Question is straightforward.

This is specific marketing to children such as, on children's channels and in stores.

I just graduated in Marketing so I will not be giving my opinion right now. I have had this debate in 4 of my classes and so I thought it would be interesting to see CC's stance.

When commenting please comment "yes" for it is ethical or "no" it isn't ethical and of course your reasoning behind your answers.

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My opinion:

Personally I don't think it's ethical.

Dependent on the age of the children they cannot identify the difference between a need and a want. You will often hear children say "but I need it" or "I really need this 37 coloured pen". Children also cannot understand the complexities of money, that these things cost money to buy and that £100 is a lot of money.

-This is a generalisation I am not referring to individual children-

The advertisers, in my opinion, are using children to manipulate sales. Obviously the children seeing advertisements will not be paying for the product themselves so will therefore have to ask an adult. This takes the control away from parents/adults to decide, yes I would like to buy that for my child or no I don't want to buy that.

Yes, companies must advertise to stay relevant, competitive, increase awareness and ultimately increase sales. I am not disputing that, however, advertising to children on children's TV which parents/adults might not be watching isn't right to me.

Many parents say that during Christmas is the worst time. As advertisers plunge millions into pushing every product they have children will constantly be seeing something new. The price of the products are rarely cheap, therefore it is causing added stress on parents to not upset their child but also not become in debt because of it.

My lecturer is a 28 year old mother of a 2 year old child. The whole class said "yes it's fine" but through research and listening to our lecturer we all soon realised that our opinions had changed. She told a story of her son wanting something seen advertised, she told him no, he watched his show and that was the end of it. They went food shopping several days later and the product was in the store, he said he "needed it" and then threw a giant strop. My lecturer was beside herself in what to do so ended up buying the product.

There is an added question of "well shouldn't parents be stricter?" But if advertising wasn't directed at children there wouldn't be this struggle.

Well that's my long winded opinion on the mater!

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Edit no. 2:

An article to give some more context on the matter. CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management.