Ruppal Walia Sharma and Pinaki Dasgupta
This paper seeks to identify the focus areas for marketing strategies targeting children.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper seeks to identify the focus areas for marketing strategies targeting children.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper integrates and structures key insights from existing research on children's influence and roles in decision making and postulates a planning framework for marketing to children. Current marketing examples are cited to illustrate and support the framework.
Findings
The PPP planning framework developed here highlights what should be the direction and focus of marketing strategies, given the level of interest and influence of children in a particular brand/category.
Research limitations/implications
The framework postulated is conceptual and has not been tested empirically.
Practical implications
The paper seeks to help marketers tailor their strategies to create maximum impact in the children's segment.
Originality/value
The paper presents an integrated perspective incorporating both the interest and the influence levels of children and develops a practical planning tool that can be leveraged by marketers.
Details
Keywords
This paper aims to study whether age impacts the responses to different communication cues in terms of brand recall, attitude toward advertisement, attitude toward brand and…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to study whether age impacts the responses to different communication cues in terms of brand recall, attitude toward advertisement, attitude toward brand and purchase intention, and which age groups respond more favorably to a given cue.
Design/methodology/approach
An experimental research was conducted across a sample of 1,050 respondents in Delhi to test variance in consumer attitudes across “tweenagers”, teenagers, youth, young adults and adults, when exposed to different communication cues for dummy brands of biscuits and mobile handsets.
Findings
Significant variances were observed in consumer attitudes across the five age groups. However, the variation pattern differs across the two product categories. The caricature cue worked well for biscuits across most age groups. For mobile handsets, the picture cue was very effective for the two younger age groups but not as much for others. The product information cue was highly effective for adults.
Practical implications
The study provides insights on making communication for brands targeted at more than one age group. If adults are a part of the marketers’ age group, some amount of product information is highly desirable, just as bright pictures/caricatures are necessary for tweenagers. For teenagers, who exhibit high variance vis-a-vis other age groups, communication needs to be customized. For brands where both children and adults are part of the target audience, common appeals can easily be identified, as they had similar responses in all but one case.
Originality/value
The framework proposed in this research fills a gap in the existing literature by establishing that age impacts attitude formation in response to communication cues and gives insights for marketing communication.