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Summary
Summary
Over the last fifteen years children's spending power has mushroomed to an estimated USD30 billion in direct purchases and another USD600 billion of influence over parental purchases. Advertising and marketing has exploded alongside expenditures and now totals more than USD12 billion a year. Ads targeted at children are virtually everywhere - in schools, museums and on the internet - and strategies for capturing the child wallet have become ever more sophisticated. Marketers are intruding into a child's most private space, organizing stealthy peer-to-peer viral marketing efforts, and using high tech scientific research methodologies. in the West. By eighteen months babies can recognize logos, by two they ask for products by brand name. During their nursery school years children will request an average of twenty-five products a day, by the time they enter primary school the average child can identify 200 logos and children between the ages of six and twelve spend more time shopping than reading, attending youth groups, playing outdoors or spending time in household conversation. On the basis of first-hand research inside the advertising industry, BORN TO BUY lays bare the research, messages and marketing strategies being used to target children, and assesses the impact of those efforts.
Author Notes
Juliet B. Schor is the award-winning author of The Overworked American and The Overspent American. A recognized expert on consumerism, economics, and family studies, she teaches at Boston College and lives in Newton, Massachusetts
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
According to consumerism and economics expert Schor (The Overspent American), the average 10-year-old has memorized about 400 brands, the average kindergartner can identify some 300 logos and from as early as age two kids are "bonded to brands." Some may call it brainwashing, others say it's genius; regardless of how you see it, the approach is the same: target young kids directly and consistently, appeal to them and not the adults in their lives and get your product name in their heads from as early an age as possible. From TV shows and toys to video games, snacks and clothing, kids today, according to Schor, know too much yet understand too little, sopping up subliminal and not-so-subliminal messages of "buy, buy, buy." Drawing on a significant body of research, including interviews with everyone from advertising executives to the kids themselves, Schor exposes what she believes to be a huge cesspool of materialism, consumerism and commercialization that could be, and perhaps already is, leading to a generation of kids with no concept of what is important and truly necessary in life. By offering up her own ideas of what can be done by parents, educators, advertisers and others to lessen these problems, Schor goes beyond uncovering the problem and into the realm of concrete solutions. Agent, Gerry McCauley. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Choice Review
Schor (Boston College) examines recent changes in the shape and scope of corporate influence on children and teens in the US. Her study is a significant departure from the myriad previous works that focus on the influence of children's programming, advertising, and other elements of the electronic media aimed at kids. Instead, Schor examines the totality of consumer culture on children and concludes that this excessive commercialization is harming the psychological and even physical well-being of American youth. She defends "family values" not by attacking the counterculture, as the right wing is prone to do, but by adhering to the New Left's distrust of corporate influence. Writing less like a sociologist and more like an investigative reporter, Schor utilizes interviews with industry insiders to expose the often shocking extent of corporate America's hold on kids. Yet her study also adheres to sociological methodologies and incorporates the findings of relevant academic studies. While acknowledging that parents need to do more, Schor argues that they are limited in their ability to block commercial influence, and need government help. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. All public and academic levels/libraries. R. Gilman Tulsa Community College
Library Journal Review
Like Susan Linn's recent Consuming Kids (LJ 3/15/04), Schor's work decries marketing to children, who by kindergarten can on average identify 200 logos. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Tables and Figures | p. ix |
| Author's Note | p. 1 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 5 |
| 1 Introduction | p. 9 |
| 2 The Changing World of Children's Consumption | p. 19 |
| 3 From Tony the Tiger to Slime Time Live: The Content of Commercial Messages | p. 39 |
| 4 The Virus Unleashed: Ads Infiltrate Everyday Life | p. 69 |
| 5 Captive Audiences: The Commercialization of Public Schools | p. 85 |
| 6 Dissecting the Child Consumer: The New Instrusive Research | p. 99 |
| 7 Habit Formation: Selling Kids on Junk Food, Drugs, and Violence | p. 119 |
| 8 How Consumer Culture Undermines Children's Well-Being | p. 141 |
| 9 Empowered or Seduced? The Debate About Advertising and Marketing to Kids | p. 177 |
| 10 Decommercializing Childhood: Beyond Big Bird, Bratz Dolls, and the Back Street Boys | p. 189 |
| Appendix A Data Appendix | p. 213 |
| Appendix B Organizations | p. 215 |
| Appendix C Commercial Alert's Parents' Bill of Rights | p. 217 |
| Notes | p. 221 |
| References | p. 247 |
| Index | p. 259 |
