ASSAM INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT

GRAND PROJECT SYNOPSIS

Project Title : Impact of Advertisement on Childrens Behaviour

Under the guidance of

Submitted by
Anurag Mahanta Roll no- 08/D/2012 2nd year, PGDBM

INTRODUCTION
The consumer in this era is in target of massive media attacks effectively planned, and enlighten with glamour as per the emotions, needs, wants and demands of the consumers. Marketers and companies are spending billions of dollars on consumer research and to know the important factors involved in consumer decision making. While talking about the marketing mix now a days marketers main focus is on designing persuasive messages/commercials to attract the target customers. Because the major chunk of the population and among all consumption of household a considerable portion is of children products. So marketers are focusing and trying to attract and influence the children by designing ads that are considerably attractive for children and persuasive enough for their emotional attachment with the product. While common notion is that the mother is the targeted customer for marketers of baby care industry. This notion is quiet logical but now media and marketers are succeeded enough to generate emotional attachment of children with the products so that they can insist on purchasing the specific product for their use. This concept has created a war of massive attacks on children of this age and forced to conscious people of society about the negative impacts of these massive advertising attacks on children memory and behaviour. Especially, the media, advertising and entertainment industries, collectively known as mass media, are powerful because they penetrate every segment of modern-day society and effectively influence how consumers view themselves, their neighbours, communities and the world. Although the mass media denotes outlets beyond newspapers, radio and television, and the scope of media influence now extends to digital spectrum, cable and satellite technology and the internet, it remains a fact that the TV is the single major and foremost communicator of our times. As the world has global village so now through our electronic media, access to all international channels is also easy. All these factors have contributed in the increasing aggressive attitude in youth as they see violence on electronic media in one form or another. The media, now a day, is promoting violent culture, which leave a deep impact on youth. It has caused the aggression and violence of youth instead of promotion of peace and harmony. According to, American Academy for Paediatrics Committee on Communications (AAPCC,1995). Media violence can lead to aggressive behaviour in youth. Over 1,000 studies confirm this link. It also says that Media violence is especially damaging to young children (under age 8) because they cannot easily tell the difference between real life and fantasy. Violent images on television and in movies may seem real to young children. Viewing these images can

upset them. Media violence affects children by increasing their fear of becoming victims. Making them less sensitive to violence and to victims of violence. Increasing their appetite for more violence in entertainment and in real life. Media violence often fails to show the consequences of violence. This is especially true of cartoons, toy commercials and music videos. As a result, children learn that there is few if any repercussion for committing violent acts.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE
In last 20 years impact of TV advertisements on children memory and behaviour is the major topic of debates in countries open for market competition (Boddewyn, 1984).Till 1988 advertising expense of TV program raised up to $500 million approximately (Leccese, 1989).While looking at the children responses to TV advertisement a research experiment revealed that childrens food choices specially in snacks are based on their exposure to TV commercials (Gorn and Goldberg, 1982).Atkin (1981) also confirmed these findings in his experimental study and found that the children with heavy exposure to TV advertisements are more likely to recall those brands while shopping in the market and with their parents. Those children demand advertised food products and toys while moving in market with their parents. Children ranging in between 6 to 11 years of age watch TV commercials 3 hours a day and it is estimated that over the period of a year average child see about 20,000 advertisements (Adler et al, 1980). Most of the research in consumer behaviour and specially on advertisement impact on children has focused two major points :( 1) impact of TV commercials in shaping behaviour and its positive or negative influence on children life and habits. (2) Role of TV commercials on the development and growth mental as well as physical of the childrens (Donohue, Meyer and Henke, 1978). Ward et al (1972) found age as a main factor in perception and learning from the advertisement and the behavioural change is more likely to occur in older children as compared to younger one. While focusing on the TV commercials and responses from the consumer in almost 500 commercials responses were recorded by the Leo Burnett Advertising Agency and they found seven different types of responses to TV advertisement. Those responses include entertainment, confusion, relevant news, brand reinforcement, empathy, familiarity, and alienation (Schlinger 1979). A sad or happy program or commercial can affect the mood, and cognition of the viewer. A happy program can produce effectiveness and

positive cognitive response to commercial as well as better and effective recall (Goldberg and Gorn, 1987). Galst and White (1976) proposed a cause and effect relationship and found strong correlations between TV advertisement exposure of children and their purchase preferences as well as amount of purchase while shopping with their parents. Results of a two method study on snacks and sugar foods revealed that effectively Designed message in TV advertisements can generate action and effectively persuasion in children for purchase of the product (Goldberg, Gorn and Gibson, 1978). It was predicted that childrens age is the factor that determines the effectiveness and persuasiveness of TV advertisement in children. Younger children are less likely to differentiate among TV programs and commercials so they pay more attention to TV ads as compared to older ones (Blatt,Spencer, and Ward 1972; Robertson and Rossiter 1974; Ward, Levinson, and Wackman 1972; Ward, Reale, and Levinson 1972; Ward, Wackman, and Wartella 1977) Voojis and van der Voort's (1993) stated that there is a marvellous body of literature representing that watching aggressive television is linked with augmented hostile attitudes and Behaviours. This relationship is particularly distinct in childhood, whose comparatively restricted knowledge and cognitive capital make them especially susceptible to television. The essential mania comes out here that children try to copy the advertisement in which they get concerned and we have been reading lot of occurrence in the media regarding copying issue. Those children tried to copy the ads or film senses we will be going to test this in our hypothesis. Television has the prospective to cause both positive and negative special effects and numerous studies have appeared at the bang of television on society, principally on children and adolescents. An individual childs developmental level is a significant factor in determining whether the medium will have positive or negative effects. Not all television programs are bad, but data showing the negative effects of contact to aggression, unsuitable sexuality and disgusting language are convincing. We will be hypothesizing that ads impact negatively to the childrens memory as well as their behaviour ,and we will also be testing in another hypothesis that ads enhances the knowledge of children about the environment. The quantity of aggression on television is on the rise. The normal child sees 12,000 aggressive act on television annually, as well as numerous interpretation of assassination and rape. Further more than 1000 studies authenticate that experience to serious doses of television violent behaviour increases violent behaviour, for the most part in boys. Other studies link television or newspaper exposure of suicides to an increased suicide threat. (Position Statement, Canadian Paediatric Society, 2003). A Federal Trade

Commission (FTC) report discovered what many supposed: media corporations were normally neglecting their own ranking limits and aggressively advertising cruel amusement to children and teens (Media Awareness Network, 2005). Over the last 30 years there has been extensive research on the relationship between televisions violence and violent behaviour among youth. Longitudinal, cross-sectional, and experimental studies have all confirmed this correlation (Beresin.V Eugene, 2005). Prior to the birth of TV, this has discovered new entertainment opportunities for the families. People were not much emotionally linked with the means of amusement they had like radio, live theatre. By submerging the people in too much entertainment, the media has created a new culture for the youth that has kept them so immersed that many of them have become unusual.

LITERATURE SURVEY (CITATIONS)

CITATION 2
Source: When Your Children Hurt Published by Thomas Nelson

CITATION 3
Source: TV and Our Children's Minds By :Susan R. Johnson

CITATION 4
Source: http://www.scribd.com Scribd is the world's largest digital library, where readers can discover books and written works of all kinds on the Web or any mobile device and publishers and authors can find a voracious audience for their work.

Objectives of the study

ii) To know the impact of advertisement on children behaviour. iii) To study the factors affecting the children behaviour.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The type of Research used in this project is an exploratory study including mostly the primary data, observation, and methods of interviews conducted to the users through questionnaire. Data is collected from secondary sources like journal articles, research papers.

TENTATIVE CHAPTERIZATION
CHAPTER 1: Introduction CHAPTER 2: About the project - Subject, Objectives, Methodology, Research Plan, Scope and Limitations. CHAPTER 3: Data analysis CHAPTER 4: Findings CHAPTER 5: Recommendations and Conclusion CHAPTER 6: Annexure