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This paper aims to explore the correlates of parental mediation of pre-schoolers’ television advertising exposure, focusing on the influence of other siblings in the home.

Participants included 486 parents of pre-schoolers. A cross-sectional design involving a quantitative online survey measured the number and age of children in the home, parents’ mediation styles and advertising attitudes, parents’ levels of education and pre-schoolers’ television exposure.

Co-viewing was the most frequent viewing experience followed by instructive and restrictive mediation. A univariate analysis revealed that parental education and negative attitudes towards advertising were associated with less viewing time for pre-schoolers, although the presence of other siblings mediated this relationship. Logistic regression revealed mediation styles were associated with parental education, attitudes towards advertising, viewing time and the presence of other siblings. Pre-schoolers with an older sibling were less likely to experience co-viewing and more likely to experience instructive mediation.

The findings revealed that parents of pre-schoolers are concerned about advertising to children and actively mediate their child’s exposure. Parental attitudes and education, and sibling composition influence pre-schoolers’ television consumption, and pre-schoolers with an older sibling might be most vulnerable to negative media effects. The sample was limited to primarily higher educated parents and might not generalize.

The study extends the field by focusing on pre-schoolers and provides novel insights into the influence of sibling composition on television consumption.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the factors influencing young children’s (aged three to five years) understanding of brand symbolism.

Multiple hierarchical regression was used to analyse the relationships between age, gender and environmental factors, including family and the media, on the development of brand symbolism in pre-school children based on 56 children and parent dyad interviews.

Results confirmed the primary influence of age, television exposure and parental communication style on three to five-year-old children’s understanding of brand symbolism. The study demonstrates that the tendency to infer symbolic user attributes and non-product-related associations with brands starts as early as two years, and increases with age throughout the pre-school years. Children exposed to more television and less critical parental consumer socialisation strategies are more likely to prefer branded products, believe that brands are better quality and that they make people happy and popular.

Identifying the factors that influence the development of symbolic brand associations in pre-school children provides an important contribution to public policy discussions on the impact of marketing to young children.

The paper extends existing research by considering, for the first time, the role of environmental factors in pre-schooler’s understanding of brand symbolism. The results provide a more informed basis for discussion about the impact of marketing messages on very young children and the environmental factors that may lead to a more critical engagement with brands.

Children are familiar with retail outlets (especially supermarkets) and the reality of shopping from an increasingly early age. In turn, retailers are actively engaging this young market, targeting them through various promotional strategies. One popular strategy adopted by grocery retailers is giveaway collectible set items. The purpose of this paper is to question the ethicality of such campaigns, within the framework of vulnerable consumers by examining children’s opinions of the campaigns and the supermarkets who run them, and the drivers of children’s involvement in the campaigns.

Qualitative focus groups were employed with 67 children aged five to ten years. Focus groups were made up of children in similar age groups to cluster responses by age and allow for comparisons. Thematic analysis was undertaken and responses were coded into themes.

Children were initially driven to collect through promotional advertising or because a third party offered them a collectible. The drivers for subsequent collecting differed between age groups, with younger children more focussed on themes around play and older children (seven and above) collecting through habit, because it was a craze amongst their peers and therefore the collections became items of social currency. Children’s perceptions of the supermarkets motivations also differed by age. Younger children thought supermarkets gave the collectibles away as “gifts” for altruistic reasons. The older children articulated a clear understanding of the economic motives of the organisation including: to attract children to their stores, to encourage pester power and to increase revenue by encouraging customers to buy more. The older children questioned the ethics of the collectible campaigns, referring to them as scams.

The findings extend the important discussion on the nature of children’s vulnerability to advertising by showing that the children’s vulnerability stretches beyond their ability to understand advertising intent. Despite older children in the present study being cognisant of retailers’ intentions they were still vulnerable to the scheme; the embeddedness of the scheme in the social lives of the children meant they lacked agency to opt out of it. Further, the finding that the scheme transcended boundaries in the children’s lives, for instance, being associated with social currency at school, highlights the potential negative impact such schemes can have on the well-being of children.

Until now, research has investigated the motivations that children have to collect, but previous studies have focussed on collections which have been determined by the children. This paper presents the opinions and perceptions of the children who are directly targeted by commercial organisations to collect and raises concerns around the ethicality of such schemes.

This study aims to explore the barriers that prevent students from moderating their drinking by comparing attitudes towards moderation in a wet (New Zealand) and dry (Vietnam) drinking culture and examines whether these barriers can be understood by applying an ecological framework.

A qualitative survey involving a written vignette was conducted with a sample of 226 and 277 undergraduates from New Zealand and Vietnam, respectively. Data were analysed using qualitative content analysis.

The analysis reveals that students perceive several barriers to moderate drinking at the intrapersonal level (e.g. positive attitude towards drinking), interpersonal level (e.g. peer pressure) and environmental level (e.g. socialising activities), suggesting that an ecological framework is useful for understanding drinking cultures. The response variations between the two countries provide novel insights into cultural differences in students’ perceptions, with external factors being more important and influential in the wet culture and internal influences being of more concern in the dry culture.

The findings highlight that students in the wet drinking culture do not take personal responsibility for their drinking and suggest that social marketing should move beyond individualistic approaches and towards the disruption of drinking cultures/practices, in pursuit of a healthier drinking culture.

This study provides novel insights into the barriers and facilitators of moderating drinking. Further, the findings demonstrate the value of a holistic ecological framework for understanding student drinking cultures. The comparison between two diverse cultures revealed how insights from one culture can help to understand deep-seated practices and meanings in another.

This paper aims to investigate the authenticity concept and its antecedents and consequences within the context of museums.

A higher-order scale of authenticity is developed and then tested for reliability and validity using a sample of museum visitors. To investigate authenticity in a model with two antecedents and two outcomes, an additional data set was collected. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modelling.

The results show that perceived authenticity of the museum, the visitor and the materials in the museum are dimensions of perceived authenticity, resonating with Bal’s (1996) research in this area. Findings also confirm that consumer scepticism and expectations are antecedents to perceived authenticity of the visitor experience in museums, and that perceived authenticity in turn affects visitor satisfaction and perceived corporate hypocrisy.

This research provides a framework for museums to manage visitors’ perceptions of authenticity, and to plan and design exhibits accordingly.

Our research, set in the museum context, articulates the basis of perceived authenticity, its antecedents and outcomes. This study sets the foundation for research to further explore how perceived authenticity interacts with other constructs relevant to consumption.

The paper aims to examine the effect of varying intensities of personal nostalgia on cognition, attitudes, and purchase intention.

Data were collected using convenience sampling via a self‐administered questionnaire in a large Australian university. Respondents were exposed to nostalgic cue laden advertising stimulus. A total of 514 responses were analysed. The questionnaire includes a thought collection exercise and scales to measure personal nostalgia, attitudes, and intention. Analysis of variance and multivariate analysis of variance were used to analyse the data.

A number of cognitive reactions are significantly affected when moving from a low to moderate or high level of personal nostalgia. However, no significant benefit in the cognitive responses tested is achieved by moving from moderate to high levels. In contrast, attitudes and intentions improve significantly with each increase of personal nostalgia.

The paper focuses only on personal nostalgia and one product category. Respondent characteristics are also limited. These issues should be examined with future research. Comparisons of responses under types of nostalgic reactions are also needed.

The paper provides practitioners with a vastly improved understanding of consumer responses when varying levels of personal nostalgia are experienced. Practitioners should note the significant change in advert‐execution related thoughts between intensity levels could be beneficial or harmful, depending on the desired response. The research indicates it is worthwhile to encourage high levels of personal nostalgia in comparison to settling for a low or moderate level as although cognitive responses do not significantly change, attitudes and intention to purchase significantly improve.

The vast majority of previous studies focus on nostalgia as a unified concept. Although personal nostalgia is distinct from other nostalgic reactions, no empirical research examines how consumer reactions are affected by varying levels of this specific nostalgic response.

Using Generation Z consumers from China as an example and focusing on the nostalgia-driven design of brand spokes-character, this study sought to update research on the causal relationship between nostalgia and brand attitude for younger consumers. Two types of nostalgic brand spokes-characters (i.e., eliciting personal nostalgia and historical nostalgia) were examined separately and compared to verify their contributions to more positive brand attitude, as well as related mechanisms, that is, whether consumer trust in the spokes-character mediated the relationship between nostalgic spokes-characters and brand attitude.

An experiment was first conducted to test the causal effects of brand spokes-characters designed to elicit two types of nostalgic feelings (i.e., personal nostalgia and historical nostalgia). Then, the authors investigated the influencing mechanism of nostalgic brand spokes-characters based on bootstrap mediation models.

The results revealed that for less familiar brand spokes-characters, either type of nostalgia-driven design would enhance consumers' brand attitude. Moreover, consumer trust in the spokes-character mediated the relationship between personal-nostalgic brand spokes-characters and brand attitude.

This study was the first to examine personal nostalgia and historical nostalgia separately regarding the effects of nostalgic spokes-characters and related mechanisms. By combining methods of experimental design and bootstrap mediation modeling, it provided a more robust evaluation of nostalgia-driven design, and supported using certain nostalgic styles for designing brand spokes-characters, which can help modern brands draw more interest from young consumers and promote more positive brand attitude.