Measuring brand awareness as a component of eating habits in children: The development of the IBAI questionnaire in Georgia

BACKGROUND: Environmental factors play a key role in obesity development. In recent years, it has been advocated particularly the role of food advertising in promoting the consumption of energy-dense food. OBJECTIVE: The aim of the present work is to develop an instrument to estimate Georgian children's brand awareness. METHODS:We developed the IBAI (International BrandAwareness Instrument), an age-Appropriate instrument that consists of twelve sheets with pictures of food logos to test children's recall and recognition of brands. The IBAI was presented to a sample of 120 children aged 3-11 years, enrolled in the city of Tbilisi (Georgia). RESULTS: Referring to the total score of each child, 46.7% of children showed a very-low brand awareness, followed by medium-low brand awareness (28.3%), medium-high brand awareness (19.2%) and very high brand awareness (5.8%). CONCLUSIONS: Even though most of the Georgian children enrolled showed a very-low brand awareness, considering that children's scores for the IBAI ranged in all the four identified categories, we can assume that this instrument allow distinguishing different kinds of children's brand awareness. © 2017 - IOS Press and the authors. All rights reserved.