The Implication Of Elaboration Likelihood Model On Children

This research was designated with three goals. First, this study is aimed to investigate the influence of advertisement message (central cue) on children's advertising attitude, belief and consumption intention. Secondly, to investigate the influence of brand (peripheral cue) on children's advertising attitude, belief and usage intention. Lastly, the research is determined to find out the overall implication of the Elaboration Likelihood Model on children. The framework of this research is based on Petty and Cacioppos' Elaboration Likelihood Model. A pretest was first conducted prior to the main study. Hamburger was chosen to represent the low involvement product and cartoon channel high involvement product for the main study. Piaget's cognitive development stages were employed in choosing suitable subjects for the main study. A 2 (involvement: high or low) × 2 (argument message: with or without) × 3 (brand: Real brand — McDonald; New brand — Pokeman; No brand), factorial design was applied. 314 children from Taipei Municipal Elementary School had participated in this experimental study. Subjects were assigned to view one color printed advertisement for each high and low product involvement. Questionnaire was filled out each time after advertisement viewing. Advertisement attitude, cognitive level and consumption intention was measured. The 6 Three-Way ANOVA results indicated that brand had shown significance for advertisement attitude but not advertisement message. The moderating effect of issue involvement and product involvement over message and brand, were both found not significant. Additionally, product involvement did reach significant level for cognitive level and consumption intention. The interaction between, “Advertisement Message by Issue Involvement by Product involvement” had reached significant level for consumption intention. The last significant interaction was observed in, “Brand by Issue Involvement by Product Involvement” for belief and consumption intention. The major implication of this research for advertiser, marketers and consumer behavior research is that children are still best communicated through images. Children are aware of the message presented to them, and do process the information cognitively but enhancement of advertisement attitude is not obtained. Thus, it is suggested to keep advertisement short or leave it out of the advertisement completely. In terms of brand, character endorsement was found highly influential for advertisement attitude. It is therefore advice to the marketers, to consider having a character to represents their brand and product