Impact of television advertising on food consumption among children in Chinhoyi district of Zimbabwe

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).