Content area
Full Text
Introduction
Since the start of the new millennium, dramatic changes in the commercial media environment have occurred because the boundaries between advertising, entertainment and information have become increasingly blurred (Balasubramanian et al. , 2006). In particular, children's media environment has been saturated with integrated advertising techniques, including advergames, branded Web sites and brand-integrated magazines (Buijzen et al. , 2010). This integration between advertising and entertainment has fuelled debates in both academia and society. It is generally assumed that children are easily persuaded by these subtle formats, which often involve integrated advertising, because children are expected to be less aware of the persuasive intent of these formats. Therefore, critical processing mechanisms are thought to remain inactivated (Nairn and Fine, 2008).
Even though children's awareness of advertising's persuasive intent has gained increased attention from both academics and policy-makers over the past few years, much remains unclear about the actual role of this awareness in children's processing of advertising messages (Rozendaal et al. , 2011). Several studies have focused on children's awareness of the intent of advertising, including integrated advertising formats (An and Stern, 2011; Owen et al. , 2013). However, only few studies have linked this awareness to advertising effects (Mallinckrodt and Mizerski, 2007; Van Reijmersdal et al. , 2012; Waiguny et al. , 2012). Moreover, the studies that did investigate this link have yielded mixed results and therefore do not provide conclusive evidence.
Clearly, to reach an informed conclusion about the effects of integrated advertising on children and about the role of children's awareness of the persuasive intent of these formats, there is a vital need to extend research into this topic. Therefore, the aims of this study are to investigate:
the effects of integrated advertising formats on the persuasion of children;
children's awareness of the persuasive intent of these formats; and
how this awareness mediates the level of persuasion.
Specifically, in this study, we focus on integrated print advertising. Brand-integrated magazines are print formats that are owned by advertisers and especially created as a vehicle to promote the advertisers' products, thereby increasing behavioral loyalty, or repeat purchase behavior (Bronner, 2004; Haeusermann, 2013). Although print accounts for considerable amounts of the total integrated advertising volume (Bhatnagar et al. , 2004), print has been largely ignored...