Abstract
Objectives
Restrictions on child-appealing food and beverage marketing have been prioritized globally. However, the concept of “child-appealing marketing” has not been consistently defined, leading to variability in policies and research. The objective of this review was therefore to generate an inventory of the marketing techniques that have been used in research to identify child-appealing marketing.
Methods
Based on WHO guidelines, this review identified primary research that analyzed child-appealing marketing techniques, using the OVID Medline database and hand searches in Google Scholar and PubMed. All marketing techniques were extracted, counted, and synthesized into an inventory, organized thematically and by popularity.
Results
From 133 publications, 1421 marketing techniques were extracted (mean 10.7/publication; range: 1–66). The final inventory included 117 techniques; the “use of characters, children, and actors” was the most popular theme.
Conclusions
The inventory and categorization generated by this research can be used for informing future research and for alerting policy-makers globally to the breadth of child-appealing food and beverage marketing techniques, helping move toward a consistent and comprehensive definition of child-appealing marketing in regulations aimed at restricting this type of marketing.
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Funding
This research was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships Doctoral Award (C.M.); CIHR Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships Master’s Award (C.M.); Ontario Graduate Scholarship (C.M.); CIHR Project Grant (2016PJT-378415) (M.R.L.); Lawson Centre for Child Nutrition Policy and Nutrition Collaborative Grant (M.R.L., M.P.K.).
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CM completed a graduate student internship funded by the Government of Canada Mitacs Accelerate program at Nestle Canada, unrelated to this research. MPK reports funding from the Childhood Obesity Foundation, unrelated to this research. MRL reports grants from the Program for Food Safety, Nutrition and Regulatory Affairs at the University of Toronto (with partial funding from Nestlé Canada), unrelated to this research. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results. All other authors have no competing interests to disclose.
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This article is part of the special issue "Market-driven forces and Public Health".
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Mulligan, C., Potvin Kent, M., Christoforou, A.K. et al. Inventory of marketing techniques used in child-appealing food and beverage research: a rapid review. Int J Public Health 65, 1045–1055 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-020-01444-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-020-01444-w