Advertisement watching preferences of children aged 3-6; [3-6 yaş çocukların reklam ızleme tercihleri]

Problem Statement: When children are watching television, they become exposed to television advertisements, the general purpose of which is to make an impression about a commodity or service and increase its sales. Television advertisements attract the attention of children due to their voiced and moving images, setup and characters and being short and recurrent. Children are influenced by both the ads of the products targeting them in particular and of the products that concern family consumption. Therefore, television ads can influence children’s purchasing behaviours. This situation made the children to become a strong target group that should be listened to, informed and persuaded with respect to purchasing behaviours. For this reason, the characteristics of the ads children prefer to watch have become important. Purpose of the Study: This study aimed at investigating the expression, message, character and sector details of the ads watched by children by their ages and genders. Method: The study was organised in accordance with survey model. Individual interviews and ads images were used in the process of data collection. The characteristics of ads were analysed according to expression, the type of messages, character and sector. Descriptive data were analysed by frequency (f) and percent (%). Ads of the properties of the differences between children’s age and gender were analysed by chi-square analysis. The sample of study included 339 children. Findings: When the pictures of children themed it was seen that there were 74 different ads. A significant difference was seen between the children’s genders and ages and the expression, message and sector types of the ads they liked. No significant difference was found between the children’s genders and the character types of the ads they liked, but there was a significant difference between the children’s ages and the character types of the ads they liked. Conclusion and Recommendations: The results of this study show that features of the ads favoured by children aged 3-6 can have different characteristics according to their ages and genders. For this reason, these results will attract the attention of advertisers as well as parents and educators. The study can also be planned longitudinally by looking at the effect of different variables of the child and their family. In this way, whether or not the characteristics of the ads favoured by children have any effect on their future consumption preferences can be investigated. © 2016, Ani Publishing. All rights reserved.