Terry O'Sullivan

International food advertising, pester power and its effects

The increasing importance of children as consumers has focused attention on ‘pester power’: children’s influence over adult purchasing through requests and demands for certain products. Many concerns are expressed about pester power, including that it increases parent-child conflict. In the contested area of food marketing, an additional and particularly potent criticism of pester power is that it can undermine parents’ attempts to feed their children a healthy diet. Results from a systematic review of international evidence find that food advertising does cause ‘pestering’ by children and results in parents buying less healthy products that are associated with obesity. This undermines industry arguments that pester power is just a legitimate way for children to express their growing autonomy as consumers. Policy implications for marketers and government are discussed.

Conducting research with children and adolescents: Design, methods and empirical cases

punishment side of excessive energy consumption, the actual payment for it, is more remote and often eased through staged payments. These behaviours, Foxall argues, are thus maintained by high utilitarian (the social reward) and low informational (the payment) reinforcement. To effect a successful change of behaviour, his analysis shows how it is necessary to increase informational reinforcement. In line with operant conditioning principles that behaviour must be reinforced quickly, daily feedback on energy usage coupled with discount incentives has proved to be very effective, reducing peak energy consumption in some cases by as much as 30%, which is a fairly impressive change in behaviour. In summary, then, this book is a very worthwhile read for marketing and consumer researchers. The price of £95 for a hardback copy (the Interpretivist Research Series is no longer published in soft back) probably puts it a little outside the budget of most students, but it is certainly a must-have for the library. Part of the problem with marketing’s lack of theory development is that the field remains firmly divided into positivist and interpretivist camps with little dialogue between them. This book provides a welcome bridge. Professor Pauline Maclaran School of Management Royal Holloway University of London Egham Hill, Egham Surrey TW20 0EX E Pauline.MacLaran@rhul.ac.uk

Advertising and children: what do the kids think?

Purpose – To question the models of childhood implied within contemporary UK debate about advertising to children. The paper identifies a role for qualitative market research in establishing a more fully‐articulated account of childhood, with implications for both policy makers and marketers.Design/methodology/approach – A brief literature review of contemporary sociological perspectives on childhood informs an account of controversy in the UK about the legitimacy of advertising to children. Adult versions of childhood from this debate are contrasted with childrens own accounts of their experience of advertising, drawing on a pilot study using informal qualitative methods.Findings – Illuminates the assumptions about childhood which divide industry advocates from their critics, and suggests that qualitative understanding of childrens experience of advertising should have a greater role in complementing the predominantly positivist research on which the debate draws.Research limitations/implications – Lim...

Get MediaSmart®: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Controversy Around Advertising to Children in the UK

In response to calls for increased regulation of advertising to children (occasioned by concerns over childhood obesity levels) a group of UK advertisers targeting young people have sought to demonstrate social responsibility by providing media literacy education resources for children aged six to eleven through the MediaSmart® initiative. This article draws on Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough 2001) to analyse a selection of publicly available accounts of the 2002 launch and operation of MediaSmart® in order to explore how alternative discursive representations of MediaSmart® construct children and advertising in relation to one another, and how these constructions work to further the social practices of which the discourses in question are part. The analysis concludes that the competing discourses have a stake in the problem of advertising to children remaining open‐ended, but suggests that the possibilities of its resolution lie in (a) the incorporation of childrens own perspectives in controversy conducted on their behalf by adults, and (b) conceptions of media literacy which are more active and age‐inclusive than those evident in the discourses currently available.

The museum values framework: a framework for understanding organisational culture in museums

This article introduces a theoretical tool for understanding organisational culture, or values, in museums. The Museum Values Framework (MVF) was adapted from the Competing Values Framework and can be used to identify various sets of values found in a museum context. Identifying the underlying values could help increase the visibility of different priorities and, in doing so, contribute to our understanding of the tensions facing museum managers. After clarifying what is meant by organisational culture/values, the article describes how the MVF was developed. It explains how the framework incorporates four sets of values (club, temple, visitor attraction and forum) and how these operate in combination to shape behaviour in museums. The article concludes by discussing the potential application of the MVF to museum management by practitioners and academics.