Genitori e consumatori: le scelte alimentari tra figli e marketing

Quanto l’etica del marketing alimentare – soprattutto quando indirizzato ai bambini – influisce sulle scelte dei genitori? C’è una sensibilità crescente che porta i genitori – in qualità di consumatori – a boicottare le aziende alimentari poco virtuose?

Questo è il primo articolo del blog in italiano, proprio perché tocca da vicino le famiglie italiane e le loro scelte di consumo. Ho infatti deciso di dare qui spazio alla ricerca da me condotta tra Luglio e Settembre 2015 per la mia tesi di laurea “Marketing ethics and children: how ethicality impacts on parent’s purchasing behaviour”, basata su un questionario rivolto ai genitori italiani di bambini di età compresa fra gli 0 e i 12 anni. Il questionario – condiviso su Facebook in gruppi dedicati alla genitorialità – era volto a verificare alcune ipotesi:

• Relazione positiva tra riconoscimento di un comportamento di marketing alimentare poco etico e comportamento punitivo (boicottaggio) delle aziende poco virtuose
• Relazione positiva tra attenzione all’approccio etico e comportamento premiale nei confronti delle aziende virtuose
• Relazione positiva tra attenzione a una dieta salutare e attenzione all’approccio etico
• Relazione positiva tra grado d’informazione sui temi etici e comportamento punitivo

Il metodo era presentare ai genitori un comportamento – dall’advergaming, ossia  la creazione di videogiochi connessi a prodotti alimentari e alla loro sponsorizzazione, alle pubblicità che promuovono come colazione ideale dei bambini cibi ricchi di zuccheri e grassi, dalla pubblicità “mimetizzata” all’interno di programmi interamente dedicati all’infanzia alla promozione di bevande molto zuccherate e gasate per i bambini – e testare la loro reazione di fronte a esso.

Genitori e consumatori: le scelte alimentari tra figli e marketing

I risultati più rilevanti sono stati:

• 406 risposte in 3 giorni! Questo risultato sorprendente – considerando il tema, abbastanza di nicchia – è già di per sé un segnale che le famiglie italiane hanno un interesse crescente per l’aspetto etico, soprattutto in un settore delicato come quello alimentare.
• Il 98.3% dei rispondenti sono donne: questo dato è un segnale del fatto che l’educazione alimentare dei bambini italiani è ancora ad appannaggio quasi totale delle madri.
• La relazione positiva tra riconoscimento di un comportamento poco etico e comportamento punitivo delle aziende poco virtuose è stata verificata: i genitori italiani sono più pronti ad agire concretamente contro le aziende dai comportamenti non etici.
• La relazione positiva tra l’attenzione a una dieta salutare e l’attenzione all’approccio etico è stata verificata: le famiglie più sensibili a educare i propri figli a uno stile di vita sano e ad abitudini alimentari equilibrate sono anche più attente ai comportamenti etici delle aziende che operano in questo settore.
• Maggiore è l’informazione sul tema, maggiore è la disposizione ad adottare comportamenti punitivi nei confronti delle aziende poco virtuose.

Genitori e consumatori: le scelte alimentari tra figli e marketing

Le mie conclusioni convergono intorno a un punto focale: l’etica del marketing – soprattutto in campo alimentare – è un tema d’interesse crescente per la società, soprattutto per le famiglie, che sentono in particolar modo la responsabilità di proteggere i propri figli da un tipo di marketing spregiudicato e poco attento alle esigenze dell’età infantile. Attualmente, la popolazione “salutista” è in forte aumento – basti pensare alla crescita esponenziale del trend vegetariano e vegano – e questo va di pari passo con un approccio più critico nei confronti del marketing alimentare e dei suoi aspetti più privi di scrupoli, che possono nuocere a una società già gravata dal problema pressante dell’obesità infantile – che, ricordiamo, non è solo americano.Da neolaureata in economia che ha appena avuto accesso al mondo del marketing, suggerisco alle aziende di non sottovalutare l’impegno etico e di considerare che comportamenti spregiudicati, sebbene profittevoli nel breve termine, possono essere puniti dai consumatori in un futuro quanto mai prossimo.    

Family communication and children's consumption behaviour

Good afternoon everybody,

today we are going to focus on family’s role in protecting children from marketing dedicated to them, or better, in educating them to a responsible consumption attitude.

I have found an interesting paper by Gregory M. Rose, David Boush and Aviv Shoham, “Family communication and children’s purchasing influence: a cross-national examination” (2002), in which the authors study the importance of family’s communication process in shaping children’s purchasing power. 

Marketing is always ready to attract and persuade kids: it appears on TV, magazines and it pervades the Web. Even if we fight for making marketing ethical and responsible towards children, it will be impossible, even excessive to prevent firms from targeting them. It is family’s responsibility, too, to instruct children to react in a rational way to marketing messages.

Parents have to make their kids aware of the money’s worth, of product prices and of puffery; they have to learn how to recognize a misleading message and understand that not always a product described as the best and as the one that you definitely have to buy is something that you really need. 

Marketing to children may be unethical, but if parents pamper their kids too much, buying them anything they want, they will facilitate irresponsible marketers’ work.

A lack of family communication often generates spoiled children

A good communication between parents and children is crucial and it usually has two main dimensions – as the authors state: one mainly socially-oriented, related to human interrelationships (based on some dictates, like avoid conflicts, respect the elders and so on), the other one conceptually-oriented, focused on teaching children to think independently and to evaluate all sides of an argument during the communication process. 

Starting from these two dimensions, four communicative patterns have been elaborated:

• laissez-faire: typical of families with a low-quality communication, lacking both of social and conceptual orientation;
• protective: it describes families in which socially-oriented dimension is strong, but the conceptual one is insufficient;
• pluralistic: more focused on the conceptual dimension, less on the social one;
• consensual: both the dimensions are important.

Family communication and a responsible consumption behaviour are often connected

If we consider these dimensions on a scale where the lowest level is laissez-faire and the highest the consensual one, the more we move towards the consensual level, the more our children are conscious about the use of their income.

Usually, children raised in pluralistic and consensual families have more income at their disposal and they are more responsible about their purchasing power, while children in protective and permissive families tend to be more dependent to their parents’ income. 

Which kind of communication do you adopt in your family? Be careful: if you recognize that your communicative pattern is low-quality, remember that it is important to raise independent and aware children, in order not to make them easy targets for irresponsible marketers. 

Carlotta Neuenschwander

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