This blog post examines how children exposed to advertising and kids’ marketing from a young age form their tastes and habits, and how this influence, filtered through parental choices, shapes their consumption tendencies and identity into adulthood.
Children conditioned to consume
Amidst the constant flood of products produced daily, is consumption truly a virtue in modern society? Why can’t we stop consuming? How do brands tempt us, and what hidden aspects of ourselves are revealed through consumption? To find answers to these questions, our reporting team met with world-renowned scholars and experts.
Dan Ariely, professor of economics at Duke University and author of “Predictably Irrational,” states:
“The commercial world we live in strongly tempts us to act immediately. It constantly demands, ‘Buy now! Spend now!’ We live constantly surrounded by such temptations. Every conceivable strategy is deployed.”
Paco Underhill, author of ”The Science of Shopping“ and ”When Women Open Their Wallets,” and CEO of shopping consultancy In-Vero Cell, also explains the sophistication of environments designed to stimulate consumption:
“I make customers focus on the product. I use music to stir their emotions and make them taste the product the moment they see it. I even make them imagine the feel of it when touched.”
We live in a society that constantly forces ‘consumption’ upon us without our awareness. Yet, this process begins much earlier than we commonly think. Children, exposed daily to an endless stream of character merchandise, children’s programs, and repetitive television ads, live their lives constantly holding something in their hands. This early shopping experience becomes a very special memory for them. This memory subconsciously shapes a preference for specific products, eventually developing into a taste for particular brands. Children are thus conditioned into future potential customers.
Brand consultant Martin Lindstrom’s explanation makes this reality even clearer.
“It has been revealed that by the time a baby is one and a half years old, they remember at least a hundred brands. Not only that, but children begin to be influenced by brands just a few months after birth and start describing their identity through brands. It’s truly sad.”
And we maintain these consumption habits well into adulthood. Yet these habits were never something I consciously chose to cultivate. They are the result of being ‘conditioned’ over a long period by marketers. As adults, we mindlessly pick up the same snacks we ate as children and feed them to our own kids. Childhood habits persist into adulthood and are passed down to the next generation. This entire process is the result of our unconscious exposure to countless advertisements from a very young age.
Clinical psychologist and money coach Olivia Melan describes this phenomenon as follows:
“Children watching ads enter a kind of hypnotic state. They suddenly develop a strong desire for items they never even considered necessary before seeing the ad.”
Dan Ariely, a professor of economics at Duke University, explains it in a similar vein.
“Children are influenced in various ways. One is the process of forming preferences that lead them to seek out specific products. Think about what we like and dislike. It’s fascinating to examine why we came to like certain things. For instance, we come to like beer. It’s quite strange. If you give beer to a child for the first time, they won’t like it, right? The same goes for whiskey or cigarettes. Things we initially dislike become preferred over time. This is precisely the process of habit formation.
It’s about instilling specific habits in children. For instance, more and more banks are encouraging children to start saving from a young age. This is because saving is important to start early and make it a habit. Getting them to start saving early increases the likelihood of a long-term relationship. Ultimately, the core is preference development. It’s about what to make them like and how to turn that into a habit.”
Kids Marketing Influencing Parental Consumption
Kids marketing also stimulates adult consumption desires in another form. A prime example is cars. While it’s commonly thought that selling cars requires capturing the father’s interest, a look inside actual car dealerships reveals elements designed to appeal to children placed throughout. Why is this? Martin Lindstrom explains:
“Car dealerships are filled with balloons. Do parents like balloons? Of course not.”
Unless someone has very particular tastes, it’s highly unlikely an adult would still like balloons. So why are there balloons in car dealerships? Parents naturally develop a favorable impression of a place that treats their child well. The people there seem likable, and trust is built. Ultimately, they end up buying a car from that dealership because ‘if they’re going to buy one anyway’.
Moreover, children don’t give up easily when they want something. They whine incessantly, beg, and sometimes even cry. Ultimately, parents can’t resist their child and end up buying what they want. Because of this power, kids’ marketing has rapidly expanded its reach. This is Martin Lindstrom’s explanation.
“Marketers focus on kids’ marketing because it directly influences parents’ purchasing behavior. This is called ‘persuasion power,’ or ‘pester power.’ Not only the products children want, but their opinions themselves actually influence adults’ purchasing behavior. It’s estimated that about 67 percent of parents are influenced by their children’s decisions when buying a car. Even the choice of car tires parents use is reportedly determined by children’s opinions about 55 percent of the time. Children wield tremendous influence over their parents’ spending. This trend is only growing stronger over time. Take China, for example, where the proportion of only children is high. Parents listen intently to the so-called ‘little emperors,’ granting them immense influence. In Korea too, as the culture of wanting to do everything for one’s child grows stronger, parents increasingly respect and follow their children’s opinions. As a result, the marketing industry is reflecting children’s reactions and preferences more actively.”
Dan Ariely, a professor of economics at Duke University, also emphasizes this point.
“Children naturally exert a significant influence on their parents. While parents try to make rational decisions by weighing costs and benefits, children whine, complain, and make persistent demands. They are far more likely to act on their desires and temptations. That’s why marketers target children—not just for the children themselves, but to influence the entire family unit they belong to.”
What’s even more noteworthy is that the target age group for advertising is generally getting younger. Advertising increasingly focuses on those under 30, and marketing aimed at children under 10 has also been steadily increasing.
Once people pass 30, their time exposed to television ads decreases as they become consumed by work and daily life. Children, however, naturally absorb ads within diverse media environments. As a result, the influence of advertising and media acts almost simultaneously on children worldwide.
Despite differences in where they live and their standard of living, the brands children recognize are surprisingly similar. Paco Underhill, CEO of In-Vero Cell, explains this phenomenon as follows:
“There’s an ironic point in our culture. Compare an eight-year-old child from a Rio de Janeiro slum with an eight-year-old from an affluent New York suburb, and their brand-related vocabulary is nearly identical. This signifies widespread exposure to media and print. Children know what a Rolex watch is, what an iPod or smartphone is.”
Children accustomed to advertising from an early age gradually internalize its logic and messages as they enter adolescence. They then undergo a process of constructing their identity through consumption. Paco Underhill describes this period as follows:
“In childhood, they don’t yet know who they are. Over time, self-awareness develops and self-consciousness forms. But around age fourteen, they start asking themselves questions like, ‘Can this lipstick make me someone different from who I am now?’ or ‘If I wear this lipstick, will that celebrity like me more?’”
Ultimately, our adult consumption habits and tendencies are the product of decades of kid-targeted marketing. We believe we make rational consumption decisions every moment, but in reality, we consume based on habits formed in childhood. Moreover, a significant number of parents make consumption decisions under the influence of their children. This astonishing fact, which we living in a capitalist society often fail to consciously recognize, remains one of the crucial secrets of today’s consumer society.
