How children can be encouraged to eat fruit as a snack instead of candy

“Daddy, I want these cookies of Dora”, says his daughter of almost four years old. “Well okay”, dad says. “Just put it in the chart please”. Once they got home, it seems that the child does not like the cookies at all. She takes a small bite and with a dirty face she puts the box away. Obviously, she didn’t like the cookies at all and never ate them. Nevertheless, more than two weeks later, dad went with his daughter to the supermarket again. Incomprehensibly but true, the child asked again for exactly the same cookies.

This sounds maybe a bit strange but this is a true story. While the child knows perfectly well she does not like the cookies, she decides that she wants them again. Why does this child make such a strange decision?

This particular situation is related to children’s consumer behavior.  During the course “Design of Business Communication” I was mainly interested in this specific behavior among very young children. For this course I have written a paper in which I investigated how to gain and maintain the attention of children through communication, encouraging them to choose fruit as a snack instead of candy.

Children are very sensitive for certain stimuli which will attract their attention. A couple of such stimuli are bright colors, unusual shapes, bold characters and unusual surroundings. In addition to these stimuli, children attach great importance to familiarity which means that a famous cartoon character gains much attention of children. Therefore, I gave the advice to design a commercial which meets those requirements. When the commercial includes interactivity, the young viewers get the impression to be part of the story which creates involvement. During this commercial children will be brought into contact with fruit. The commercial has an open end and has its follow up in a supermarket chain where children will be confronted with fruit again in a creative and fun way. To bring children into contact with fruit in a fun way and to make use of famous cartoon characters in the same context, this information will impact the children which results in the storage of this information in their memories. During the follow up in the supermarket, children are able to collect gadgets concerning fruit. At this stadium, the information will be retrieved from their memories again. In this way, fruit will be recognition for children and will be associated with fun which will make them choose fruit faster.

Do you want more information on this topic?

Here you can find an article that has been written by Simone de Droog, Ph. D. candidate at the University of Amsterdam, and colleagues: http://www.ccam-ascor.nl

Would you like to know more about the specific design which has been advised or do you want to give your comment? Just post a message on this page or contact me.