Literature Review by Eileen van Dulm
University of Lethbridge
11/30/2011
1. Introduction
On average children between two and five years old spend more than 25 hours a week in front of a TV screen. Children between six and eleven years spend on average 23 hours per week. Children between two and five years old are exposed to more television commercials than older children and 50% of the commercials are being seen in playback mode by them1. The USA has one of the highest numbers of advertisements per hour on television. These factors have contributed to concern among parents, governments, consumer organization, etc. about the influence of advertisements on young children. Young children fail to evoke and utilize cognitive plans for storing and retrieving information, this is one of their big weaknesses. This weakness can lead to the hypothesis that young children are unaware of the selling purposes of television advertisements and therefore the fairness of television advertisements addressed to young children. In this sentence young children are between the age of two and eight years old. Advertising companies are using various techniques for television advertisements addressed towards young children, one of these techniques is the use of animated characters. This paper discusses some studies about the influence of animated characters in television advertisements. These studies discuss if this technique may lead to brand preferences, what emotions and feelings it evokes, how the companies use animation in advertisements and the responses of children towards these advertisements. Some of the trends in the use of animated characters in television advertising have changed during time. The use of animated characters is a technique which has been used for quite some time now, and the changes during this time are mainly technical oriented. Images are still an important and integrated part
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