Food in a plate or food in a plate with a sustainable toy: A thematic analysis of parents’ perception and children behavior

Abstract

BACKGROUND:

Using innovative and creative marketing promotional techniques for the children food items along with freebies with eco-friendly or sustainable toys which attract them to consume foods that are not particularly good for health is the area of research which is most concerning these days considering the United Nations Sustainable development goals of Good well-being and responsible productions and consumption.

OBJECTIVE:

This paper is intended to explore and analyze the effectiveness of the innovative marketing techniques like the use of sustainable toys, tattoos, and stickers employed as toys with food by leading FMCG companies in India for influencing children behavior.

METHODS:

This research presents the results of in-depth interviews conducted and participants’ were selected through quota sampling from working mothers, non-working mothers, and other non-working mothers with full-time maid support. Grounded theory and inductive approach were used in the study.

RESULTS:

Five themes were evident across all the groups of mothers’ with respect to toys with food. Results showed that the themes underlying the gift in food for kids are portrayal of snacking, exaggerating the claims, enriching the moods, ameliorate the popularity and denigration of core foods. So, the results suggested that toys even though sustainable in nature with food marketing negatively affect the child behavior and health of kids.

CONCLUSION:

The study suggested that toys with food strategy can positively be presented /deliver a message to kids and companies can use healthy food items with these eco-friendly premiums which would benefit both the parties. The paper presents the concepts and themes that present the understanding of the mothers’ perspective of toys with food offered by companies in Indian perspective.

Keywords

Thematic analysis induction approach sustainable toys with food

Dr. Amandeep Kaur has more than 12 years of experience in teaching and industry, currently working as Associate professor at Rukmini Devi Institute of Advanced Studies. She is also managing Department of Management Studies as Course Coordinator. She received her Ph.D from Amity University in 2020. Her research interest is Service Marketing and brand Management. Her specialization is Services marketing, Brand Management. She has quality publication in her account. E-mail: id-amandeep092@gmail.com.

Dr. Pooja is Professor in Rukmini Devi Institute of Advanced Studies, Affiliated to GGSIPU, Delhi. Has work experience of 16 years in Academics. Her areas of interest are Consumer Behavior, Brand Management and Business Law. Email id –pbpoojabahl@gmail.com. Address: F-1104, White Lily Apartment, Sec-8, Sonipat, Haryana, 131001. Contact No: 7027125070.

Dr. Garima Malik, is a research scholar of XLRI Jamshedpur, Department of Marketing. She has more than twelve years of academic experience. She is associated with Amity Business School, Noida. She has degrees in GNIIT, MCA, MBA and Ph.D. in the banking sector. Her keen area of research is banking, Marketing of Services, Rural market and customer relationship management. She has presented several papers at national and international conferences and attended training programs at institutions like IIM’s, IIT’s, and Brookes University of UK. She has sixty five publications in various leading national & international journals.

1 Introduction

Using a growing range of innovative and attractive marketing techniques by FMCG companies is becoming a new marketing practice to lure children. According to the study published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, Children’s average daily time spent on televisions increased from 53 minutes at age 12 months to more than 150 minutes at 3 years [1]. Food Advertisement Company’s aim is to reach mass number of kids and attract them towards small size toys which may come as a surprise while opening the packaging of a food item. Indian kids are keen to watch the food advertisements on various channels including (entertainment and cartoon categories). The advertising of food and beverage products particularly targeting to young audience use various appeals and promotional formats. Previous studies reported that these integrated promotional campaigns have strong influence on the children [2, 3]. Now days, a new concept have started emerging related to sustainable toys. According to the Toy Association. “Toys with real and substantiated environmental benefits are buzzing right now, but it’s a trend that will only continue to grow as today’s kids get older and begin making their own purchasing decisions.” The packaged food business’ interest in children’s eating behaviors and how to change them has been growing in recent years. Although there have been many research concerning the climate and health but research about offering green, eco-friendly toys as premium offering along with kids food items is very limited. Therefore, the research related to food marketing with children’s sustainable toys is essential to understand the Indian parents’ mindset towards buying snacking food for their kids’ consumption [4].

Despite the toys being eco-friendly as marketed by some companies, they try to take away parents’ attention from unhealthy nature of snack. Sustainable toys are best suited for eco-conscious lifestyle where the overall sustainability matters, including the food production, packaging, selection of gifts; eliminating environmental impact. Sustainable toys don’t have to be necessarily a product but can be an experience for the children such as ticket to library or a museum or can be a wooden toys or something without battery. However, unsustainable toys are traditionally made from plastic polluting beyond our planet’s ability to recover and very unsafe for kids. These toys are cheaper to produce and attract kids more thus, the children become vulnerable towards the persuasive nature of advertisement, the manipulated messages and the recognition of bias and they have the least cognitive defenses towards television advertisement [5]. The distribution of free toys/stickers/tattoos with kids’ meals is a well-known guise of appeal which fast food companies and kids confectionaries progressively use [6]. This is a smart strategy which is also known as Trojan Horse where the toys provided along with food are considered to be the premium offering that takes away the conscious of families towards the unhealthy snack being the main product [7]. Another concern relates to the sustainability of toys because the plastic toys can have harmful effects on children of all ages [8]. The relevant trends in the modern marketplace are bigoted as the kids are becoming the focus progressively. The first trend, obesity, has become rampant in many countries. India has a second highest number of children, around 14.4 million with excess weight followed by china (Indian express, 2017). Experts have pointed to a numerous factors that lead to the rise in childhood obesity that is unrelated to media [9]. Secondly, an increase in the acknowledgment of the children rights as young consumers. The parents are required to let their kids make decisions for their consumption and other opportunities, thereby, making them ready for their life ahead [10]. Thirdly, parents save their money on other toys by buying their children a food item with premium offering with carelessly deciding what the toy is made up of [11]. The interception of these three trends leads to parents’ bafflement. Simultaneously, the emotional well-being of the children is also the responsibility of the parents. To what extent are these expectations practicable in a scenario in which children encounter a plethora of advertisements per year for low in nutrition foods and marketers for food items are engrossed in increasing the sophistication of the marketing efforts and practices that are hard for comprehension by children as a selling effort is an important questions that needs to be addressed.

Therefore, particularly relevant to the study, there is a gap in research that can examine the parents’ especially Indian mothers’ perspective towards the use of these innovative and attractive marketing promotional campaign practices by food companies which may offer sustainable premium offerings. This study unfolds the above-mentioned issue by discovering the Indian mothers’ past experiences and their developed attitudes towards these marketing strategies and tactics.

Thus the important research questions lies ahead are:

How Indian mothers’ respond towards marketing tactics or advertisement of food items that comes with premium offering?

Whether mothers gives any importance to that premium offering being an eco-friendly toy over and above the unhealthy snack.

How children influences their parents for buying food snacking items and using eco-friendly toys as their go to statements for push.

Mothers’ from across all three groups spoke in detail and presented/explained their take aways from these toys with food strategies which targeted their kids.

2 Literature review

Toys given as premiums are a way to attract children and inherit special power and hold lots of interjections such as this practice should be eliminated [12]. Toys are asserted to encourage and befool young consumers for buying and consuming not healthy food begetting high costing issue- obesity plague prevalence. The fast-food restaurants claim that the toy offered by them provides the child zeal and excitement for the food, and when the same is consumed as a component of nutritionally balanced diet, the happy meal is relatively less perilous.

Another study conducted with 21 mothers of young Australian children reported that almost all mothers were influenced by their young ones to decide on the brand of the kids’ toys with food items [12]. The results also highlighted that children and their peer group members always considered toy marketing to be highly effective which infiltrate their school environment. Researchers also investigated and analyzed the behavior by preschool children towards such collections so as to determine their responses and reactions to the variety of marketing campaigns involving food and collectible toys [13]. Findings were that the maximum number of preschoolers showed a need for and displayed positive behavior towards the collection of toys. In the next step, these children were asked to pay a “price” for the collectible toys and these children were ready to pay for collectible toys than non-collectible toys. Further, the children’s cognitive development and their responses and reactions were studied in regards to advertising [14]. Two advertisements were demonstrated to children, one with the premium gift being promoted and the other one with a plain product. The findings suggested that the child after being exposed to an advertisement with a premium give away was not affected by the recall and considered buying the same.

Now days, schools in India have started sensitizing children towards environment protection and selfless motive in achieving pleasure. Thus, students have now somewhat become conscious in their selection of toys. Many companies taking advantage of this attitude transformation have started distributing eco-friendly toys along with their food items [15].

The food companies employ emotional design methodology which is user centered to promote the main products and aims to develop the affective relationship between the toy and child which shall encourage the buying of main product keeping aside its’ not so appreciated contents [16].

Many other studies conducted in the past presented results that the selling effort with premiums given away in the advertisements did not affect the behavior of the children. It may also be concluded that the marketers’ giveaways of premiums may impact a child’s preference, at the same time there are fewer chances that it may influence a request to purchase the same by child and even less probability for mother to accept the brand’s purchase [17].

In a study, researchers conducted a focus group study of mothers to reckon their perspectives on the impact the toys that are included as premiums in fast food meals had on their children. They described that the fast food companies utilized manipulative promotional activities by way of using toys and cartoon character stickers, etc. premiums which may be sustainable in nature to excite and entice children into purchasing their unhealthy food offerings; and that the use of a eco-friendly premiums giveaway’s denied the mother’s desire to feed her children healthy nutritious diet to consume [11].

It was also found that 81% of mothers believed toy add-ons had an influence, to a great extent, on their child’s food selections and preferences. The Advertising Effectiveness Award in 2000 was won by McDonald’s (Australia) in lieu of a campaign to patronize children to pressurize their parents for a toy add-on thereby engendering parents to switch from previous fast food restaurants to theirs [16]. A class action against McDonald’s is raised by a mother in the United States, averring that it uses toy add-ons to badger her children to go for nutritionally poor food (Centre for Science in the Public Interest, 2010). The parents showed reluctance for succumbing kids’ pester power due to the ubiquitous social desirability of responses [17].

3 Methods

A grounded theory and an inductive approach were used in this study as research objectives established by using existing theory (literature review) which was acquired from peer-reviewed journals and grey literature. In order to identify the gaps in existing literature and understand the practicality of the research, Indian mothers’ perspective was taken by the researchers to identify the themes relevant for the results. Quota sampling is used to identify the respondents. Three groups of non-proportionate mothers were selected for the research such as non –working mothers, working mothers with full-time maid support and non -working mothers with full-time maid support. 30 interviews were conducted with each group. For this study, middle-class mothers were selected for the interview and the age of their children aged between 5 to 12 years. Before conducting the interview with the mothers, researcher gave the presentation of the food items that offers kids toys with food. The non-working mothers and working mothers were selected from Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India where full-time working mothers were employed in IT companies and Universities/ colleges and non-working mothers with full-time maid support within the same geographical areas with the help of peer groups’ contacts. Measures were taken to prevent any of the mothers feeling stigmatized.

Set of interview questions framed with the help of social constructionism and a lot of brainstorming done on farming questions. A total of 10 questions were asked to ensure the proper coverage of the topics which focused on (kid’s attitude towards sustainable food premium, mother’s reaction to kid’s demands and impact on their behavior as well as health, Mothers’ suggestion for improving the toys with food strategies practices by MNCs in India). The conceptual framework of the thematic analysis for interviews conducted was mainly built upon the theoretical positions [18]. Six steps of the thematic approach were used to identify the themes and narrate the concept of toys with food through toys, stickers, and tattoos. Researchers in this study considered the reality of toys with food using mothers’ perspectives through an exploration of their experiences and the meanings they attach to them.

4 Data analysis

After conducting the interviews of 90 mothers of three different groups the researcher encouraged free-flow communication coupled with emotional expression of varying intensity. The transcribed data was then read and re-read repetitively several times and moreover, the recordings were heard several times to ensure the accuracy and authentication of the transcription patterns.

5 Results

The thematic analysis process that was applied to the transcripts elicited key concepts that were apparent and evident in the data. These themes are viewed as essential and vital in determining and comprehending the understandings of all the mothers’ from each group on the basis of their time spent with kids like working mothers, non-working mothers and non-working mothers with full-time maid support. These categories have been labeled as ‘Portrayal as Snacking, “Exaggerated Claims,” “Enriching the mood”, Ameliorate Popularity”, and “Denigration of core food”.

5.1 Portrayal as snacking

This theme is defined by all the mothers’ from each group. The attitudes of the mothers as interviewees towards eco-friendly toys with food intensity appeared different for all three categories. The working women preferred to give some safe and exciting surprise to their kids but at the same time, they also wanted a nutrition diet or food items with these surprises.

“I wish to give these safe and exciting surprises to my kids but as mother I am also looking for healthy and nutritious food items with these surprises. For example, “toys and stickers made of wooden or other safe material can be offered by these companies with fox –nut, trail mix and with dry fruits, other working mothers also felt that their kids have the strong bond with brands like kinder joy, jems, and other local brands which provide plastic toys but kids constantly demand these food items.”

The companies make use of attractive and luring advertisements to entice children towards buying their unhealthy foodstuffs with premium gifts. The children are targeted and expected to consume the low-nutrients and junk foodstuffs [19]. The companies use all the possible tactics so as to push their sales by way of attracting children via environmental safe promotional efforts. They make their company grow, make a profit and prosper at the cost of the health of the children.

Few mothers told that “food companies continued with these practices which attract kids for surprise gifts but at the same time these companies can also effectively offer healthy items with toys in food.”

Companies may adopt for healthy eating item so that the parents would also not refrain their children from purchasing the foodstuff [20]. This would lead to a competitive advantage and enhancing market share along with the consideration of society causes the company to grow in the long run [21].

When they were asked to tell them the weekly spend on these food items which offered toys with food then they were able to point out:

“I spend eight hundred rupees weekly on purchasing these food items only due to the pressurization to buy these food products, especially those advertised in the media when it announces that the toys are safe and climate accepted. After purchasing these items daily, kids basically feel happy to get toys /tattoos which satisfy their social image in front of teachers and the candies, chocolate go to waste. Some mothers felt that Kinder Joy cost INR Rs.45 rupees and offered only two small chocolate ball and toys. A child make spending for collected toys only and their refrigerator gets full of these chocolate balls.”

Interviewees perceived that these were unethical practices of the companies to get the attraction of their kids towards their freebies. As per the opinion of the mothers, these companies are very smart and clever to understand the behavior of their kids. They are getting an undue advantage of the kids’ age and increasing the negativity among kids. In the case of advertising, mothers felt that their children were being tantalized by clever promotional campaigns that effectively engage their children and took advantage of their vulnerability [32]. For example, when discussing toy premiums in the form of licensed figures one mother lamented the difficulty of trying to counter this form of persuasion.

“I wish they didn’t use it because it’s easy to fool kids and you can’t make them understand.” Other mothers also felt that the fast food companies had effectively used eco-friendly toy giveaways to create a bond with children that weakened parents’ influence over their food preferences.”

5.2 Exaggerated claims

The companies sell their unhealthy foodstuffs to children by luring them with attractive advertisements. They play with the children’s emotional and physical well-being. Parents are aware of the harmful effects of both plastic toys and foodstuffs and discourage their children from consuming them, but children drawn to advertisements and premium sustainable gifts make motivational statements and draw parents’ attention towards sustainable and safe toys [33].

“Kids forbid us to buy such food items due to media exposure (advertisement and promotional campaign on cartoon channels). Kids pressurize us to buy the same by way of crying and skipping meals. Hence, a mother has to succumb to his/her demands for such food items.”

Sometimes the premium gift being sober due to eco-friendly and viability perspective does not meet the children’s expectations and eventually makes them distressed and discontented. As a result, they try to find the fulfillment of their expectations in other exciting toys, stickers, etc that comes with even more harmful food items. Thus, the emotions of the children are also negatively affected. Toys that are small in size pose a danger to toddlers at home as they may swallow the toy and end up choking on their food pipe [25]. Hence, this is not only harmful but can be fatal to the children as well.

“Kids do not find the meal tastier than these food items and hence always want to consume the latter.”

The kids’ behavior is affected to a great extent by the attractive promotional strategies. Their indecisiveness and tender age are used for the company’s benefit to entice them to buy unhealthy foodstuffs with a premium. Such practices are considered to be unscrupulous and unethical. The companies make profits at the cost of the health of young children [15, 16].

5.3 Enriching the mood

The mothers who were interviewed commented that “due to long working hours for them at work has led to children spending most of the time in crèches, at school or at home watching TV for long hours at length. They are majorly influenced by the toys and accessories that are collected as a fad by their immediate peer group. For example, collectible cards of Pokémon characters that are influenced by the show aired on Cartoon Network.”

Other fellow children were also seen to be a major source of information and exposure relating to the availability of specific toy premiums and thus were strong drivers and inducers of requests: “He was desperate to go because the child across the road had a toy gifted along with a happy meal . . . so he too desperately wanted to go to McDonald’s. (Young Consumers Quarter 3 2006 toy premiums).

“At a retail store, kids insist on buying the products with a mere poster of their product with the toy that was discussed in class as good toy by their teachers or the campaign was done at the school by confectionary producing company”

Mothers felt that their children were enthralled by clever promotional ad campaigns and gimmicky advertisements that effectively engrossed their children and took advantage of their vulnerability and indecisiveness. The school environment is often attributed to the providence of exposure to toys as fellow students tend to bring their premiums into the playground and teachers recommend using eco-friendly toys by ignoring the health perspective and not giving explicit statement to only consider buying toys but not food items [20].

While bragging, children become unpaid promoters of the companies’ products with remarkable attention and effectiveness.

“Mother told us that her son persists on buying the same stuff that his fellow mates own and he does not. If she forbids him from buying such stuff, then the kid becomes distressed and sad.”

In many cases, displayed and advertised toys were run out by the time parents reached the store: “It was advertised for that week, and of course they had run out! So, unfortunately, we missed out... He was quite dashed and sad for a day.”

A similar issue was the availability of toys merely appropriate for either boys or girls, often causing agitation and disappointment in at least one child in the family while their siblings obtained and played with the desirable toys. The mothers were stressed and very concerned about attaining equanimity between their children and perceived toy premium gifts to be a potential source of partiality to deal with and manage: ‘You have to be scrupulously fair or all hell breaks loose and you are gone.’ The outcome can be an exhausted parent and an inconvincible child, making the experience nothing less than fun [21].

“The mothers perceive that these promotional marketing campaigns that include cartoon characters are unethical and brash in their portrayal. They also added that these entice the kids towards the premiums and those toys with food gifts act as an influencing factor that lures the kids towards the acquisition of the product.”

5.4 Ameliorate popularity

“The mother’s interview during the research also added that they often give in to the needs and wants of their children creating a fuss in the marketplace. They give in due to the reason that they try and avoid creating a negative social image of themselves in society.”

There was a consensus amongst the interviewees that toy premiums are primarily a marketing strategy to increase sales, with quality and educational implications perceived to be nearly unimportant to the companies involved. Reportedly, only a few mothers refused to succumb to requests for toy premiums. The others oozed out resignation and a hesitation to put up a fight: “[The toys have] got no advantage. I just look at it as a play for McDonald’s to get us into the store, which is obviously what they’re trying to do. And it successfully works!” Most interviewees reported that the toy premiums which are simple but safe held their children’s interests for a brief time period and more quickly ended up lying around underfoot as the kids no longer felt attracted towards the once most craved for stuff. This causes a disposal problem for the mothers as the toys are something between items of value and rubbish [26].

5.5 Denigration of core food

“The mothers’ interview provided the suggestion that this toy acts as a compensation for the juke goodies bought by the parents for their children. The mothers suggested that these food companies should promote them as a nibble post a proper nutritious meal. They should also promote educational competitions to promote knowledge exchange.”

6 Discussion

Direct advertising to children and teenagers was evident across many of the websites, often positioned as provision of “product information” or “nutritional information’. Overall, the interviewees considered toy premiums to be a highly effective form of marketing whether the toys are sustainable or not and direct advertising targeted to children, teenagers and to the decision making mothers [19]. The effectiveness of the study stems from the intensity with which the premiums especially when they are eco-friendly are advertised and the ability of the toys to stream down and infiltrate the school environment and thus serving as a form of mobile promotion which child took advantage of influencing their parents and parents sometimes also consider the toy being safe. The outcome is a continuing stream of interactions with their children on the subject of fast food and toy premiums, interactions that occur before, during, and after a restaurant visit.

Many of the mothers felt helpless and handicapped to counteract the relentless pestering and pleading that can result from children’s desire for toy premiums and their plea for the toys being eco-friendly. According to the data, children in metropolitan areas have an influential role to play in the choice of eating venue, which is consistent with recently published work advocating the importance of children having some weight and say in consumption decisions that affect them [10]. This influence, however, was not considered beneficial by most of the mothers interviewed as it resulted in worse diets than would otherwise have been consumed [5]. Also, the expectations created by advertising and peer influence are not realized at the point-of-purchase, which can result in distressed children [7]. The outcome of such mounting needs has to be considered by those advocating children’s consumer rights [14]. To conclude, the findings of this study have implications for those attempting to understand the complex effects of fast food marketing on children’s diets. As the intermediaries responsible for purchasing the food, parents are caught between wanting to please their children and making responsible feeding decisions.

6.1 Managerial implications

Research findings from this study have implications for policy makers from a public health perspective, marketers for designing their promotional strategies and top of that for parents to take their decisions for the betterment of their kids. Toy premiums should only be permitted to accompany healthier food choices. This evidence may be used by policymakers and practitioners to inform FMCG companies for their work in trying to reshape the food marketing environment to foster healthier food choices by children.

Marketing managers should be able to identify the new strategies for kids’ toys with food for mothers’ satisfaction hence strategize solutions. This research can help the industry in understanding ways to increase room sales by putting parent’s expectations into perspective. This research, therefore, has strong potential for better informing top management of branded kid’s food items in the country. Moreover the findings of this research gave the thought to all the popular and local FMCG companies to strategically deal with parents concern for their children. Preferably companies could work to make their children’s meals more nutritious and their toy premiums more educationally sound to please both parents and children.

6.2 Societal implications

Findings show the understandability of children towards obesity in terms of some of its causes and repercussions. It was specifically clarified that knowledge, often given in a school setting, is getting through to the children who participated in this study. However, it is apparently evident that this knowledge in many cases does not translate to behavior [27]. Further study and analysis of the results allows us to unleash the potential reasons behind the gap between knowledge and behavior. Role models by way of their actions, practices, and nature provide examples for both the children’s beliefs and consequently their behavior.

6.3 Limitations

The first limitation is related to the region, the focus of this study is India and the data was collected from National Capital Region. This may somewhat limit the generalizability of the findings. In future research, researchers could consider other regions basically semi-urban areas to understand their views on kid’s food marketing strategies used by companies. Only mothers were selected for the recent study. Fathers of the children might have revealed different results. For future research it will be important to understand the differences between mothers and fathers, when influenced by children, their different approach could highlight a different attitude towards their children’s choices. Therefore, this could be a limitation for not providing a full picture (parents) of clarifying the main aspects related to the kid’s food marketing strategies. The present study has been conducted through interview of 90 mothers’ from three different defined groups, and further thematic analysis is used for analyzing the responses, these techniques are known to be associated with their own limitations. Other research approaches like survey-based techniques can also be used in future research.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

The authors have no acknowledgments.

Author contributions

CONCEPTION: Amandeep Kaur

METHODOLOGY: Pooja Bahl

DATA COLLECTION: Amandeep Kaur, Pooja Bahl and Garima Malik

INTERPRETATION OR ANALYSIS OF DATA: Amandeep Kaur and Garima Malik

PREPARATION OF THE MANUSCRIPT: Amandeep Kaur, Pooja Bahl and Garima Malik

REVISION FOR IMPORTANT INTELLECTUAL CONTENT: Amandeep Kaur, Pooja Bahl and Garima Malik

SUPERVISION: Amandeep Kaur

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