This document summarizes a study on Pakistani children's attitudes toward cartoon advertising on television. The study surveyed 160 Pakistani children ages 6-10 on their awareness, entertainment and credibility perceptions of TV cartoon ads. The results showed that children found cartoon ads entertaining but did not necessarily believe the claims made in them. Children were also aware that ads do not always tell the truth and aim to promote products. The study concluded that cartoon ads can effectively target children if developed professionally while considering children's understanding of advertising claims and purposes.

1. Assessing of Children’s Behaviour toward Cartoon
Advertising in Pakistan.
Abdullah (11056,B morning)
Anayat UllahKhan(11034,B morning)
National University of Modern Languages Islamabad
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to explore Pakistani children’s attitude toward TV Cartoon
advertisement, their awareness about add and influence of add on their purchase behaviour.
In Pakistan, most advertising agencies now target children through advertisement especially
when advertising consumer products like children’s toys, chocolates, candy bars, tooth paste
etc. Study shows that Pakistani children are very much aware about TV commercial’s
features like: truthfulness, annoyingness, taste and influencing characteristics of the ad. Their
behaviour Is also different about advertised and non-advertised brands
Keywords: Children attitude, Advertising, Consumer Product.
1. Introduction
The aim of this study to find out the impact of cartoon advertising regarding the factor of
entertainment and credibility among children’s of age group 6- 10 years in Pakistan .This
form of advertising could be persuasive in nature , like purchase brands of goods or services
or influence buying decision of parents as compare to adults. Practitioner have an urge to
study the impact of various advertising methods on the attitude of children’s in order to
improve the effectiveness of their ads. Thus, the assessing of children’s attitude towards
cartoon and advertising in Pakistan could be improve to be useful in the related set of
circumstances.
Children’s segment is now being target by many consumers’ product companies, because
children are important potential customers as they not only decide about their own buying as
they can influence the buying decisions of their parents. A greater percentage of parent’s
income is spent on purchase of products only because of children’s influence.
Especially due to the usage of Cartoons in advertisements, children’s develop different
attitude towards them that can be favourable or non-favourable in terms of entertainment and
credibility. On the other hand, such studies are required by advertising control authorities to
keep a check and balance on advertising techniques and ensure the safe and healthy exposure
of advertising towards children’s. In this case there is a good probability that such advertising
have a greater affect on children’s than on adults.

2. 1.1 When are kids watching.
To a large extent, kids are watching when they want. Most kids talked about watching TV:
In the morning before school;
As soon as they get home from school;
During dinner;
While doing their homework;
Weekend morning;
Early evening weekdays;
Early and late evening weekends.
These all are the Prime times for kids advertising.
Kids are functionally literate; children do not access the written information available through
print advertising, packaging, and labels. Children often lack information about price, a
primary consideration so the Cartoon is the best option for them to understand the depth and
purpose of the Ads.
1.2 Objective of the Study
The objectives of this study are as follows:
To study children’s attention towards television cartoon advertising.
To compare children’s response to different types of television Cartoon and Non
Cartoon commercials.
To compare children’s response to their favourite commercials and their most disliked
ads.
To compare children’s perception of advertised and non-advertised brands.
The purpose of the research is to find out that which type is more attractive and persuasive
for Children’s. The Children’s likes or dislike the Cartoon ads and how they are evolving it
according to their own perception.
1.3 Hypothesis of the Study
H1: Children’s are in favour and entertaining the cartoon advertising.
Most of companies which they targeting kids only for the purpose to entertain them with full
joy and happiness and create awareness.
They are in favour of cartoon advertising the did’t buying or believe on it but only for few
characters and favourite like, the whole clip of Safeguard, in which one cartoon playing the
role of Commander Safeguard, but few of Kids are trying to buy it.
H2: Children’s have fully credible on cartoon advertising.

3. Most of kids have believe on cartoon and it’s ads. The are liking the characters of ads and
trying to follow them and the waiting for that moments, a example of cartoon is Tom and
Jerry, which aim is only to entertain the Kids and Now most of advertising agencies trying to
follow the sequence of that; the simple example of Cartoon advertising is the Ding Dong
Bubble Gum, which is very appreciate by Kids, another Example of Safeguard Soap and the
Kids are in favour of Commander Safeguard. Tiger, Prince and peddle pop.
H3: Children’s have zero interest in Cartoon advertising.
The one category comprises that they neither like the Cartoon nor cartoon advertising. They
have zero interest in ads and televisions, or they have no access to television without the
parents permission, so the not involve to watch consistently and not waiting curiously for any
type of ads.
2. Literature Review.
In 2008 companies spend nearly $17billion annually marketing to kids. That is more than
double what it was in 1992 (Lagorio 2007).The trends leads to clustering of advertisement
towards the audience. Children form a sensitive and vulnerable part of the TV advertisement
audiences. American children view an estimated 40000 commercial annually .They also
makes approximately 3,000 requests for products and services each year (schor, 2004).
Children’s under age 10, have not fully developed their abilities to acquire, encode, organize,
and retrieve information (O’Barr 2008). Some attempts have been made in the past to study
the attitude of children towards advertisement, but they did not end up in proposing scales
whose validity was fully assessed (Riecken and Samali 2009). Although the age of age of 8,
children might be able to understand a lot about the intention behind advertisement but they
still have problems until the age of 12 years(Marshall 2010).
While looking at the children’s response to TV advertisement, a research experiment revealed
that children’s food choices especially in snacks are based on their exposure to TV
commercials (Gorn and Goldberg, 1982). Children’s tend to believe what they see and hear
but from the age of 8 onward, children’s develop some knowledge about advertising, some
skepticism as they realize that ads are not only entertaining and informative but are some
time untruth (Roedder john, 1999).
The finding tends to give an idea about the assessment of children’s attitude in terms of
credibility. In last 20years, impact of TV advertisement on children’s behaviour has been the
major topic of debates in countries open for market competition (Boddewyn,1984). Children
use the ad for the sake of getting acquaintance with the new brands and products, how that
particular brand can be used. Children also keep the realities and belief about the products
and show their priorities accordingly. These realities and belief further help them to make
purchase or they ask from their parents what is to purchase.(Mcneal & Ji, 1999).
Children age 10 or younger feel difficulty to recall previous stored information and in making
comparative decision (Kobasigawa, 1977). Therefore rather than comparing alternatives and

4. choosing from its, young children usually prefer to make attitude toward the advertised
product and make decision about purchase based on this. (Wartella et al., 1979).
States that children do not believe many Cartoon ads claims and they do not always keep
positive attitude towards these ads, they are aware, how is to deal with ads clutter, they
remain skeptic about the truthfulness of these ads. They always keep a room about the
credibility of advertised products.( Reiken and Yavas1990).
Young children are more inclined towards funny and song –oriented ads, and while older
children like and pay attention on funny, meaningful ads and ads based on public service
announcements. Younger children are more confident about the advertised product as
compared to the older children. Older children do not rely on the quality of the advertised
product. (Chan & McNeal,2005)
This explain that TV advertisement have huge impact on the attitude as well as behaviour of
children’s. Finding in another experimental study found that the children’s with heavy
exposure to TV advertisements are more likely recall those brands while shopping in the
market with the parents. (Farooq,et al,2000)
2.1 The model
This model contain the three variables, like the One is the independent and the two are the
Dependent variables.
The Entertainment and Credibility are the dependent variables and the Cartoon advertising
has a huge influence on it, may be positively or negatively.
The kids have two purposes to watch the cartoon advertising in both, but some have strong
tendency toward one of them.
Actually most of companies who’s target are children’s so the trying to make the ads
according to the kids requirements and 80% of children’s(6-10) are not clearly understanding
the verbal and the stars, so they putting the cartoon instead of actors, which creating more
interest among children’s.
3. Research Design and Methodology
A major strength of this study is its use of data on key independent and dependent variables
from separate sources to avoid common method bias. We obtained the advertising, cartoon
advertising and children’s behaviour data from different sources in Pakistan like, Magazines,
previous papers, internet and personal experience, which assess the children’s behaviour and
response toward advertising very care fully and explanatory.
This survey involved Pakistani Primary schools from different vicinities of Rawalpindi and
Islamabad, The capital. A total of 160 Pakistani children aged 6–10 years were selected on
the basis of, The Convenience sampling method was used according to the convenience of
getting data from the schools of Islamabad and Rawalpindi. The questionnaire was also
translated into the Urdu language (domestic language) to bring out better understanding from
the children.. All the questionnaires distributed were collected with 98.5% response rate.
Different dimensions were used to measure children’s television Cartoon advertising responses.
Twenty questions were formed and adapted from scale. Two new questions were included. A 5-
point Likert scale (Likert, 1932), strongly agree to strongly disagree, was used, and factor-
analyzed to determine single dimensions of children’s cartoon advertising responses of
Entertainment and Credibility were realized: children’s awareness of TV cartoon advertising.
Likert scale was used to measure the degree of Entertainment and Credibility of Children’s
Awareness of TV cartoon advertising. The selected scale focuses on the range of cognitive and

5. affective reactions towards television advertising in terms of watching of TV, perceived
truthfulness of commercials, potential annoying qualities, and objectivity in describing advertised
products, overall liking, and perceived persuasive power, believability of characters, and
trustworthiness as guidance to product purchases and wants to buy the product after watching TV
commercials.
Every question was given five answers strongly disagree agree neutral disagree strongly disagree.
Children were given self assistance in filling the questionnaire. Entire study was self
administered.
4. Research Results
The sample characteristics for the 155 respondents are summarized in table-2.
Table 4 shows that children know that all TV ads do not tell the truth as greater percentage of
respondent children were disagreeing to the claim that TV add tells the Entertainment
indicated by the Mean value of 3.31. This means that children understand the language of
cartoon advertisement. Similarly Mean results 2.85 shows in table that children feel the
annoying qualities of advertisements and are agreeing that most TV commercials are of poor
taste and very annoying. As it is a fact that TV advertisement’s purpose is to increase the sale
of the product advertised, that’s why it tells only good aspects of the product. Pakistani
children are aware of this fact and Mean results 2.29 are showing the same. About the
likeliness of TV advertisements in Pakistan, most of the children dislike ads. And response
about the claim that TV adds influence people to buy the product they don’t need, Mean 3.04
shows that they are neither agree nor disagree with the said statement. Mean value for
believability and always advertised products are best are respectively 3.24 and 3.24 which
shows children are neither agree nor disagree with said statements. TV Advertisings do create
purchase desire as indicated by mean value which is 2.57.
Reliability analysis was used that is inter-item correlation among the items listed in the
Table-1.
Results and findings are summarized in Table-3. According to Guilford (1973) guidelines, for
a well constructed test, item Pair wise comparison should be between 0.10 and 0.60. The
present findings shows that Rossiter’s (1977) scale can be applied usually among the
Pakistani children while measuring their understanding of TV commercials as Paired
comparison correlation not significant i.e. all inter-correlations are negative, it means that
these items are negatively correlated with each other. On the other hand (annoy, like), (annoy,
believe), (annoy, best), also don’t have significant inter-Correlation they are not in the range
of 0.10 to 0.60 although it is not negative. Remaining items have significant inter-correlation.
Table2;
Description Frequency Percentage
Gender Number %
Boys
Girls
86
69
55.48
44.52
Total 155 100
Table;3
Strongly
dislike
Dislike neutral like Strongly
like

6. Entertainment 5 5 5 20 60
Credibility 5 4 3 13 35
Total 10 9 8 23 95
4. Conclusion
Data shows that Children are very much interested of TV cartoon advertisements in Pakistan and
advertising has a impact on their purchase behaviours. We also got that they evaluate and
compare the both variable TV cartoon Advertisements. TV cartoon advertisements influence
children’s behaviour about on the basis of entertainment and credibility. As
children’s behaviour change it also changes their buying pattern and this is the purpose behind the
advertisements. As children are very much aware of TV advertisements and they know good and
bad
aspects of them. Marketer should understand the children’s psychic before launching any
advertisement. Children also know the degree of truthfulness in add. So for the advertisers it’s
very
important to realize that children are not ignorant from the content of their campaigns, and while
developing their campaigns they must address the issues with a professional approach. It is also
clear
that advertisement can be a good effective media to convey the required message in child
segments if
they are created professionally. Lastly advertisers can not rely only on comic and colors in
children
related advertisements, they do need to focus on the content of the advertisements, they must
avoid
over promising in their advertisement campaigns.