Brand Display Magnitudes and Young Children’s Brand Recognition

Abstract

Young children (i.e., younger than 8) have low persuasion knowledge (children’s persuasion knowledge [CPK]) of advertisements, low skepticism about advertising false claims, and a high tendency to recognize advertised brands, so they are seen as a vulnerable group by most of the society. These vulnerability issues can be largely influenced by the display magnitude of brands (i.e., prominently or nonprominently) due to these children’s limited capacity for memory, yet no researchers have studied this influence. An experiment-based study (N = 233, 4- to 7-year olds) with structured interviews were undertaken to understand the impacts of brand display magnitude. Results show that CPK increases with young children’s recognition of the prominently displayed brand but decreases with their recognition of the nonprominently displayed brand. Skepticism toward the advertising message increases with the participant’s recognition of the prominently displayed brand and has no relationship with their recognition of the nonprominently displayed brand. Academic and managerial implications are discussed.