The influence of advertising on children's buying behaviour: a case study in Slovakia

Abstract

Advertising is an essential tool in influencing the customer's buying behavior. However, customers tend to have various levels of understanding and decoding advertising messages. Even though children do not have purchasing power themselves, they still create a key customer segment that can influence the purchase decision of the whole family. The paper focuses on how media usage by children and their attitudes towards advertisements determines their buying behavior. The main purpose of the research is to present and describe how children's advertising literacy develops and its connection with the concept of the theory of mind. The relevance of the decision of this scientific problem is that according to several types of research, children are increasingly targeted through various advertising media. Even though their advertising literacy is not fully developed yet. However, nowadays, there is a growing importance of media in our lives and a need to socialize children as consumers because they represent a huge market for advertisers. An empirical study was carried out by designing a questionnaire filled by Slovak children between the ages of 11 and 15. The advertising impact and the degree of impact of the selected types of advertising media on children's consumer behavior were evaluated. The study involved the online method of computer-assisted web interviewing to investigate the influence of advertising media. The authors assessed the degree of the disruptive effect of the selected advertising media on children and the perception of a chosen medium within gender. The most and the least influential type of media were identified. The findings showed no significant difference within gender in the case of advertising media perception by children. The research empirically confirmed and theoretically proved commercial messages aimed at children through different kinds of traditional and electronic media. According to the results, children's buying behavior is mostly influenced by advertising on social media platforms. This type of media mostly integrates sponsored content which has a huge influence on decision making and forming future preferences. The research results can be helpful for further research of commercial messages of social media aimed at children and how those messages affect the whole family and children's future preferences.