My View

            

               Children view in average approximately 40 000 advertisements each year. Although the kinds of products advertised remained more or less the same, the buying power of kids has increased. Children shape the buying patterns of the family which means that through children advertising companies can easily influence the entire family (Calvert, 2008). Moreover, children are spending more and more time online, playing games and watching videos. This fact is great for marketers! Traditional marketing techniques are much more expensive while comparing with online advertising. For example, Wild Planet Toys spent 50,000 dollars for online ads instead of spending 2 million dollar for television advertising campaign (Calvert, 2008).

            What marketing techniques are used to achieve company goals? One of them is repetition. It simply means to advertise so product over and over. Attention-getting production features are techniques designed to attract children´s interest. They do it thought sounds effects, action, movement, rapid pacing and loud music. Next technique is celebrity endorsement. Well known faces on cereal boxes help to sell products. Also, sponsors logo is popular among marketers. Bolt, popular website, had a Pepsi logo on its music page, which increased awareness of their brand among teens. Furthermore, viral marketing is created when people talk about some product.  Far more dangerous technique is tracking software and spyware. Marketers want to know who is visiting their websites to figure out how effective their strategies are. They are using cookies or electronic bits which gathers these information is someone register to their website. Even though they violate the privacy of users while spy on their computers without their knowledge, it is not illegal action. Tracking these information provides extensive information for marketers (Calvert, 2008).

            So, how these marketing practices affect children? Using Jean Piaget´s theory of cognitive development we can elaborate this question. From age two to age seven, children focus on properties such as how a product looks. Between age seven and age eleven, kids start to understand world more realistically and they realize the aim of advertising is to sell products. From age twelve upward they are starting to look on ads more cynically (Calvert, 2008). Next important question to answer is how children process advertisements. Ads that are full of color images, happy music and lyrics can replay in kid´s head and according to this they will remember the product very easily and do not have to be even aware of this. Researchers found that repetition of ads increases children´s requests for purchases of products. Marketer use premiums, bonus toys and staff, which also increases children´s product requests. Charles Aitkin found that 81% of mothers are aware of this fact. Unfortunately, advertisement can lead to negative outcomes such as parent-child conflict, cynicism, obesity, and possible materialistic attitudes. For example, four to six-year-old rely on nagging, crying, and whining to get their parents to buy them products (Calvert, 2008).

            Good news is that some school across the United States has these media literacy trainings to teach kids to understand advertising techniques (Calvert, 2008). I believe that parents can also help their children to understand this issue. Also, parents should be more aware of this problem and do not underestimate the power of marketing persuasive techniques.

Sources

Calvert, S. L. (2008). Children as consumers: Advertising and marketing. The  

Future of Children, 18(1) Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com /docview/1519298667?accountid=17238