AN INVESTIGATION OF THE EFFECTS OF TELEVISION ADVERTISEMENTS ON FOOD SELECTION OF SCHOOL AGE CHILDREN

One of the most determining factors in realizing the value of children as customers seems to be the advertisements. as a result of the developments in the communication technologies the number of advertisements targeting the children has gradually increased. this increase is most prevalent in food advertisements. advertisers’ wrong and misleading information affects children’s mental and physical health negatively, they persist with their advertisements to boost their sells. particularly, when the target group is children, in order not to affect the children negatively, the message and the techniques of the advertisements should be chosen carefully. this study aimed at determining of the effect of television advertisements on food selention of school age children. the universe consisted of students in 9-14 aged group who currently attending the central primary school in caycuma zonguldak. the data were collected using data forms which prepared by researcher between may-june 2009. in the evaluation of the data spss 13.0 statistical package program was used. for each question tables were made including absolute and % values. according to the results of the study, it was determined that the majority of students (88.6%) sometimes and always watched the advertisements. more than half of the students (54.3%) said that purpose of advertisements was to give information about the product. it was determined that the most favorite food and drink advertisements of the students was chocolate, chips, cakes and candy advertisements (45.7%) with cola advertisements (58.5%).