Marketing to Children in Guatemala

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A recent study has found that unhealthy food, or junk food, is being marketed to young children in Guatemala and sold in stores located near urban schools.

This study found 55 stores within 200 square meters of four public schools, two preschool and two elementary, and accessed what snack foods were being sold. There were 2334 snack food packages total, 826 of which were considered child-oriented.

A total of 106 snack items were purchased for further assessment in the study. There was at least one snack food marketed directly for children in each of the 55 stores.

The most common method of marketing to children found on these snacks were promotional characters, making up 92.5% of the products, made up of brand-specific characters, cartoon characters, and creatures/animals.

Most of the marketing techniques, like featuring a character, were prominently displayed on the front of the product and covered nearly a quarter of the package’s surface.

These marketing techniques affect the purchasing choices made by young children, as the study points out “Promotional characters have been found to influence children’s food choices as they are more likely to choose a snack with a character on the packaging compared to one without a character.”

“While the industry has to pay a license fee to use a character, creating its own brand-specific characters appears to be a less expensive option. This might explain, in part, why brand-specific characters were the most frequently found promotional characters on packages.”

Based on the results the study suggests, “Due to the effects on food preferences and overall nutritional quality, restricting the use of child-oriented licensed and brand-specific characters on the packaging of snack foods is needed to discourage consumption of less-healthy snacks.

Other findings from this study include that the motivation to purchase snack foods in Guatemala may not be related to price since savory snack foods were more expensive than regular grocery items like bread, companies are still offering toys as giveaways in their product sales, and despite nutritional labeling being required by law 20% of the snacks accessed did not have them.

The full research study report can be found here.