Summary and Response Essay (Kid Kustomers)

Jovan Tewira

English 11000 – B

March 4^th, 2015

Summary and Response to “Kid Kustomer”

            Advertisement has become a powerful tool in influencing kids these days. Eric Schlosser, a well-known journalist and writer, in his essay, “Kid Kustomers,” argues that American companies have affected young children to buy their products through advertisements. He backs up this argument by doing the following: first, he describes how James U. McNeal writes about the ways in which kids persuade their parents to buy them the things that they want; next, he defines the importance of relation between the children’s dreams and the companies’ marketing in how they attract the kids to buy their products through Dan S. Acuff’s essay, “What Kids Buy and Why”; last, by illustrating the past experiences of how the ads have affected children’s interests. Schlosser appears to write in hopes that his readers will be aware of how ads influence kids these days in order to help parents and being able to prevent their kids from the negative impacts that caused by the industry groups. The author’s formal and highly analytical tone suggests that he writes for all American parents and American companies.

            In his article, Schlosser said, “Today children are being targeted by phone companies, oil companies, and automobile companies as well as clothing stores and restaurant chains (353).” From this statement, he tried to explain how ads these days persuaded children to buy their products. He explained it by giving some research studies that were done by the professors from well-known universities. Through reading this article, I found that he only gave the readers the information or facts about the effect of advertisement toward children. I totally agree with Schlosser’s argument, saying that the ads only impact children negatively. It impacts children negatively because it makes them to be more “needy” toward their parents. Children become more selfish in getting what they want by asking their parents, constantly. This can be seen through one of the Texas A&M University’s professor; James U. McNeal’s article that said every child has seven methods in persuading their parents to buy them what they wanted. I feel like all of these tactics that Prof. McNeal said, are true because when I was a child, I literally did every single thing in his categorized “juvenile nagging tactics”. Also, the other fact that I agree with is when he explained about the research by Dan S. Acuff, “What Kids Buy and Why (1997)”. Acuff said, “The technique purports to create imaginary characters who perfectly fit the targeted age groups level of cognitive and neurological development (356).” I experienced this too when I was around 10 years old. I remember that I went to a McDonald, and there was this big figure. It was Ronald McDonald. At that time, it was very popular. I was fascinated and I nagged my parents to buy me the toys that I wanted. Eventually, they bought them for me, and now I realize that marketing is such a really strong tool that could affect people, especially children, greatly. I think that mostly, it only gives negative influences toward children.

            I am impressed by how Schlosser informs the readers about what he wants to say without being so judgmental toward the topic that he discusses. But, I feel like the article is really plain and the feeling of the author toward his essay is not so clear. This article only gives the readers the facts about the relationship between ads and children. I think that he can give his own opinion or comment in his essay, and also he could be more sincere about his feeling in his idea by discussing more about how the ads really impact the children negatively from his point of view. By doing that this article would be more interesting to read and the readers could understand more clearly what Schlosser really wanted to say through this article.