Long-Term Effects of Exposure to Advertisements in Early Childhood

This research explains long-term effects of advertising prior to development of persuasion knowledge on consumer judgment that persist into adulthood. Results from two experiments demonstrate that: (1) positive affect felt toward early childhood advertising objects, but not late childhood advertising objects, leads to judgments in favor of attributes of advertised brands; and (2) enhancing accessibility to cognitive corrections can facilitate bias correction, but only when affect felt toward childhood advertising objects is less positive. These results have important implications for long-term consequences of advertising to young children for health-related product categories, such as sugary snacks, fast foods, tobacco, and alcohol.

Citation:

Paul M Connell, Merrie Brucks, and Jesper H. Nielsen (2011) ,"Long-Term Effects of Exposure to Advertisements in Early Childhood", in E - European Advances in Consumer Research Volume 9, eds. Alan Bradshaw, Chris Hackley, and Pauline Maclaran, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 524.