Estratégias da mídia e os apelos comerciais para promoção dos produtos alimentícios

Abstract

Objective: To investigate the contents of advertisements about the foods in relation to the commercial appeals divulgated by means of internet and television. Material and Methods: An interpretative survey of advertisements broadcasted on media related to internet and television was conducted and for this purpose, it was taken into account the ones interlinked by the key words: alcoholic beverages, cookies, meats and meat derivatives, cereals and green vegetables, candies, processed meats, starchy food, milk and dairy products, oils and olive oil. The data have been represented in the form of relative frequency for each category and to test the significance of the differences it was performed a square chi test of expected equal proportions, at the levels of 5%.Results: The 154 advertisements surveyed were divided into 16 categories, where it was found that the main commercial appeals used singly or simultaneously were: stimulus of the eating object (21.1%), illusion/ fantasy (13.9%), family / friendship (13.2%) and flavor (13.2%). On the other hand, the commercial appeals used for spreading of foodstuffs were nutritional /dietary appeal (2%), price (1.7%) and critical awareness (1%). Conclusion: The media involved with food industry makes use of artifices, mainly emotional and affective, ones to attract the attention of consumers and aggregate the consumption of the product to a sensation of pleasure, with social rewards and satisfaction of the ego. Normally, they do not possess informative character but rather persuasive ones, appealing to the consumer’s appetite. Those results call the attention to greater investments in policy programs which aim at the nutrition education, making the subject more critical and more autonomous in the formation of their eating habits.