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

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?

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”.

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.