Impact of Television Advertising on Food Habit of Children: The Case of Lebanese Armenian Private Middle Schools 8th and 9th Graders
Authors:   , Nalbandian Tamar Kevork 
Published: June 2024

Children have always been a lucrative target for advertisers and marketers due to their spending power and their influence on their parent's purchasing decisions. Marketers reach children by all types of promotions from television to smart phones, internet, and newsprints. The observed growing interest of certain food categories marketers in targeting children and teen eventually started to create concerns about the effects of those aggressive advertising messages on children. Consequently, certain countries like the USA, Switzerland, Canada and Australia have discussed and even established laws that protect children from the excessive targeting through television advertisements by certain food categories marketers. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the impact of television advertisements on the food habits of 8th and 9th graders of six Lebanese Armenian middle schools selected at random from the study target population of Lebanese Armenian middle schools. A thirty items Survey Questionnaire was administered to the 352 8th and 9th graders. A Cronbach Alpha and Factor Analysis were used to establish the reliability and validity of the administered Questionnaire. Five research questions were investigated: (1) Do Television food advertisements targeting 8th and 9th graders have an impact on their food consumption habits? (2) Is there a relationship between socio-economic status (tuition level) and attitude toward 8th and 9th graders' food consumption habit? (3) Is there a relationship between socio-economic status (tuition level) and TV watching habit of the 8th and 9th graders? (4) Do gender differences influence food consumption habits of the 8th and 9th graders? (5) Do gender differences influence TV watching habit of the 8th and 9th graders? Results of this study showed that that the more the 8th and 9th graders view television, the more they are aware, know and like television food ads and the worse is their eating behavior habits. Furthermore, the more positive is their attitude toward those advertised food categories the worse is their eating behavior habits. Consequently, the more the 8th and 9th graders trust advertised food categories on television the worse is their eating behavior habits. The study also showed that the lower the socio economic status the higher is the consumption of advertised food and television viewing habits. Finally, results showed that gender differences and nature of food consumption habit of the 8th and 9th graders are not dependent and they are dependent with their television viewing habit. From the results of this study, we can conclude that certain food categories companies and marketers are relatively successful in targeting through television advertisements middle school age children (11-14 yrs). Thus, in order to minimize the negative impacts of television advertisements targeted to children, parents should be encouraged to monitor their children's television viewing habits, school officials need to introduce nutritional educational programs in their curriculum. Lebanese government and health organizational agencies should introduce laws that force advertisers to conduct themselves ethically to protect children from misleading television food commercial appeals.