According to a new report from CU Boulder’s Leeds School of Business and Colorado State University’s College of Business, parents and lawmakers looking to cartoon characters as a reason children choose cookies over carrots could be looking in the wrong direction.
Researchers found children prefer junk food over healthy food with or without cartoon characters marketing the products. Licensed characters did, however, influence kids to choose between similar products.
The article shows up in the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing. Researchers ran several tests allowing kids to pick between snacks with or without licensed characters like SpongeBob or Scooby Doo on the packaging. They found children are more likely to pick foods branded with licensed characters when choosing between similar products, like two packages of carrots. If the choice is between carrots or cookies, however, cartoon characters did not trump children’s taste buds.
“The primary influence on kids’ choices is taste,” said paper co-author Margaret C. Campbell, a professor of marketing at the Leeds School of Business. “The licensed character only has an influence on moving kids’ choices between foods with the same level of expected taste.”
An article on colorado.edu suggests that proposals like the United Kingdom’s 2018 effort to ban cartoon characters on junk food packaging may miss the mark.