How Images of Other Consumers Influence Subsequent Taste Perceptions, Morgan Poor, Adam Duhachek and H. Shanker Krishnan (2013)

The aim of this study is to measure the effect of the image exposure on taste perceptions largely depends on the interaction between the type of food and whether the image shows the food alone or the food being consumed by a person. Specifically, the authors show that exposure to consummatory images of unhealthy foods increases the taste perceptions relative to food images. For the understanding of this effect researcher argue that seeing an image of someone else indulging in an unhealthy food serves as social proof of the appropriateness and acceptability of indulgent consumption. For this researcher considered five studies and omit rival explanations pertaining to goal contagion, emotional contagion, and source attractiveness.

Nutritional Content of Food and Beverage Products in Television Advertisements Seen on Children's Programming, Lisa M. Powell, Rebecca M. Schermbeck and Frank J. Chaloupka (2013) It is very much important to expose the advertisements which are responsible for the high rates of childhood obesity, assessing the nutritional content of food and beverage. For TV ratings data the children of age group 2–5 and 6–11 years of age were used to examine the nutritional content of food and beverage products in advertisements seen by children on all programming and children's programming. Based on the federal Interagency Working Group (IWG), nutritional content was assessed and recommended nutrients to limit (NTL), including saturated fat, trans fat, sugar, and sodium.Many food and beverage products shown in TV advertisements seen by children do not meet the IWG nutrition recommendations and less than one half of such advertisements are self-regulated. It can be inferred that continuous monitoring is required for such self-regulated advertisement to control its adverse impacts. Products advertised on children's versus general-audience programming and by CFBAI- versus non-CFBAI-member companies are particularly of low nutritional quality, suggesting that self-regulation has not successfully protected children from exposure to advertising for unhealthy foods. 

Influence of food companies' brand mascots and entertainment companies' cartoon media characters on children's diet and health: a systematic review and research needs, V I Kraak and M Story (2015)

The important obesity prevention goals are reducing the extent and persuasive power of marketing unhealthy foods to children worldwide. The objective of this study is to understanding how children's diet is influenced by brand mascots and cartoon media characters.A systematic review of five electronic databases (2000–2014) were conducted to identify experimental studies which measured how food companies' mascots and entertainment companies' media characters influence up to 12 diet-related cognitive, behavioral and health outcomes for children under 12 years. In the inclusion criteria eleven studies met. Studies used 21 unique popular media characters, but no brand mascots.This study concluded that cartoon media character branding can positively raise children's fruit or vegetable intake compared with no character branding. However, it can be stated that familiar media character branding is a more powerful influence on children's food preferences, choices and intake, especially for nutrient-poor foods (e.g. cookies, candy or chocolate) and energy-dense compared with fruits or vegetables.

Influence of child-targeted fast food TV advertising exposure on fast food intake: a longitudinal study of preschool-age children, Jennifer A. Emond, Meghan R. Longacre and Keith M. Drake (2019)

In the present scenario among children, there is a direct link between advertising of fast food and its consumption, through various review of literature the impact of such advertising on children’s FF intake has not been assessed in a naturalistic and longitudinal study. It is also unknown that whether the parents’ fast food consumption mitigates advertising effects or not.

For this study one-year (2014-15) longitudinal study was conducted among 624 preschool-age children, 3–5 years old, and one parent was considered from New Hampshire. In every eight weeks, six online surveys were completed by parents and, at each, reported the number of times their children consumed fast food in the past week. Advertisement exposure of each child was determined by counting the brand-specific fast food advertisements aired within the programs they viewed on children’s TV networks during the study and Parents reported their own consumption frequency of fast food. The reported data was analyzed during 2017-18. This study suggested that fast food advertising targeted to children’s may mitigate the protective effect of infrequent parental fast food intake on children’s fast food intake.

Effects of Advertising on Food Consumption Preferences in Children, José Antonio Ponce-Blandon and Maria de las Mercedes Lomas-Campos (2020) The main object of this study was to know is there any exposure to commercial messages which advertise food products exerts have any effect on the short-term consumption preferences of the children between the age group 4 to 6 years. For this study double-blind and randomized experimental design is used. Sample size is 421 boys and girls from twelve schools in a city in Spain were considered. In the case of products with wide brand awareness the convincing effect of commercials has shown to be influential in a general, immediate, and significant way. This research study strengthen the importance of advertising and focuses that it is very much important to control the content of TV commercials.

The Mann-Whitney U test is used to compare differences between two independent groups when the dependent variable is either ordinal or continuous, but not normally distributed.

When we are interested in testing the difference in means of two independent populations then we use two sample t-test. To use the t-test however, it is necessary to make a set of assumptions. In particular, it is necessary that two independent samples be randomly drawn from normal populations having equal variances and the data be measured in at least of an interval scale. But in studies of consumer behavior, marketing research, experiments of psychology, etc. generally the data are collected in ordinal scale and the form of the population is not known. Since the parametric t-test could not be used in such a situation, an appropriate non-parametric technique is needed. In such a circumstance a very simple non-parametric test known as Mann-Whitney U test may be used.

This test may also be viewed as a substitute for the parametric t-test for the difference between two population means. When assumptions of the two-sample t-test are fulfilled then this test is slightly weaker than t-test.

This test work under the following assumptions: 

(i) The two samples are randomly and independently drawn from their respective populations.

(ii) The variable under study is continuous.

(iii) The measurement scale is at least ordinal.

(iv) The distributions of two populations differ only with respect to location parameters

Test Statistic for the Mann Whitney U Test

The test statistic for the Mann Whitney U Test is denoted U and is the smaller of U₁ and U₂, defined below.

U₁=n₁n₂+n₁(n₁+1)/2-R₁

U₂=n₁n₂+n₂(n₂+1)/2-R₂

n₁: number of units in sample 1

n₂: number of units in sample 2

R₁: Rank sum of sample 1

R₂: Rank sum of sample 2

Now, our test statistic (U) will be smaller than U₁ and U₂.

Now, we look at the critical values in the table with respect to n₁ and n₂ (take it U₀).

if U <= U₀ : we reject the null hypothesis.

Otherwise, we do not reject the null hypothesis.

Table 1: Rank Statistics

 Table 2:Mann-Whitney U Test

The variables that are considered in the above analysis pertain to the questions corresponding to frequency consumption and questions pertaining to branding and advertisements. V14 is the consumption frequency, v6 is effect of branding and v7 is effect of advertisements.