements are only just one part of advertisements developed for children’s needs. But the questions still remain if and how children are aware of those advertisements. This term paper aims at analyzing how children observe advertisements and if they know why advertisements are made.

The evaluations relate only to a sample of the main unit. The given answers and data may give a conclusion to the main unit but with regard to the small amount of interviewees asked through this project the interpretations may not be representative enough to conclude from this sample to the general public. That is why the subsequent evaluations only refer to the interviewed target group of 65 children who participated in this research project.

1 Aim

A range of TV programs are present which regularly show animation series or

movies the whole day. In between advertisements are often interrupting those movies because companies want to address their advertisements of a product or a service to their special target group – children. But are children really aware of advertisements and their possible impact on them? This research project aims at analyzing this topic. It will show how children handle their allowance they regularly receive and how often children watch television. Further it will investigate through which mass media children know about commercials and if children understand what advertisements are. Additionally, it will discover if children remember

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commercials and how they think of commercials in general. But first of all, the next chapter will deal with the methodological approach how the required data for these evaluations are collected.

2 Methodological approach

In order to answer the question if children are aware of advertisements and their possible impact on them the attention lays on TV advertisements because advertisements in general would have been a too large topic for this research. But after having found a topic to work on the decision which approach would ideally fit for the research had to be made. There was the choice to carry out the research either by interviews or by questionnaires. Because open-ended or semi-structured interviews take much time children might not be concentrated enough for the whole time of the interview and so a difficulty in receiving answers could exist. But a questionnaire read and answered by a child also seemed to be also not feasible. The children just started learning how to write and read, so reading and understanding the questionnaire might have been a big problem. For that reasons the decision fell for developing a questionnaire which the interviewer reads to the individual child. The interviewer ticks the given answers and writes down additional information or answers. Through this combination of a semi-structured questionnaire and a semi-structured interview including questions with given answers but also open questions the best results were expected. The questionnaire is divided into three parts. First, it starts with general questions to warm up with the interviewee. Second, questions regarding to advertisements are posed. Third, general TV questions are asked in the end with regard to TV advertisements.

It is supposed that teenagers older than 10 years are obviously aware of advertisements and influenced by them. By watching those closely on the streets or in shops one can observe that they normally wear brands and pay attention to brand names and stylish products. But also when talking to them they often remember advertisements, name a lot of brand names and know what intentions advertisements have. Therefore the aim is to find out whether children at the age of ten years and younger also have such an awareness. Because children

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younger than six years old might have perception problem children from the age of six to ten years where questioned.

The target group was approached by visiting primary schools in Hamburg to have a mixed group of children. Not every child visits a children’s home after school so that only a special group of them would be found there. Thus the headmasters of three primary schools in three different living areas were contacted to explain the research project. Because of anonymous interviews there was no need to contact the school council but it needed a time to wait for the answers of other teachers asked in the subsequent faculty meetings. Thank to assents of two schools in the Hamburg quarters of ’Niendorf’ and ’Mümmelmannsberg’ it was possible to carry out the interviews on arranged appointments.

The interviews by a questionnaire took place in rooms next to the classrooms or in the halls where the interviewer could ask the questions undisturbed and separately during the lessons. To show appreciation for taking part in the research every pupil received a candy. Although the feasibility of the questionnaire could not be tested by a young child and some doubts were expressed by individuals the interviews ran very easy and faster than estimated.

3 Results

3.1 Children

In the beginning of every interview children were asked some general questions to warm up and to get an overview over the target group. Altogether 65 children at the age between six and ten years in the two different living areas ’Niendorf’ and ‘Mümmelmannsberg’ were interviewed by the questionnaire. The age average amounts to 8 years. About the same number of children was asked in every grade in order to have comparable data in each age level and grade. The selection of the children’s gender happened by chance. So there is no parity in the collected data. According to Wöhe (2002; p. 565) a target group is a group of people on which the provider concentrates his marketing measures. Because this term paper will concentrate on children in general and not on specific advertisements either for girls or boys the parity is not decisive and might have no effects on the results. By asking the children how much allowance they receive per week it can be estimated if they are able to buy products on the market on their own or not. 63 children

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could give information about their allowance. Only 2 (3%) of them stated that they sometimes get allowance from their parents but they could not name how much. Obviously the majority receives less than 2 Euros per week which means that 54% of all interviewees weekly receive up to 1.50 Euro allowance and about 20% are weekly given more than 4 Euros.

Figure 1: Amount of weekly allowance per age group

In figure 1 the given answers are shown with the age of the interviewees. It becomes noticeably that the elder the children become the more allowance they get from their parents even if some children stated that they do not get any allowance at all regardless of whether they are six or ten years old. Apparently older children have a higher purchase power than younger children have. By asking the children what they do with their weekly allowance only 33% of the children stated that they spend their allowance for little toys and even about 23% of the questioned children expend it for sweets. In the next table the portion of children saving their allowance regardless of their age group are shown. Table 1: Saving weekly allowance

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As it can be noticed in table 1 the majority of 63% save their money apart from their age group. Some of the interviewees indicated that they save their money for buying a big car in the future or building a huge house when they are grown ups. According to Kommer (1996; p. 121) children nowadays get opportunities to take part in the consumption society through receiving allowances and money presents. The calculated average of about two Euros per week through this research project shows that children have just a low purchasing power but they are willing to spend their money and can be consequently seen as consumers.

By questioning the interviewees about their activities during their free time with an open question about 50% answered that TV, Computer or game consoles, for example Playstation, Gameboy, Nintendo are their favorite hobbies. The majority of those who named TV and game consoles as their favorite hobby are between 6 and 8 years old. Additionally children were questioned about their favorite toys by means of an open question. The answers are illustrated in table 2.

Table 2: Favorite toys

Here the answers were summarized into eleven categories. Up to 18.5% of the interviewees mainly named game consoles. But also other electronic games as well as Lego and Play Mobil are popular toys among children. The big category ‘other’ sums up diverse toys like small game cars or just crayons and paint boxes. Noticeably children often have favorite toys with a greater value. Obviously, the interviewees do not have a high purchasing power but they know and possess at least one of the above mentioned items. In order to own these the children might have an influence on the consumer behavior of their parents because these children do not have the possibilities to buy such expensive products. Probably

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