It has commonly been assumed that very young children (below 7 years) have a problem in understanding advertising messages. Although there is an increasing awareness of the child’s role in the family decision-making process among academic and corporate circles, very young children, i.e., pre-schoolers, however, are still deemed as the largely unintelligible segment. This paper reviews the research done in this area over the last 30-40 years, and draws out the major findings regarding the young child and his information-processing capabilities with respect to advertising.

Children, as a whole, represent a substantial segment of the consumer market in terms of their personal needs and wants. This market is well expected to grow in the next few years, with a spending capacity of an excess of US$150 bn a year (MCI Asia Pacific Study, Group M, 2003). In addition to being important end consumers for products like chocolates, ice creams, clothing, toys and entertainment, children are known to exert considerable influence on product consumption for almost all categories today. It has been shown that children learn their basic consumption patterns and attitudes towards promotional efforts at this early stage in their lives (Barry 1978). For these reasons, it becomes important that practitioners and academicians alike learn and understand the children’s market.

Studies focusing on very young children have been few in number due to the supposition that children are not capable of giving intelligible responses. This assumption of children’s ineptness in understanding advertising messages was based on a particular interpretation of academic studies conducted during the 1970s that relied upon the Piagetian doctrine of human development. The traditional Piagetian doctrine was noted for its use of oral tasks designed to test for the articulation of key concepts (Piaget 1926). However, the potential problem with the conclusion that children do not understand commercial intent is that the required tasks in terms of articulation may be too hard for the children (Macklin 1987).