International Marketing To Children

The prevalence of childhood overweight and obesity is reaching unprecedented proportions in Australia and internationally. The most recent research on the prevalence of overweight and obesity among children, from kindergarten to school year 10 in New South Wales, Australia, indicates 8% of boys and 6% of girls are obese and 17% of both boys and girls are overweight (Booth et al., 2006).
Food marketing to children has been recognized in a joint report by the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization as a probable causal factor in childhood overweight and obesity (World Health Organization, 2003), influencing children's food preferences, at both the brand and category level, purchasing behavior, purchasing requests and food consumption habits (McNeal, 1987 Committee on Food Marketing and the Diets of Children and Youth, 2005; Hastings et al., 2006). Television is typically both the main electronic medium with which children engage (Linn, 2004) and the primary source of advertising used by the food industry (Hastings et al., 2003). Previous reviews on food marketing to children have focused primarily on television, as there is a lack of published studies on other marketing avenues. In a systematic review prepared for the UK Food Standards Agency (Hastings et al., 2003), it was acknowledged that the majority of the available research was based on television as an advertising medium, with only 5 out of 50 reviewed studies focusing solely on other marketing techniques. The collective effect of other food marketing techniques, together with television advertising, is likely to augment television advertising's effect on children's food choices and dietary intake (Hastings et al., 2003).
Print media, including magazines, is one such marketing technique that has received little attention in the research