You're the fun to my food. The effectiveness of fun food packaging to promote healthy food with children

Given the increase of child obesity as a severe public health issue and the role of child-oriented marketing in this, attention should be drawn to counter this negative trend. Previous research already showed the effectiveness of adding endorsers on food packages to promote healthy foods. There is, however, little research on the existence of such a relationship for fun food packaging. This study sought to assess the comparative effectiveness of fun food packaging for healthy and unhealthy framed cereals by the use of a 2 (fun food package vs neutral package) x 2 (healthy vs unhealthy framed product) experimental between-subjects design. Children (N = 355), aged 7 to 12, were exposed to a cereal box, tasted cereals and filled in measures of attitude towards the package, liking of the cereals, purchase intentions and pester power. Adjusting for gender, age, current appetite and persuasive knowledge, results showed that only attitude towards the package was positively influenced by the fun food technique (F (1, 347) = 72.86, p < .001, ηp² = .174). Furthermore, attitude towards the package also showed to be a significant predictor of purchase intentions and pester intent. Policy makers should explore the use of these techniques specifically to be used for healthy foods that typically have lower budgets such that expensive marketing is often impossible.status: publishe