Children and brands, that relationship possible? A view from the mascots

Abstract

This paper aims to present the reflections about the relationship between children and pets mediated brands. Therefore, we integrated the theoretical knowledge about the topics concerned by Macklin (1996), Ji (2002), Royal Court (2007), Lancaster (1997), Perez (2011), John (1999) among others and results from conducting focus groups with children conducted in the city of Porto in Portugal, aiming to investigate three specific semantics: abstract vs. figurative, vs round. vs. angular and symmetrical. asymmetrical. A summary of the results indicates that older children prefer and better recognize the stimuli and figurative, the newest recognize and prefer more abstract favorably. In round vs. semantic category. angular, it appears that the female children react more favorably to the stimulus round and the male to stimuli angular. At the category level vs symmetrical. Asymmetric female children prefer symmetrical stimuli, and these are more easily recognized by older children, children prefer male asymmetric stimuli and these are more easily recognized by the new.