Healthy, sweet, brightly colored, and full of vitamins: cognitive and affective persuasive cues of food placements and children's healthy eating behavior

• Published in: International journal of advertising Vol. 39; no. 7; pp. 1012 - 1030
• Main Authors: Naderer, Brigitte, Binder, Alice, Matthes, Jörg, Mayrhofer, Mira
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 02.10.2020
• Subjects: body mass index; children; developmental stages; healthy eating; Persuasive cues
• ISSN: 0265-0487; 1759-3948
• DOI: 10.1080/02650487.2020.1735140

Research on persuasive cues of food placements in entertainment media targeted at children is still scarce. We investigated whether healthy food placements (i.e., fruit) connected to different persuasive cues (i.e., cognitive, affective, and combined) can enhance children's (age 6-11 years old) healthy food choice. A pretest (N = 154) confirmed that the stimulus was understandable and appropriate for children. We then conducted our main experiment (N = 191), measuring children's awareness for positive cognitive and affective cues regarding fruit, fruit evaluation, and fruit choice in response to an audiovisual cartoon. A moderated mediation-analysis revealed that the use of affective cues (i.e., in the affective and the combined condition) increased children's awareness for the positive affective attributes of fruit, which then led to a more positive evaluation. Furthermore, the moderating role of children's body mass index and age were investigated. The effectiveness of cognitive cues regarding cue awareness depended on children's BMI and children's age. The effectiveness of cognitive cues on fruit choice was also moderated by children's age. Implications and avenues for promoting healthy products to children are discussed.