In Eric Schlosser article, “ Kid Kustomers” he focuses on how American companies have began to target kids in the marketing business. This began in the 80’s and the companies attempt to influence children at a young age to decide on what companies they will buy from. Doing so the companies hope to create lifelong customers and increasing their profit. This can be seen in areas such as a children’s club where ads are seen regularly to be viewed by the kids. Nevertheless these companies benefit from targeting child audiences because eventually it will increase sales. Through TV commercials or on the computer these industries are aiming to create children customers. Fast food establishments such as Mcdonald's and Burger King are prime examples
A Child Called “It” by Dave Pelzer is a biography about Dave Pelzer and how he managed to survive one of the worst child abuse cases ever reported in California. Dave’s life was full of starvation, torture, and cruelty from the age of four but it all came to an end at the age of twelve when his school officials reported
The founding fathers of fast food giants, including Ray Kroc and Walt Disney, were among the first to develop and focus on marketing to children. In a response about advertising Schlosser shows just how knowledgeable they were, “Hoping that nostalgic childhood memories of a brand will lead to a lifetime of purchases, companies now plan ‘cradle-to-grave’ advertising strategies. They have come to believe what Ray Kroc and Walt Disney realized long ago -- a person's ‘brand loyalty’ may begin as early as the age of two”(43). Schlosser explains how Ray Kroc and Walt Disney purposefully targeted children to build loyal customers. Their intent was to attract children so that they would drive their parents to take them to fast food restaurants.
In Eric Schlosser‘s essays, the author shows how the social media are targeting children by their ads and advertisements. He exposes the negative side of advertising especially when children are implicated. The author explores children’s cooperation with these companies whether consciously or unconsciously through their behavior and ways of convincing their parents to get them what they want. He mentions how these same parents by lack of spending enough time with kids pamper them and don’t refuse their desires. Schlosser gives more explanations by introducing several examples of these companies such as Disney, McDonald, clothes, oil, and phone companies, too without openly blaming neither of them.
In the autobiography “A Child Called It” the author, Dave Pelzer, tells us about the abuse he suffers as a child. Child abuse is often defined as an action or failing to act, when a parent or caregiver causes emotional or physical harm, death or injury to a child. Abuse can be physical, emotional, sexual or neglect. In his book, Dave describes for us the three abuses he suffered, physical, emotional and neglect.
Modern Americans are still motivated to spend on various products, whether they are useful and necessary or not, as the result of powerful mass advertising campaigns, widely broadcast through many forms of media. Children and young adults are usually the main targets for such campaigns. It is estimated that the average American child watches between 25,000 to 40,000 television commercials per year so advertising undeniably has a great power over the young minds, who in turn would influence their parents and guardians (Shah, 2010). More than 30 billion dollars are spent by families every year as the result of this strategy, which is progressively adapted by many companies (Shah, 2010). Additionally, thanks to these advertisements, people pay more attention to keeping up with the current trend, with what is considered the most up to date rather than the overall necessity of the product.
Dave Pelzer was the author and main character in A Child Called It. He was born in Daly City, CA on December 29, 1960. His parents are Stephen and Catherine Pelzer. He has 4 other brothers. He was rescued at age 12.
Advertising works at its best when provoking insecurity about something. These insecurities are easily found among pubescent teenagers, as teenagers are very uncertain about whom they are and where they fit in, this in turn makes them ideal targets for advertising. Branding is about finding a group to identify with; this is what makes it so appealing to teenagers trying to find themselves. The messages brands send out is that if you have the right brand you will
Victor Strasburger, the author of children, adolescents, and advertising, begins his journal article with a fact that states "young people view more than 40,000 advertisements per year on tv alone". (Strasburger 2006, page 57). This fact leads the reader into Strasburger's main idea of the harmful effects of advertisements on young children and adolescents. Strasburger writes the journal article fluently and flows from idea to idea with ease. Strasburger presents many good ideas such as a rising obesity crisis in America, or that drug, alcohol, tobacco and food companies spend the most amount of money on advertising, thus causing repercussions such as substance abuse or underage drinking.
They seldom reflect on their own selves because of anxiety and discomfort these induce(47). Wishnie observes that it is easier for them to account for their conduct by pointing to factors that seeming lie outside their control(48). Precisely the reason marketers fail to evaluate their own actions and its subsequent effect on the children. Aggression towards friend/family/others: Marketing aggression is a premeditated attempt to play on the ‘unreasonable’ , ‘irrational’, or ’instinctive’, or ‘compulsive’ elements of human psychology (49). Marketers harass the customers, stalk them, bore them to purchase emotionally abuse them, intimidate them through fear and shock appeal, all definite forms of instrumental aggression.
Working At McDonald’s Summary In " Working At McDonald's ", Etzioni claims that fast food chains are terrible and don't give significant working background or order to kids. Etzioni contends that restaurants such as KFC, and McDonalds no matter how successful are bad jobs for kids and teens. Etzioni gives brilliant defense to his contention and gives illustrations to bolster his point. He can't help the way that McDonalds trains its representatives and abandons them with no space for creativity.
In doing so, he evaluates the importance of studying children’s behavior to learn more about their tastes. Schlosser claims that many advertisers, “ conduct surveys of children in shopping malls ... analyze children’s artwork, send cultural anthropologists into homes, stores, fast food restaurants…” (Schlosser 44) By studying what children do and do not like, ads are specific to the age group and likely to draw more attention because they are clear in their
Science Direct, www.sciencedirect.com.libsrv.wku.edu/science/article/pii/S0747563216307579. Accessed 5 Mar. 2017. Hill, Jennifer Ann. “Chapter 5.” How Consumer Culture Controls Our Kids: Cashing in on Conformity, Praeger, an Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC, Santa Barbara, CA, 2016, pp.
In the article “Kid Kustomers” author Eric Schlosser writes about how in today’s society many companies are targeting children to buy their products. These companies target children to buy a wide range of products not just products intended for children, for example, even automobile and oil companies have specific ads that target the youth. These ads are not only meant for consumption in the present, they are also meant for future consumption of their products. Also, throughout this article, the author includes the seven ways kids nag to their parents to get them to buy whatever they want is also included. In our society, if children throw tantrums or don’t stop their continuous begging and nagging they will get what they want.
Over the past twenty years, the amount at which advertisers are advertising to children is astonishing. Advertising directed towards children has estimated at over 15 million annually that’s almost three times more than what it was 26 years ago! Toy companies, fast food places, and retail stores are very eager to target children-maybe even a little too eager. Advertisers are consciously targeting children. Most advertisers are targeting children because they're easier to get hooked on a product.
For example Lego, Hasbro, Disney, Mattel, Barbie, Nerf, MEGA Bloks, and Fisher Price. Todays’ children “Generation-Z” have unique characteristics in many ways as compare to past generations. The ad film-makers, advertisers, and marketers always try to formulate new ways to attract their targeted customers, because of its rule the best way you attract to the customer and most likely to change their purchase intention and influence their decisions. The marketers and advertisers here use advertisement which targets the children are always based on anthropomorphism; using of non-living things like cartoons, animations, songs, logos, jingles, and different characters that advertisers keep in mind their audiences to attract the children, i.e. MacDonald, Disney, Barbie are the best example of