A U.S. study suggests marketing plays a role in how often parents buy fast food for their children.
A survey by Sonya Grier, a marketing professor at American University's Kogod School of Business, found that greater exposure to fast food advertising was linked to beliefs that eating fast food is a regular practice of family, friends and others in their communities. The more parents perceived fast food consumption as a socially normal behavior, the more frequently their children ate fast food.
The questionnaire was administered to parents of children ages 2 to 12 at eight community health centers on the United States' East Coast and in Puerto Rico, the university said Friday in a release.
Hispanics and African Americans reported being exposed to more fast-food marketing and having greater access to fast-food than whites. Hispanics also reported significantly more positive attitudes toward fast-food than did whites. Asian parents expressed the least normative views of fast food consumption, the report said.
The findings were published in the American Marketing Association's Journal of Public Policy & Marketing.
Copyright 2008 by United Press International
Related stories:
Businesses use Web without abandoning physical presence
Chuck Bankoff, Capistrano Beach franchisee for WSI Internet, has not met 90 percent of his clients in person. Most of his work and meetings are done over the Internet.
X-rays power discoveries at Chicago's Field Museum
Digital medical imaging and information technology from Carestream Health, Inc., is playing a key role in helping The Field Museum of Chicago discover and analyze secrets hidden within its world-class collections.
IdentiGEN founder says access to DNA from cloned animals should be made public
In order for meat producers and retailers to satisfy anticipated consumer desires to avoid meat and milk from cloned animals, access to DNA from every unique clone should be made public so that DNA traceability technology can be used, according to Patrick Cunningham of Dublin's Trinity College and Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government of Ireland, who will speak at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) conference in Boston tomorrow.
China's biotech industry: An Asian dragon is growing
Backed by a government intent on promoting innovation and fuelled by the “brain gain” of talented scientists and entrepreneurs returning from abroad, China’s health biotech industry only needs a more favourable investment climate to emerge as a global force in the production of therapies and medicines – both new and low-cost generics – experts say in a new study.
'Healthy' restaurants help make us fat, says a newl study
If you're like most, you eat worst at healthy restaurants. The "health halos" of healthy restaurants often prompt consumers to treat themselves to higher-calorie side dishes, drinks or desserts than when they eat at fast-food restaurants that make no health claims, according to a series of new Cornell studies.
Old McDonald's has a hold on kids' taste buds, study finds
Say what you will, Shakespeare, but a McNugget by any other name is just not as tasty. At least, not to the 3- to 5-year-old set.
Tech File: Sony's Playstation Portable
Tech File caught up with Peter Dille, senior vice present of marketing at Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc., to grill him about the future of Sony's portable multimedia device the Playstation Portable (PSP). With recent announcements that Hollywood studios are pulling out or cutting back on the UMD movie format and complaints from gamers about the lack of games, we thought it'd be a good time to get an update on the system.
Green Up: Game time, Day 3
In late January the development team of America's Army, the U.S. Army's free video game for the Mac OS X, Windows and Linux operating systems, arrived in Camp Guernsey for three days of hands-on training and demonstrations via the Green Up event. These people would ordinarily spend their days coding video games, planning the next release of the game, implementing bug fixes and planning future versions of the title or marketing. For a few days they've been given full access to some of the weapons, vehicles, physical training and technologies used in their game.