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Measuring Brand Awareness as a Component of Eating Habits in Indian Children: The Development of the IBAI Questionnaire

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Abstract

Objective

To develop an instrument that allows one to estimate the Indian children’s brand awareness of alimentary products.

Methods

The IBAI (International Brand Awareness Instrument), an age specific tool composed of 12 sheets with images reporting brand logos of alimentary products, has been adjusted for the Indian context in order to investigate on infants’ cognitive skills of recalling and recognizing. The IBAI was piloted in a sample of 100 children aged from 3 to 10 y and enrolled in New Delhi schools.

Results

Children aged 7–10 y showed an higher brand awareness as compared to those of 3–6 y.

Conclusions

The IBAI instrument may be a component for further analysis of the influence of food marketing on child’s diet, foods’ choices and preferences within the Indian social and cultural macro-context. Findings suggest that children over 6 y are particularly gullible by brands and TV promoted advertising. Prevention through information should, therefore be offered to school aged children and their parents, involving teachers, nutritionists and experts in developmental psychology also.

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Contributions

MGV, AG and DG: Designed the study; MGV, PB and ECP: Wrote the manuscript; MG and PB: Performed the statistical analysis. All authors contributed to results interpretation, read and approved the final manuscript. DG will act as guarantor for this paper.

Conflict of Interest

None.

Source of Funding

This work is partially supported by an unrestricted grant from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Directorate General for Country Promotion, and from Prochild ONLUS (Italy).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ZETA Research Ltd., Via Caccia, 8, 34129, Trieste, Italy

    Maria Gabriella Vecchio & Marco Ghidina

  2. Department of Otorhinolaryngology (ENT), Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi, India

    Achal Gulati

  3. Department of Clinical and Biological Sciences, University of Torino, Torino, Italy

    Paola Berchialla

  4. College of Nursing, Lakeside Institute of Child Health, Lakeside Hospital, Bangalore, India

    Elizabeth Cherian Paramesh

  5. Unit of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Public Health, Department of Cardiac, Thoracic and Vascular Sciences, University of Padova, Padova, Italy

    Dario Gregori

Authors
  1. Maria Gabriella Vecchio
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  2. Marco Ghidina
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  3. Achal Gulati
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  4. Paola Berchialla
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marco Ghidina.

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Vecchio, M.G., Ghidina, M., Gulati, A. et al. Measuring Brand Awareness as a Component of Eating Habits in Indian Children: The Development of the IBAI Questionnaire . Indian J Pediatr 81 (Suppl 1), 23–29 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12098-014-1447-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12098-014-1447-y

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