Food Marketing and Power: Teen-Identified Indicators of Targeted Food Marketing

Charlene Elliott, Emily Truman and Nikki Stephenson
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Charlene Elliott: Department of Communication, Media and Film, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB T2N 1N4, Canada
Emily Truman: Department of Communication, Media and Film, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB T2N 1N4, Canada
Nikki Stephenson: Department of Community Health Sciences, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB T2N 1N4, Canada

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 13, 1-13

Abstract: Food marketing is powerful and prevalent, influencing young people’s food attitudes, preferences, and dietary habits. Teenagers are aggressively targeted by unhealthy food marketing messages across a range of platforms, prompting recognition of the need to monitor such marketing. To monitor, criteria for what counts as teen-targeted food marketing content (i.e., persuasive techniques) must first be established. This exploratory study engaged teenagers to explore the “power” of food marketing by identifying what they consider to be teen-targeted marketing techniques within various food marketing examples. Fifty-four teenagers (ages 13–17) participated in a tagging exercise of 19 pre-selected food/beverage advertisements. Assessed in light of age and gender, the results showed clear consistency with what indicators the participants identified when it comes to selecting “teen-targeted” ads—with advertisements most frequently chosen as “teen-targeted” containing humor (particularly irony) and celebrities. When it comes to specific indicators used by teenagers, visual style dominated, standing as the marketing technique with the most “power” for teenagers. The findings shed much needed insight into the elements of power—and more precisely, the specific marketing techniques persuasive to teenagers—which are necessary to inform monitoring efforts and to create evidence-based policy.

Keywords: food; marketing; advertising; youth; teenager; adolescent; monitoring; policy; public health; power (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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