Television advertising’s influence on parents’ gift-giving perceptions
ISSN: 0736-3761
Article publication date: 15 November 2018
Issue publication date: 4 December 2018
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine factors, beyond child requests, that influence parents’ perceptions of the most important gifts to give their children by assessing the influence of television advertising on children’s programming.
Design/methodology/approach
Using agenda-setting as a theoretical and methodological template, a content analysis of 7,860 commercials in children’s programming was compared using a questionnaire to 143 parents of 240 children to test the transfer of salience between advertising and parents’ perceptions. The study also examined the role of child purchase requests in this relationship.
Findings
The product categories that most prevalently advertised on children’s television had a significant relationship with the product categories that parents perceived to be the most important to give their children as gifts. Furthermore, the results indicate that this relationship was not contingent upon parental advertising mediation or child product requests.
Research limitations/implications
The results are limited to a single broadcast market during the Christmas season. Strategically, the research suggests that advertising through children’s television programming may be an effective way to directly inform parents’ gift-giving consideration sets, and this target and outlet should be strategically evaluated in subsequent campaign decisions about the marketing mix.
Originality/value
The findings add new insights to the gift-giving literature, indicating that advertising in children’s programming may be an alternative direct influence on parents’ perceptions. This research also extends research on advertising agenda setting into the new context of commercial advertising of consumer products.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The present article uses the term “Christmas season” to differentiate gift-giving that collectively occurs during numerous holidays at the end of the year from other holidays at other times of the year where gift-giving occurs (e.g. Easter and Valentine’s Day). It also uses this language to align with other research conducted on this particular season (Buijzen and Valkenburg, 2000; Clarke and McAuley, 2010). The researchers of the present study are sensitive to the fact that gift-giving that occurs during this season may be directly associated with other holidays that occur at the end of the year and coincide with varying personal, cultural, secular or religious traditions.
Citation
Holiday, S., Norman, M.S., Cummins, R.G., Hernandez, T.N., Holland, D. and Rasmussen, E.E. (2018), "Television advertising’s influence on parents’ gift-giving perceptions", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 35 No. 7, pp. 665-675. https://doi.org/10.1108/JCM-07-2017-2274
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited