Smeal College Chair Of Marketing Serves As Sole U.S. Participant At Expert Panel On Promotion Of Foods To Children

UNIVERSITY PARK, PA -- Marvin Goldberg, the Irving and Irene Bard Professor of Marketing and chair of the Department of Marketing at Penn State's Smeal College of Business, was the sole representative from the United States at a recent expert panel convened in the United Kingdom to discuss research on the promotion of foods to children.

Goldberg was invited to attend the panel because of his expertise in assessing factors contributing to the effectiveness of advertising. His research on the linkages between snack and breakfast food advertising and children's food preferences and choices was extensively cited in one of the two review studies discussed by the U.K. panel, which included experts in areas such as psychology, cognitive development, behavioral sciences, and marketing.

As indicated in a summary report recently released by the British Food Standards Agency, panel participants analyzed two recent reviews of the promotion of food to children—one by Gerard Hastings of the Centre for Social Marketing in Glasgow, Scotland, which relied in part on Goldberg's work and was commissioned by the British government, and another by Brian Young at Exeter University in England, which was undertaken at the behest of the advertising industry.

In their final conclusions, those in attendance agreed that the Hastings study strengthens the case that food advertising exerts significant influence on children's food preferences and selections and also lends support to the hypothesis that advertising can work both directly and indirectly.

"The large body of research that Professor Hastings' reviewed indicates that there can be little doubt of the influential role advertising plays in the lives of children," Goldberg said. "Experts in a variety of fields and disciplines are certainly grasping this fact more than ever before, and as the general public becomes more in-tune with this reality, it will be interesting to monitor the adjustments made by the marketplace. In some cases, the responses have already begun; evident, for example, in the healthier alternatives that fast food establishments are beginning to offer."