Mom and Dad may make the money, but it’s the kids who decide how to spend it. According to James McNeal, a marketing consultant and author of Kids as Consumers: A Handbook of Marketing to Children, youngsters influenced how $1.2 trillion was spent last year. “Up to age 16, kids are determining most expenditures in the household,” McNeal says. “This is very attractive to marketers.” Indeed, many businesses are tinkering with how best to help kids with their (and their parents’) purchasing decisions—and some perhaps are taking potentially unethical liberties. The site Webkinz caters to kids who want to raise virtual pets there, but some items within the Webkinz universe cost money. Now, kids can earn virtual cash or items for their pets by clicking on some of the site’s many ads. Isabella Sweet, for instance, clicked on an ad for “Judy Moody and the NOT Bummer Summer” each day for seven days to earn virtual furniture for her pets. Her mother, Elizabeth Sweet, is a doctoral student at the University of California-Davis whose dissertation is on how companies market kids’ toys. She wasn’t even aware of this particular technique until her daughter told her. “They’re doing this right under the noses of parents,” she says. (USA Today)
