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Marketing Genius: The Impact of Educational Claims and Cues on Parents' Reactions to Infant/Toddler DVDs
Author(s) -
VAALA SARAH E.,
LAPIERRE MATTHEW A.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
journal of consumer affairs
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.582
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 1745-6606
pISSN - 0022-0078
DOI - 10.1111/joca.12023
Subject(s) - toddler , psychology , value (mathematics) , promotion (chess) , perception , advertising , dimension (graph theory) , social psychology , marketing , personality , developmental psychology , business , political science , mathematics , machine learning , neuroscience , politics , computer science , pure mathematics , law
Infant/toddler‐directed DVDs have become commonplace in American homes. Most of these DVDs carry direct claims or implied cues of educational benefit, despite complaints from the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood and others regarding a lack of confirmatory research. Using a DVD package created for this study, this experiment tested the impact of DVD brand name, educational claim specificity, and a personality dimension (i.e., regulatory focus orientation) on parents' perceptions of educational value and purchase intentions. Parents reacted similarly to specific and ambiguous educational statements, but gave higher educational value estimations when the brand name had an educational cue. An interaction suggested that the effect of the claim outcome specificity depended on the claim verb specificity. Parents with a strong focus on pursuing possible rewards (promotion focus) had higher perceptions of educational value and stronger desires to purchase the DVD . Implications for policy and further research are discussed.