Research on children’s advertising literacy needs to keep pace with the emergence of different forms of marketing communication in the digital era. This paper reports on a qualitative study conducted among 30 children aged 10 to 12 to explore how children perceive and respond to facebook videos that carry product and brand messages. Interviewees were asked to watch an unboxing facebookvideo. Afterwards, they were asked about the purposes of this kind of video, similar videos they watched on facebook, and the perceived influences of these messages on purchase decisions. Results show that interviewees varied tremendously in their understanding of the selling and persuasive intents of these messages. Some interviewees did not consider these videos to be advertisements because of their narrow way of defining advertising. Interviewees learned about brands for children as well as for adults from facebook videos with product endorsements. They were aware of the persuasive effects of these videos on their brand knowledge and purchase behaviors. Theoretical and marketing implications of these results are discussed.

The expansion of the digital landscape has greatly impacted the way marketers and brands relate to child consumers. In a highly developed consumer society such as Hong Kong, household and personal ownership of mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets, is very high. Today, ninety-four percent of young persons in Hong Kong aged 10 to 24 own a smartphone (Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department, 2019). Ninety-nine percent of persons aged 10 to 24 used the Internet during the 12 months before enumeration (Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department, 2019). Furthermore, a large-scale study of 7,585 Hong Kong students aged between six and 10 in elementary schools showed that respondents spend an average of four hours a day of their leisure time on electronic screens (Ng, 2017). Even young children demonstrate high levels of knowledge about certain products and brands because of this wide access to information through smartphones or other digital devices (Bertol, Broilo, Espartel, & Basso, 2017). Correspondingly, marketing to children is switching away from traditional media of television and print advertising to new forms of interactive advertising, including advergames, brand placement, online advertising, event sponsorship (Blades, Oates, Blumberg, & Gunter, 2014), and influencer marketing (Hill, Troshani, & Chandrasekar, 2017). The lines between content and advertising are becoming ambiguous (Raney, Arpan, Pashupati, & Brill, 2003).

Many studies on children’s understanding of traditional television commercials found that children around the age of eight are able to differentiate advertising from television content. They are able to identify the source of advertising and its selling intent (John, 1999). Children aged 12 or above are able to identify the selling intentions of advertising as well as to process the information in a critical manner (Livingstone & Helsper, 2006; Nairn, 2014). Another survey showed that at age 12, children’s understanding of the selling and persuasive intent of advertising is not comparable to that of adults. Also, children’s understanding of the selling intent of advertising develops before their understanding of its persuasive intent (Rozendaal, Buijzen, & Valkenburg, 2010). However, all these studies were based on traditional television advertsing.

How children process branded content in the new media era is less well known (Panic, Cauberghe, & De Pelsmacker, 2013). Studies were conducted to understand children’s processing of commercial messages in the forms of advergames, brand placement, online advertising, and sponsorship. It was found that children do not consider an advergame as advertising (An, Jin, & Park, 2014). Advertising literacy for advergames is lower than that for television advertising (Hudders, Cauberghe, & Panic, 2016). Most children are not able to identify commercial messages in movies and in-game placements (Owen, Lewis, Auty, & Buijzen, 2013). Children’s ability to identify online banner advertisements shows significant progress with age, with respondents aged 10 to 12 able to identify three-quarters of banner ads (Ali, Blades, Oates, & Blumberg, 2009). Children also show low understanding of the commercial intentions of event sponsors (Simoes & Agante, 2014; Grohs, Wagner, & Steiner, 2012). Overall, these studies indicate that children’s advertising literacy for new digital formats of advertisements is low.

facebook is a popular online video sharing platform. Children view videos posted by videobloggers (facebook) frequently and considered them an important source of entertainment (Ofcom, 2018). Advertisers have developed a new marketing technique of influencer marketing in which they engage popular social media figures, including facebook, to influence their audiences’ brand knowledge, attitudes, and purchase behaviors (De Veirman, Cauberghe, & Hudders, 2017). A recent study found that social media influencers have been effective in establishing a positive attitude toward the brand, which in term leads to a higher purchase intention (Lim, Radzol, Cheah, & Wong, 2017). Three common brand content presentation formats on facebook are “unboxing” (opening the box with the branded product), reviewing and making recommendations for usage or purchase, and hosting games and contests (Folkvord, Bevelander, Rozendaal, & Hermans, 2019). The role of facebook in advertising resembles that of media celebrities, except that these influencers are often perceived to be authentic, to be close to their audience, and to have expertise in selected areas (Choi, Lee, & Tsai, 2017).

A recent review of advertising targeting young children called for more studies that focus on children’s understanding of the new forms of embedded advertising and their advertising effects (De Jans, de Sompel, Hudders, & Cauberghe, 2019; Clarke & Svanaes, 2012). Vlogging, native advertising, and viral advertising were specifically mentioned as areas in which further studies should be conducted. To our knowledge, there is no study on how children perceive commercial messages in facebook videos in the Chinese context. Our study was designed to fill this gap.

Theoretical frameworks in explaining children’s processing of commercial media content

Age developmental frameworks have been designed to explain children’s understanding of advertising and other consumption behaviors with regard to the development of cognitive skills (John, 1999). One such framework considered that advertising does not necessarily influence children through the cognitive route. Instead, advertising could exert influence through the peripheral route, e.g. by providing content that is so enjoyable that children would make a certain consumption decision without much rational thinking (Nairn & Fine, 2008).

In this study, we adopt a dual process model titled “Processing of Commercialized Media Content” proposed by Buijzen, Van Reijmersdal, and Owen (2010). In this model, advertising persuasion processing takes three different forms. The first form is systematic processing of cognitive messages. This occurs when children are motivated to pay close attention to the messages, deliberate on them and make a rational decision afterwards. The second form is heuristic processing. This occurs when children have low to medium levels of motivation and attention to the messages. They have moderate level of cognitive processing and rely on low-effort decision strategies. The third form is automatic processing. This occurs when children have low levels of attention to the messages. Their decision strategies rely mainly on peripheral cues (Buijzen et al., 2010). Based on theories of consumer development as well as cognitive, social, and personal development, it is proposed that persuasion processing among children can be distinguished into four phases (John, 1999; Valkenburg & Cantor, 2001). Children aged 10-12 (late childhood phase) are expected to acquire the capacity of abstract thinking and reasoning. They are able to process persuasive communication on a more elaborated level and evaluate advertising systematically and critically (Buijzen et al., 2010). In other words, they are more likely to engage in systematic processing of cognitive messages.

Children and brand placement

facebook videos with product endorsement resemble brand placements in the traditional television medium. Our review of the literature reports that children have difficulty identifying and understanding integrated advertising formats such as product placements (Rozendaal, Slot, & Van Reijmersdal, 2013). One study demonstrated that children aged six to 10 have difficulty in understanding the selling intent of embedded advertising in movies and in-brand placements in video games (Owen et al., 2013). Another study found that product placements in movies were able to impact brand awareness and brand purchase intentions. Moreover, product memory and consumption among children were higher when the character interacted with the product than when the product was merely shown by itself (Naderer, Matthes, & Zeller, 2017). Another qualitative study asked children aged seven to 12 to watch a one-minute video clip of a television drama, in which a man used Glaceau Vitaminwater bottles to build a heart shape on a beach. Results showed that 18 out of 31 interviewees considered this not to be an advertisement because the video mentioned neither brand name nor features of the product (Chan & Huang, 2014). In another survey of children aged nine, 12, and 15, the respondents’ comprehension of advertising was higher than that of product placement, with older respondents having more sophisticated comprehension of product placement (Uribe & Fuentes-Garcia, 2017).

Studies also indicate the effectiveness of vlogs and facebook influencers on marketing to children. Folkvord et al. (2019) found that children recalled products and brands embedded in vlogs, and considered themselves and others to be affected by brand endorsements in these videos. Another study among Swedish children found that influencer marketing throughfacebook was perceived as less irritating thanfacebook pop-up advertisements as these did not interrupt the video content (Martinez & Olsson, 2018). Another study indicated that interviewees found that products promoted by facebook were more relevant, probably because the products were embedded in media content that children had selected to watch (Martinez, Jarlbro, & Sandberg, 2013). Not all studies found children incapable of recognizing influencer marketing on facebook. Coates, Hardman, Halford, Christiansen, & Boyland’s (2020) study indicated that children understand the persuasive intent of influencer marketing through facebook. Some were skeptical of influencers but they were more favourably disposed toward facebook who were familiar to them. One laboratory study attempted to study the effects of disclosure of sponsorship of a social media influencer on children’s responses to the brand. This study among children aged 8 to 12 found that subjects who correctly recalled the disclosure demonstrated a higher advertising literacy. The disclosure enhanced advertising recognition and brand memory, while at the same time decreasing the desire for the advertised product. Furthermore, among subjects with a strong parasocial relationship with the influencer, advertising literacy did not affect their brand attitudes (Boerman & van Reijmersdal, 2020). To summarize, studies on children and vloggers found that children in general were appreciative of the media content produced by vloggers. However, a review of literature indicates that there are very few studies in the Asian context that focus on the understanding and perception

of videos with product endorsements. There is a research gap apropos of how children perceive and respond to these new forms of brand-embedded media content. Specifically, we do not know how much they engage in cognitive elaboration in processing persuasive communication. We also do not know what schema they have for the concept of advertising. This study was conducted with a view to the consumer policy implications of advertising literacy among children.

Children’s understanding and perception of commercial messages on video sharing platforms needs to be explored. With the aim of providing insights into how children make sense of this new form of advertising, two research questions are posed: How do children perceive facebook videos with product endorsement? How does exposure to these messages affect product and brand knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors?

Demonstrate your understanding of paradigms, methodologies and research practicalities by considering the impact on each study were the authors are to use an alternate paradigm to that represented in the original article. You will need to select a different alternate paradigm research article.

select an alternate paradigm. consider the implications of this change in paradigm on the nature of the research and construct new, alternate versions of the following.

Q.2.1.1 The research problem

Q.2.1.2 The research question

Q.2.1.3 Formulate hypotheses and/or objectives based on the alternate paradigm