Hurwitz Lisa B, Montague Heather, Wartella Ellen
a Center on Media and Human Development, School of Communication , Northwestern University.
Health Commun. 2017 Mar;32(3):366-371. doi: 10.1080/10410236.2016.1138386. Epub 2016 Jun 16.
Since 2006, many U.S. food and beverage companies have pledged to market healthier foods to children to help combat the childhood obesity epidemic. Despite this, companies' expenditures on online advertising have increased of late. To explore this seemingly contradictory situation, the authors conducted a content analysis of approximately 100 food and beverage brand websites, examining a multitude of online marketing practices across a variety of different products, as well as the relationship between marketing techniques and the nutritional profile of promoted foods. This is the first study to examine if nutrition varied by marketing technique. Few brands maintained child-oriented websites, but the brands that did have child-oriented websites included a large number of games promoting particularly obesogenic food products. Somewhat surprisingly, games with many brand identifiers were paired with slightly less obesogenic foods. These findings present a mixed picture of the threat posed by online child-oriented food marketing.
自2006年以来，许多美国食品和饮料公司已承诺向儿童推销更健康的食品，以帮助应对儿童肥胖流行问题。尽管如此，公司最近在网络广告上的支出却有所增加。为探究这种看似矛盾的情况，作者对约100个食品和饮料品牌网站进行了内容分析，考察了多种不同产品的一系列网络营销行为，以及营销技巧与所推广食品的营养状况之间的关系。这是第一项研究营销技巧是否会影响食品营养的研究。很少有品牌设有面向儿童的网站，但设有这类网站的品牌包含大量推广特别易致肥胖食品的游戏。有点令人惊讶的是，带有许多品牌标识的游戏所搭配的食品致肥胖性略低。这些研究结果表明，面向儿童的网络食品营销所构成的威胁情况不一。
