Publications

Few studies focus on how children’s environment affects their ability to cope with contemporary advertising. This study uses multilevel analysis techniques to explore how parents, classmates, and teachers’ characteristics influence primary school children’s dispositional advertising literacy, while acknowledging these children’s own individual features. To this end, three surveys were conducted, resulting in four datasets linking information ...

The present dissertation has germinated from AdLit (short for Advertising Literacy), which is a nearly completed four-year interdisciplinary research project (2014- 2018) funded by VLAIO (Flanders Innovation & Entrepreneurship). This project is based on a collaboration between 19 researchers at four Flemish Universities (UGent, KUL, UA & VUB) and various stakeholders in the realm of policy, society, education and marketing. The main goal ...

Despite that contemporary advertising is decreasingly about persuading children through persuasive messages and increasingly about influencing them through implicit tactics, little attention has been given to how children may cope with advertising by understanding and evaluating the new advertising tactics. Drawing on 12 focus groups entailing 60 children of ages 9-11, this article investigates children’s advertising literacy by exploring their ...

As few studies focus on how children’s coping with advertising is affected by their environment, the present study uses multilevel analysis to explore the role of both primary (i.e. parents) and secondary socializing agents (i.e. classmates, teachers) in children’s advertising literacy. The results show that children’s cognitive advertising literacy and attitudes toward advertising are to a large extent determined by class-level processes. Their ...

Compared to traditional advertising formats, contemporary advertising is characterized by a more subtle, less intrusive commercial nature. Commercial messages are now frequently integrated in or merged with highly entertaining and fun media content, which distract the users from systematically and critically processing the content. This makes it difficult for consumers, especially young consumers with limited advertising literacy, to evaluate ...