Exploring how children's food brand associations and food choice preferences are affected by exposures to food marketing within web-based games: a Public Health perspective

Brief summary: The harm that junk food marketing poses to children’s health has been acknowledged by leading health agencies, such as World Health Organization. Online marketing of foods to children is particularly pervasive, yet relatively little is known about how this may affect children’s food preferences. The purpose of this research is to explore how children respond to online food marketing. It will investigate the marketing techniques used in branded online games and explore how this influences what users subsequently choose to eat. Children (aged 7-12) will be required for a one-off visit of 25 minutes to complete some questionnaires, play a 4 minute online game, choose a snack from a selection of items and then have their height and weight measured. The results from the study will be used in a wider body of work (as part of an Australian Research Council project) which aims to inform future public policy decisions to further limit children’s exposure to unhealthy food marketing. Sample Population/Setting: 150 Children aged 7-12 will be recruited across three sites. The study will be run by a Public Health PhD student and a research assistant from the School of Health and Society at the University of Wollongong. Firstly, we are collaborating with the University of Wollongong Spring Sports Camp to recruit from their pool of children who are attending the camp. The data will be collected in an activity room in the Illawarra Health and Medical Research Institute (IHMRI) at the University of Wollongong campus, within very close proximity to the Sports Camp. We aim to gather data from 60 people at this site. Peak Sports and Learning, a children’s care company that implement breakfast and after-school clubs at schools in the Illawarra have also agreed to collaborate with the study and we expect to get approximately 80 participants from these sites. We aim to get the remaining 20 participants by advertising the study for participants in the area to visit Early Start at the University of Wollongong to take part. Experimental Design: The proposed study will use a between subjects design, with four conditions (3 experimental, 1 control). The participants will be randomly allocated to one of four conditions: 1) Control – game with no advertising, 2) Game with peripheral advert 3) Game with in-game economy, and 4) Game with YouTube advertisement in game. Condition one will have no branding at all. The condition two will have a rectangular advert for the food brand aligned underneath the game screen. Condition three will incorporate the food brand as a game piece for the participant to collect, and this item will be worth 15 points in the game, whereas a coin will be worth 1 point. Condition four will introduce a YouTube advertisement of the food brand when the character arrives at a door in the game. When they reach the door a YouTube video launches and they will watch an advert for the product, which will then close and reveal a ‘mystery level’. In this level the character is in space environment with plentiful coins which are worth 100 points. The same brand will be ‘marketed’ to the participants in all experimental conditions and will not be advertised in the control. The chosen brand is from the U.K and should be unfamiliar to Australian children. An unfamiliar brand is the most appropriate because it can be used to explore the effect of priming in the absence of an existing brand attachment and it also means that the participants cannot purchase products from the brand after seeing the advertisements. Materials/measures: Game - The online game that will be used as the marketing platform for the study has been created for the study and tailored to the study’s exact specifications and requirements. Creating a game allowed us to manipulate several things such as the marketing techniques in the conditions and the time it is played for. It is a web-based side-scroller game, in which the player will have four minutes to help an alien named ‘Ziggy’ collect as many gold coins as they can. The alien ‘Ziggy’ has been kept gender neutral and the aim of the game is to mimic other popular online games, such as Mario Kart. Food (snack) - The test brand is a lolly (sweet, U.K). Following the game, the participants will be presented with four foods in labelled opaque paper cups with lids so that the product is not visible. One of the available food options will be the test brand, and the other three foods will not have been present in the online game (another unfamiliar brand, unbranded lollies, and green grapes). The labels indicating the contents ensure that the children will choose based on the brand name, rather than by the look of the product inside. We did not want to have any brands available that the child already knew of, which is why the options are all unfamiliar or unbranded. Having two unfamiliar food brands, which only one of which was advertised, should show us whether the advertising had an effect on food choice. To avoid all of the snacks being consumed and to induce a choice component, the children will only be allowed to choose one of the snacks available to them. The chosen food will be weighed before and after consumption and will be measured in grams and kilojoules. The snack that is chosen will also be measured by how often it is chosen between conditions. Anthropometric measures - The children will have their height and weight measured for calculating their BMI. Questionnaires – 1) Vas Hunger Scale 2) Logo Recognition Questionnaire (implemented pre and post-game) 3) Usual online game playing behaviours/usual lolly consumption questionnaire Procedure: 1. The participant will complete a VAS Hunger scale and a Logo Recognition Questionnaire. 2. The participant will have been randomly assigned to a game condition, and will play the game for four minutes until the timer runs down to zero. 3. The participant will then be told they are allowed to choose one snack to eat at their desk from four choices of packaged and labelled snacks. They are allowed to eat as much or as little of the snack as they would like and we continue when the child says that they are finished. 4. After this, the participant will complete a questionnaire about usual online game playing/lolly consumption behaviours and complete the Logo Recognition questionnaire again. 5. Finally, the participant will have their height and weight measured.