Abstract

Parents understand and are concerned about the influence that personalized advertising, designed to more directly engage and influence their children, is having on the youngest consumers. Research on antecedents of parental advertising mediation primarily focuses on individual consumer factors (e.g., parents’ sense of empowerment and locus of control), while largely overlooking the forms of advertising that are catalysts for the mediation of children’s advertising exposure. The present study empirically examines these two factors—a specific form of advertising (i.e., personalized advertising that targets children via addressable TV) and individual factors (i.e., perceptions of children’s susceptibility to those personalized messages)—and their combined influence on the active or restrictive advertising mediation of 147 parent respondents of children ages three to 12. Findings indicate that parents’ perceptions that an ad that is personalized to their children positively influences their active and restrictive advertising mediation behaviors. The results also indicate that this influence, in the case of restrictive advertising mediation, is partially mediated by the belief that their children are susceptible to the message. These findings suggest that both parents’ perceptions about the personalized nature of TV ads as well as the intuited susceptibility of their children to such messages play a role in determining parents’ advertising mediation behaviors. Practical and theoretical implications are also discussed.

摘要

父母理解并担心旨在更直接地吸引和影响孩子的个性化广告对最年轻的消费者的影响。父母广告中介的前因研究主要集中在个体消费者因素（如父母的授权感和控制点），而在很大程度上忽略了作为儿童广告曝光中介的催化剂的广告形式。本研究实证检验了这两个因素——一种特定的广告形式（即通过可寻址电视针对儿童的个性化广告）和个体因素（即，对儿童对这些个性化信息的敏感性的看法）——以及它们对 147 名 3 至 12 岁儿童的家长受访者的积极或限制性广告调解的综合影响。调查结果表明，父母认为针对孩子的个性化广告对他们的孩子有积极影响的看法积极和限制性的广告中介行为。结果还表明，在限制性广告中介的情况下，这种影响部分是由他们的孩子容易受到信息影响的信念所调节的。这些研究结果表明，父母对电视广告个性化性质的看法以及他们的孩子对此类信息的直觉敏感性在决定父母的广告调解行为方面发挥了作用。