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Record W4410040412 · doi:10.1017/s1368980025000369

The impact of brand advertising on children’s food preferences and behavioural intentions: an experimental study

2025· article· en· W4410040412 on OpenAlexafffundabout
Christine Mulligan, Lauren Remedios, Tim Ramsay, Elise Pauzé, Mariangela Bagnato, Monique Potvin Kent

Bibliographic record

VenuePublic Health Nutrition · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldMedicine
TopicObesity, Physical Activity, Diet
Canadian institutionsUniversity of Ottawa
FundersUniversity of OttawaHeart and Stroke Foundation of Canada
KeywordsAdvertisingProduct (mathematics)PsychologyBrand preferenceLikert scalePost-hoc analysisBrand awarenessMarketingPreferenceBusinessMathematicsDevelopmental psychology

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Abstract Objective: Despite strong evidence linking exposure to food and beverage marketing with poor diet quality and negative health impacts in children, the effect of brand marketing (i.e. marketing featuring branded content, but no food products) is uncertain. This study evaluated the impact of brand marketing v. product-based advertising on children’s food preferences and behavioural intentions. Design: An online survey was administered to participants randomised to one of four ad conditions; familiar product (i.e. from popular Canadian brands); familiar brand (i.e. no food product, Canadian brand); unfamiliar product (i.e. foreign products); and unfamiliar brand ad (i.e. foreign brand). Participants viewed three ads displaying features of that condition and answered three 5-point Likert-scale questions related to the study outcomes: food preference, purchase intent and pester power. The average of all outcomes determined the total impact. An ANOVA with Bonferroni post hoc tests evaluated differences in impact between conditions. Setting: Canada participants: n 1341 Canadian children (9–12 years) Results: Familiar product ads had a higher total impact on children (mean score 3·57) compared with familiar brand ads (2·88), unfamiliar brand ads (3·24) or unfamiliar product ads (3·09; P < 0·001 for all pairwise comparisons). Total impact was lower for familiar brand ads than for unfamiliar brand ads or unfamiliar product ads (P < 0·001 for all pairwise comparisons). The impact of an unfamiliar brand and product did not differ (P = 0·53). Conclusions: Results suggest that familiar product ads seem to have a stronger impact on children’s food preferences and behavioural intentions than familiar brand ads, unfamiliar brand ads and unfamiliar product ads.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.003
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.004
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Randomized trial · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.037
Threshold uncertainty score0.073

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0030.004
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.001
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.001
Bibliometrics0.0010.000
Science and technology studies0.0010.002
Scholarly communication0.0010.001
Open science0.0010.001
Research integrity0.0010.002
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0060.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.057
GPT teacher head0.378
Teacher spread0.321 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designRandomized trial
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations2
Published2025
Admission routes3
Has abstractyes

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