Hypothesis identification in article analysis

Food Marketing to Children in Australia:

Based on a research conducted on marketing of food to children in Australia, the hypothesis in the journal is an inductive hypothesis. Given that an inductive hypothesis is an overview based on specific observations, the hypothesis was for the purpose of proposing a policy for organizing food marketing based on Australian research on food marketing to children. The theory was also developed to demonstrate how the proposed framework can be used in identifying knowledge gaps in examining food marketing to children in Australia. The proposed framework identified the need of classifying research on food marketing to children in Australia to prevent replication of research and provide guidance in future policy making.

In addition to proposed restrictions on unhealthy food marketing to children and Australian food marketing research in the last decade, the hypothesis included business, medical and marketing records. Discussion with experts, specific media, web-listed reports and reference lists were some of the other areas in which the review was conducted. This hypothesis classified the investigations according to their major focus which included exposure, effects of exposure, regulations and breach of regulations. However, investigations that had more than either of these categories were documented as such.

While the effects category examined the media types such as broadcast and print media, the effects of exposure category analyzed results of food marketing such as actions and attitudes. On the other hand, the regulations class evaluated both the kind and level of directive applying to food marketing. The final category sought to identify cases where marketing regulations had been desecrated in food marketing to children. Most importantly, the proposed framework divided marketing media into broadcast and non-broadcast advertising.

Article Summary:

Research on food marketing to children in Australia has been conducted in the previous ten years with most of these investigations focusing on television advertising and exposure. According to these findings, a child's food preferences, purchase demands and consumption has been largely influenced by food marketing (Chapman et al., 2009). Most of the programs that advocate for healthy eating are slowly becoming unsuccessful because of the impact of food marketing. These unhealthy food advertisements are not only the reverse of dietary suggestions but they are also unnecessary in prevention of obesity.

According to the findings, broadcast media marketing has a significant impact as compared to non-broadcast advertising. In fact, television advertising constitutes the highest percentage of food advertisements to children given that most of these adverts are during children-related programs. However, more than eighty percent of these television adverts with persuasive marketing are for unhealthy foods and contain promotional characters and premium offers. While various televisions adverts were in breach of Children's Television Standards, one of the findings proposed regulatory changes to food advertising to children. Most of the non-broadcast food advertisements were also tilted toward unhealthy foods with most of them being in areas close to schools.

As mentioned earlier, commercial television advertising has taken the center stage of majority of research on food marketing to children in Australia. This focus on commercial television advertising can largely be attributed to the lack of information on non-broadcast food advertising. Notably, there have been no Australian researches that directly examine the effects of food advertising on children's food purchases or consumption manners. Furthermore, the focus of international research on food marketing to children has also been television advertising.