Abstract:
The aim of the study was to investigate the impact of Television advertising on food consumption
among children in Chinhoyi District of Zimbabwe. The Child Institute (1999) as cited in Dibie et
al, (2019) define the concept of child as, 1) Infants or babies (0-2 years); 2) Toddlers or Pre schoolers (2-5 years); 3) School Age Children (6-12 years), and 4) Adolescents Teenagers (13-17
years). Therefore the following objective was created in order to meet the needs of the study; 1)
To explore the impact of television advertising on food consumption among children. The survey
research design was utilised by the study. To that end, a structured questionnaire was used to
collect data from 250 respondents (parents). The simple regression model was used to measure the
strength of the given hypothesis. The results of the study showed that; 1) Television advertising
has a significant impact on food consumption among children, and 2) Television advertising copy
has a significant impact on food consumption among children, and 3) Television advertising
setting has a significant impact on food consumption among children. Therefore this study
recommends that parents should teach their children on how they should react to television
advertising that relate to food consumption as this arrangement helps to reduce the negative
effects of television advertisement on children. The literature on television advertising shows that
children who watch television frequently learn strange behaviours, such as drinking, cheating,
gambling, stealing and class bunking, (Klein et al, 1993; Comstock and Strzyzewskis, 1990).
