Prevalence of child-directed and general audience marketing strategies on the front of beverage packaging: The case of Chile

Abstract

© Copyright The Authors 2017. Objective Front-of-package (FOP) marketing strategies of a wide variety of beverages were catalogued to examine the prevalence of each strategy prior to a sweeping Chilean restriction of child-directed marketing aimed at reducing obesity-related disease among Chile's youth. Design Photographs of 1005 beverage packages were quantitatively content-analysed to code whether a variety of child-directed, health-oriented and other marketing strategies (e.g. sales promotions) were present on each product's FOP. Strategies were then analysed based on beverages' product category, total sugar, energy and tax status (beverages with added sugars are taxed at different rates). Setting Photographs were taken in six urban supermarkets in Santiago, Chile, representing five different supermarket chains. Results Beverages using child-directed characters or nature/fruit references were higher in total sugar and beverages with child-directed characters or childhood/family refe