An exploratory study of children’s perceptions of television advertising in urban China

The one-child policy in the People’s Republic of China has created a generation of only children in most of its urban areas. Popularly called little emperors, these only children are spending a great deal money as well as exerting tremendous influence on their family spending. Consequently, they are the targets of an increasing amount of advertising. The objectives of this study were to explore urban Chinese children’s understanding of television advertising, their attitudes towards it, and their perceived truthfulness of it. Three focus group interviews of 22 urban Chinese children ages 6 to 12 were conducted in Beijing, China in October 2001. The findings yielded similarities and differences with previous studies of children in the US and Chinese children in Hong Kong. Mainland Chinese children’s were similar to Hong Kong Chinese and US children in their increased understanding and decreased trust of television advertising with age. Similarly, they enjoyed commercials that were funny and disliked commercials that were boring. Contrary to previous findings, Mainland Chinese children showed a high awareness of public services advertising. They also held negative attitudes toward television commercials of health products and medicines. Older Mainland Chinese children had some negative perceptions of advertised brands; they did not agree that television advertising would enhance their buying confidence in products. Insights for further study provided by this exploratory research are presented.