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The Development of Children’s Scepticism About Advertising

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Advertising to Children

Abstract

In this chapter we will review the evidence about children’s beliefs about advertising and advertisers’ motives. There is much evidence that children, even young children, can be sceptical about advertising, but there is less evidence about the reasons for that scepticism. As noted in Chapter 2, children begin to understand the persuasive intent of advertising at about 7 or 8 years of age (Kunkel et al., 2004). That is, children after about age 8 are aware that the purpose of advertising is to persuade a consumer to buy a product.

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© 2014 Maria T. Chu, Mark Blades & Jane Herbert

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Chu, M.T., Blades, M., Herbert, J. (2014). The Development of Children’s Scepticism About Advertising. In: Blades, M., Oates, C., Blumberg, F., Gunter, B. (eds) Advertising to Children. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137313256_3

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