Rates of childhood obesity are alarmingly high and increasing each year. Studies have shown that obese children are more likely to become obese adults and are likely to suffer with numerous health consequences like coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, and Type II diabetes, among others. Studies also indicate that television viewing and exposure to advertising for food products influences children's attitudes toward, food preferences and food purchase requests for foods with low nutritional value. It is important to better understand the role of media in childhood obesity and to learn how media may be used to address this issue in a positive way. This book focuses on communication and media research that can have an impact on reducing childhood obesity. Emphasis is placed on topics related to how the media communicate health-related messages about food, nutrition and diet that influence childhood obesity. Particular emphasis is on the new media, given the fact that media now have more central roles in socializing today’s children and youth than ever before. Advertising and marketing messages reach young consumers through a variety of vehicles – broadcast and cable television, radio, magazines, computers through the Internet, music, cell phones – and in many different venues – homes, schools, child-care settings, grocery stores, shopping malls, theaters, sporting events, and even airports. In addition, given the disparity in obesity rates between children of color and the general population, special attention is given to research on media targeting these populations.

Children's health has made tremendous strides over the past century. In general, life expectancy has increased by more than thirty years since 1900 and much of this improvement is due to the reduction of infant and early childhood mortality. Given this trajectory toward a healthier childhood, we begin the 21st-century with a shocking developmentâ€"an epidemic of obesity in children and youth. The increased number of obese children throughout the U.S. during the past 25 years has led policymakers to rank it as one of the most critical public health threats of the 21st-century. Preventing Childhood Obesity provides a broad-based examination of the nature, extent, and consequences of obesity in U.S. children and youth, including the social, environmental, medical, and dietary factors responsible for its increased prevalence. The book also offers a prevention-oriented action plan that identifies the most promising array of short-term and longer-term interventions, as well as recommendations for the roles and responsibilities of numerous stakeholders in various sectors of society to reduce its future occurrence. Preventing Childhood Obesity explores the underlying causes of this serious health problem and the actions needed to initiate, support, and sustain the societal and lifestyle changes that can reverse the trend among our children and youth.

Dynamic, rapid, and radical changes are transforming the communication professions, provoking major implications for ethics. Traditional boundaries blur as media converge; relentless competitive pressures cause some forms of communication to atrophy and permit others to explode; and technological advances occur daily. In this volume, a new generation of scholars take a fresh look at the manner in which ethical issues manifest themselves in their areas of research and suggest new agendas for future research. This book addresses a wide range of questions from a variety of communication professions. Contributors tackle such issues as how to define a journalist in an era when anyone can disseminate information to a global audience; how to use "advergames," crowdsourcing, and facial recognition technology in advertising responsibly; and how to respond ethically in situations of public crisis communication, among many others. This volume will be critical reading for scholars and professionals in media, communication, and digital arts, as well as philosophy, government, public policy, business, and law.

Exploring both the theoretical and the applied aspects of the role ethics plays in marketing, this Handbook analyzes key issues in order to advance our understanding and provide an overview of the state of the art in this vital field.

This book honours the contribution Professor Pascale Quester has made to academia and higher education, through her research, teaching, and leadership. It provides readers with a comprehensive, contemporary perspective on marketing practice with an emphasis on the role of marketing in making a difference. Organisations are interwoven with the society in which they operate and are thus commonly expected to shoulder some responsibility in advancing that society. While there has been significant academic and practitioner focus on corporate social responsibility (CSR), research is often limited to the organisational benefits and implementation of CSR initiatives, this book presents a broader perspective. It highlights a variety of players and approaches that are making a difference to their various stakeholder groups, specifically in the areas of sponsorship, consumer behaviour, education, health and innovation.

In the past few decades, attention has turned to the need to apply commercial marketing concepts, knowledge, and techniques to promote goods, services, and actions that enhance consumer well-being and social welfare through socially and environmentally responsible advertising, for example, recycling promotions. Critics argue, however, that for-profit advertisers who endorse social responsibility are inherently serving commercial purposes and diluting the value of socially responsible advertising. Scholars in many fields—advertising, marketing, communications, and psychology—explore ways to encourage consumers, companies, and policymakers to adopt socially responsible behaviours, and to provide theoretical and practical insights regarding effective applications of pro-social and pro-environmental marketing messages. This book comprises ten chapters that contribute to advertising theory, research, and practice by providing an overview of current and diverse research that compares, contrasts, and reconciles conflicting views regarding social and environmental advertising; uncovering individual differences in perception of advertising messages and their consequences for social and environmental behaviours; reconciling societal and business interests; identifying a message factor that determines eco-friendly behaviours; and identifying source factors that enhance and weaken advertising effectiveness. This book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Advertising.

Marketing is among the most powerful cultural forces at work in the contemporary world, affecting not merely consumer behaviour, but almost every aspect of human behaviour. While the potential for marketing both to promote and threaten societal well-being has been a perennial focus of inquiry, the current global intellectual and political climate has lent this topic extra gravitas. Through original research and scholarship from the influential Mendoza School of Business, this book looks at marketing’s ramifications far beyond simple economic exchange. It addresses four major topic areas: societal aspects of marketing and consumption; the social and ethical thought; sustainability; and public policy issues, in order to explore the wider relationship of marketing within the ethical and moral economy and its implications for the common good. By bringing together the wide-ranging and interdisciplinary contributions, it provides a uniquely comprehensive and challenging exploration of some of the most pressing themes for business and society today.