Do you take credit cards? The attitudinal and behavioral effects of advergames targeted at children

Abstract

Advergames are a promotional tool that confronts children with brands in an entertaining and playful setting. The present study adds to the existing knowledge by analyzing an advergame placement that is usually not targeted at children: credit cards. Based on an emotional conditioning process premised on the positive gaming experience, we argue that advergames lead to an increase in brand evaluation and brand choice. In addition to changes in brand outcomes, we investigate how playing a game promoting credit cards can impact children's spending behavior. For that purpose, children either played the traditional version of Monopoly paying with cash money or they played the banking version, promoting Visa credit cards. Results indicate that exposure to the branded game enhanced preference for Visa. In addition, children's spending behavior increased in an online shopping task. As another important contribution to the literature, we found the behavioral and attitudinal effects to be independent of children's age. In light of young consumers' high debt, our findings raise concerns about targeting children with credit card placements in advergames. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Placing snacks in children's movies: cognitive, evaluative, and conative effects of product placements with character product interaction

“…As a consequence, there will be an increase in brand evaluation and brand choice (Burke and Edell 1987). Based on this theorizing, as well as previously obtained results of studies on advergames (Naderer, Matthes, and Mestas 2016;Vanwesenbeeck, Walrave, and Ponnet 2016) and brand placements in movies (Matthes and Naderer 2015), we therefore argue that the presentation of a brand placement can positively impact brand memory, brand evaluation, and brand choice: H1: Children who are confronted with a brand placement show an increase in (a) brand recognition, (b) brand evaluation, and (c) brand choice compared to children who are not confronted with a brand placement.…”

Effects of mental accounting on purchase decision processes: A systematic review and research agenda

“…Multiple studies rank cash as the payment method that causes the highest pain of paying due to its increased transparency and low decoupling effect. In these studies, cash is followed by checks, credit cards, debit cards, stored value cards, and lastly direct debits (Naderer et al, 2016; Raghubir & Srivastava, 2008; Runnemark et al, 2015; Soman, 2003). Research on new payment methods such as mobile payments is still limited, however, early studies indicate that there is no significant difference between the pain of paying on credit card or by mobile payment (Boden et al, 2020; Falk et al, 2016).…”

Advertising and Young People’s Critical Reasoning Abilities: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

“…Participant ages ranged from 4 to 18 and were broadly categorized as 12 years and under (n 5 19), 38,[39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52] over 12 years (n 5 7), [53][54][55][56][57][58][59] or had participants in both age groups (n 5 13). [60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75] Most of the studies were conducted in Europe (n 5 16; Austria n 5 5, Netherlands n 5 4, Belgium n 5 3, UK n 5 3, Portugal n 5 1), followed by the United States (n 5 12), Australia (n 5 6), Chile (n 5 2), and Israel (n 5 1), India (n 5 1), South Korea (n 5 1). Studies were mostly conducted in classroom settings (n 5 21).…”