Understanding Children's Knowledge and Beliefs about Advertising: A Global Issue that Spans Generations

As governments, particularly those in the European Union, continue to place tighter restrictions on advertising aimed at children, it seems appropriate to reexamine children's knowledge of and understanding of television advertising in terms of both its content and its intent. Much of the data that decision-makers rely on is based on children (now adults) born prior to 1990, many born in the 1960s and 70s, and as such may not be representative of today's children who are exposed to more television advertising than any previous generation. The present research uses a sample of children born in the 1990s in order to reexamine some of the earliest research that pertained to children's knowledge of advertising (Robertson and Rossiter 1974). Comparisons are made and the original work is extended based on the current sample of children.