Playing with food: the impact of marketing via online games on children's behaviour

• Autores: Alexandra Dominique Danielle Theben
• Directores de la Tesis: Francisco Lupiáñez Villanueva (dir. tes.), Frans Folkvord (codir. tes.)
• Lectura: En la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya ( España ) en 2021
• Idioma: español
• Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: George Gaskell (presid.), Xavier Medina Luque (secret.), Sara Pabian (voc.)
• Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Sociedad de la Información y el Conocimiento por la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
• Materias:
  • Ciencias económicas
    • Organización y dirección de empresas
      • Marketing (comercialización)
• Enlaces
  • Tesis en acceso abierto en: O2 Repositori UOC
• Resumen

  • The present study investigates the impact of online marketing on children’s behaviour. Children and adolescents spend much of their leisure time online and are likely to be confronted with atypical marketing content that is difficult to distinguish as such. Current online marketing practices targeting children raised concerns among academics, politicians, health professionals and caretakers about the potential effects on children. These concerns relate to children being unaware of the persuasive intent of embedded forms of advertising, which may lead to behavioural impacts that are far beyond the understanding of the child consumer. These marketing formats do not directly try to persuade young people about the qualities of the product advertised, but rather deploy techniques that influence in a subtle, unconscious manner. A vast interdisciplinary literature has emerged discussing online advertising from various perspectives and methodological approaches. In particular, marketing in online games and advergames has been subject to criticism and concerns. The objectives of this doctoral thesis were threefold: (1) to analyse what is the current state of knowledge about the impacts of online food marketing to children; (2) to analyse the characteristics of online marketing techniques directed at children in most popular online games and advergames; and (3) to test the effect of an advergame that promotes fruit on children’s subsequent fruit consumption. With these objectives, the study also aimed to fill current research gaps related to the marketing of healthy food products using currently deployed online marketing techniques. Academic research reviewed in this thesis provided evidence that the exposure to marketing content in advergames leads to cognitive, affective and behavioural responses of children, including increased food intake. A content analysis of popular online games and advergames revealed that currently deployed marketing techniques in online games and advergames often deploy features which make it inherently difficult for young people to activate consumer defence mechanisms, such as persuasion knowledge and scepticism, and encourage young people to consume. As a result, children are more susceptible to the persuasive intents in these formats and renders marketing through online games and advergames more effective than traditional advertisements. The effectiveness of advergames promoting healthy foods presents a significant opportunity for research. Evidence remains scarce as concerns the potential for promotion of healthy food products via advergames, although the health-related benefits of eating more fruit and vegetables for children are well established. This research responds to calls for more research on the effectiveness of interventions to increase the intake of healthy food by children and examined if an advergame promoting a fruit brand and individual products can increase children’s actual fruit consumption. The results gave no evidence that children who played an advergame promoting fruit consumed more fruit compared to those children who played an advergame with non-food items or were in the control condition. Despite the fact that previous studies have shown that advergames promoting food products increased the intake of the (oftentimes unhealthy) food products advertised, the same effect could not be found for advergames promoting fruit. Implications on online marketing of healthy food products are discussed and recommendations for future research outlined.