Marketing to children: a critical issue

Target selection is a critical phase in marketing decision-making process: choosing the right target for your product is the best way to increase sales and to obtain profit. 

You have to select who is the potential customer that you can easily attract and persuade: and who is as sensible as a child?

Indeed, children have always been one of the marketers’ favourite targets: they are too young, innocent and unspoilt by the society to react and refuse the proposed marketing message; they do not have a rational identity that can protect them from an external manipulation.

One could argue that kids do not have purchasing power: false. Even if it is not a direct purchasing power – they do not go shopping by themselves – they exert a strong influence upon their parents’ shopping decisions. Moreover, nowadays, from a certain age they start receiving a little amount of money from their parents. The sum of these two aspects gives them a strong purchasing power, making them attractive preys to marketers’ eyes. 

Marketing to children: children's purchasing power

If the message we are trying to communicate is safe, we can debate about the ethicality of the choice of targeting helpless customers, but, actually, children will not be damaged. According to me, marketers should have the possibility of targeting children, but they must be really careful of the product they are promoting: if it can be dangerous for children’s health, if it boosts unhealthy behaviours, if it embeds violence and sexual innuendo, marketers should be prevented from targeting children.  

One of the biggest industry in which children play a big role in companies’ profits is food & beverages one. This is the field in which marketing to children proliferate: it is easier to tempt children, because they spend more time watching TV compared to adults – who are often at work – and because they get influenced quicker. 

Marketing to children and TV

Moreover, children do not care about diet – as often adults do; for this reason, they may insist with their parents to obtain a certain snack or drink.

Marketing to children and negative influence

Childhood obesity is a pressing health concern in Western countries – especially in the US – and food and beverage marketing often targets children: it is impossible to ignore the connection between these two aspects. 

Free-market supporters claim for self-regulation in this sense, while others think that a government regulation should be required.

I want to stress one particular point that I always underline: consumers may react towards these marketing campaigns, in this particular case parents should be really careful about what their children watch on TV and what kind of advertising hits them. They have to be ready to protect their children from unethical marketing and to boycott firms that show an irresponsible marketing conduct towards them. If they did so, companies would understand that this marketing technique is not profitable at all and they would cease to adopt it.

This is better than any kind of government intervention: public opinion is far stronger than it and, if exerted in an intelligent and proactive way, could be able to stop these behaviours.

Carlotta Neuenschwander