An Econometric Study of Advertising and Cigarette Demand in the United Kingdom

This article reports the results of an empirical investigation of the effect of total cigarette advertising on aggregate demand for cigarettes in the United Kingdom. The research is conducted within the framework of the Becker-Murphy model of rational addictive behaviour, using time series spanning the period 1963–1992. No evidence is found in this research to back up the view that aggregate cigarette advertising has the effect of expanding total market demand for cigarettes.     

Cigarette pack and advertising displays at point of purchase: community demand for restrictions

Tobacco promotion influences tobacco consumption. Traditional forms of tobacco promotion have been heavily restricted in response to the harmful effects of tobacco. Tobacco displays at the point of purchase are increasingly important as a means of communicating brand imagery for the tobacco industry, especially when advertising is restricted at these points. Previous research has demonstrated that children exposed to tobacco advertising at the point of purchase have inflated perceptions of availability, use and popularity of tobacco. Internationally, laws are being debated and implemented to prohibit or restrict the display of tobacco at the point of purchase or put tobacco out of sight. Such measures would reduce tobacco product exposure and, hence, tobacco marketing among youth and the community. In South Australia, a ban on all cigarette advertising at the point of purchase was introduced in 2005. This study was designed to assess community support for restrictions on cigarette displays and advertising at the point of purchase. A telephone survey was conducted with a random sample of 2026 South Australian adults (aged 18 years and over) in July 2005. Overall, 63% of the community approved of a hypothetical total ban on cigarette displays at the point of purchase, with over three‐quarters believing this should happen in the next 12 months. A further 24% believed that cigarette displays should be restricted and 82% would approve of a ban on displays in stores that sell confectionary. Only 7% of adult smokers reported making their decision about the brand of cigarettes to buy at the point of purchase and 90% made their decision before they even entered the shop. The results strengthen arguments that cigarette displays are not necessary to maintain brand loyalty or to encourage brand switching of established smokers. Instead, the results make arguments more credible that cigarette displays normalize and promote smoking among young people and may also promote unplanned purchase or increased consumption among less frequent smokers or former smokers. Placing cigarettes out of sight would be unlikely to impact on brand choice for most smokers, who have already made up their mind before they enter the store.     

Children,Smoking and Advertising: The Evidence is There for Those Who Wish to See it (A Reply)

In a recent article in this journal, Colin McDonald (1993) criticized our research on cigarette advertising and children's smoking. This paper refutes each of his criticisms and shows that our research and that of others in this field provides a convincing argument that cigarette advertising does influence children's smoking. These arguments are now widely accepted, with the only prominent disagreement coming from those with most to lose—the tobacco industry.     

Can cigarette advertising be prohibited? Advertising and the First Amendment to the United States Constitution

Smoking has been considered a health problem virtually since its introduction to Europe in the 1500's. At various times, laws were enacted to attempt to control smoking, while cultivation of tobacco became economically more and more important. The development of widespread recognition of the health consequences of smoking has led to numerous suggestions that cigarette advertising be banned. However, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects freedom of the press. Analysis of the legal issues involved in such a ban requires consideration of the entire trend of Supreme Court decisions in the area of commercial speech. While it is not possible at this time to predict exactly how the Court would rule in this area, a comprehensive regulatory effort to reduce tobacco consumption could probably include a ban on tobacco advertising.     

Directing Advertising Copy Creativity through Benefit Segmentation

While much attention has been paid in the marketing and advertising literature to the more quantitative aspects of advertising such as the setting of advertising budgets, media selection, advertising scheduling and effectiveness measurement, relatively little attention has been paid to the generation of effective advertising copy and messages. This area of advertising decision-making, in many ways the most crucial element of any advertising campaign, is an essentially creative element. It is an area, however, where effective marketing research can guide the creative process more efficiently. This article describes the use of conjoint measurement techniques to conduct benefit segmentation which can, in turn, be used to direct advertising copy thinking. The approach is illustrated with reference to a small-scale study of the United Kingdom king-size cigarette market.     

Dealing with complaints about advertising in Australia: the importance of regulatory self-discipline

Many countries have imposed restrictions on tobacco advertising in the belief that these will curb tobacco consumption. These beliefs rely on the ‘strong’ theory of advertising, which holds that advertising exerts a powerful persuasive influence on consumers' behaviour. However, the research examining the advertising-consumption relationship has reached contradictory conclusions and led some to argue that such bans are ineffective.

In contrast, proponents of the ‘weak’ theory of advertising suggest that advertising reinforces rather than initiates consumers' behaviour. This paper explores tobacco advertising restrictions in the context of the weak theory and suggests that the apparent failure of increased restrictions to depress either juvenile or aggregate tobacco consumption is unsurprising. The paper concludes that decisions about tobacco advertising restrictions are political and should be based on ethical principles and not on assumed behavioural consequences, which are unsupported by modern advertising theory.     

Navigating the Complexities of Grounded Theory Research in Advertising

Grounded theory is a well-established methodology within the social sciences and more recently within the field of advertising. This article looks at how it has been used in advertising research and in particular two key areas: the consumption of advertising and the world of advertising creatives. The article concentrates on common mistakes found in grounded theory papers submitted for publication in leading journals. It offers 10 important points for consideration that should help authors improve the quality of their research by avoiding such errors. The article concludes by suggesting potential areas of advertising where grounded theory may be applied in future research.     

Policies for the prevention of cigarette consumption: the case of Spain

This paper describes the causes that generate the relatively high – among comparable OECD countries – prevalence of tobacco consumption in Spain. It evaluates the current policy interventions geared towards reducing incidence and prevalence. It argues that, despite a recent major breakthrough in legislation on advertising and consumption in public places, one of the major shortcomings of current policies is the lack of an effective fiscal policy. This lack of effectiveness is explained by some idiosyncrasies of the Spanish cigarette market that call for specific measures.     

Phenomenology of Aesthetic Organising--Ways Towards Aesthetically Responsive Organizations

Through explication of a visual research method, this paper theorizes how masculine identity interacts with consumption—of imagery, products, desires, and passions in advertising and consumer culture. We analyze the male body as a discursive “effect” created at the intersection of consumption and several marketing discourses such as advertising, market segmentation, and visual communication, balancing between brand strategy—what the marketer intends—and brand community—the free appropriation of meaning by the market. The paper’s contribution rests in extending previous work on male representation into historical, ontological, and photographic realms, providing a necessary complement between understanding advertising meaning as residing within managerial strategy or wholly subsumed by consumer response. We argue that greater awareness of the connections between the traditions and conventions of visual culture and their impact on the production and consumption of advertising images leads to enhanced ability to understand how advertising works as a representational system and signifying practice.     

Context effects of TV programme-induced interactivity and telepresence on advertising responses

This article provides an analysis of the relationship between annual advertising expenditures and sales, using a time series regression procedure, for beer, wine, and liquor sold in the United States from 1971 to 2012. Information from these four decades provides a comprehensive analysis of the relationships of numerous variables with aggregate alcohol category sales. Even though per capita alcohol consumption has not changed much throughout this period, alcohol advertising media expenditures for all alcohol beverages have increased almost 400% since 1971. This study has provided evidence of consumption changes across categories of alcohol beverages over the past 40-plus years with the preponderance of those changes significantly correlated to fluctuations in demography, taxation and income levels – not advertising. Despite other macro-level studies with consistent findings, the perception that advertising increases consumption exists. The findings here indicate that there is either no relationship or a weak one between advertising and aggregate category sales. Therefore, advertising restrictions or bans with the purpose of reducing consumption may not have the desired effect. Implications on policy decisions regarding advertising controls are addressed.     

Alcohol Advertising: Orientations and Influence

The paper presents an analysis of the effects of televised alcohol beverage advertising on the consumption of alcohol among a sample of US teenagers. While no effects of exposure on total consumption are demonstrated for the total sample, consistent with other research on alcohol advertising effects, the present analysis reveals the importance of ‘orientations towards advertising’ as linkages between exposure and consumption behaviour. Specifically, a social utility orientation, involving learning of normative expectations about drinking, and a vicarious utility orientation, involving identification with models in alcohol beverage commercials, are shown to be mediating factors which condition the effects of advertising exposure.

‘Alcohol Advertising: Content and Controversy’, by the same author, appeared in the last issue of this journal.     

Some Economic Issues and Policy Implications of Studies on the Competitive Effects of Advertising Expenditures

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to examine some of the litersture in Economics that concerns itself with the economics of advertising and to present some of the public policy implications of the results of these studies.

It is found that it is unlikely that advertising expenditures are subject to increasing returns to scale, thus probably do not lead to an increased concentration of industry for this reason.

A study is presented that deals with competition by advertising expenditures and product differentiation in the U.S. cigarette industry. It is found that advertising expenditures. during the 1956–68 period, were not effective in obtaining sales from competitors, although they may have had the affect of inducing new customers to buy the product. The effect of anti-smoking commercials is examined, and it is found that. although they may have had some effect on cigarette smoking. it is doubtful that they provide the impetus for the decreases in advertising expenditures in this particular industry.     

The effectiveness of advertising appeals: A culturally-derived power perspective

Based on the perspective of culturally-derived power, we explore the influence of advertising appeals on attitudes towards advertisement, as well as their psychological mechanisms and boundary conditions through three experiments. The results indicate that individuals primed with personalized (vs. socialized) power have a better advertising attitude towards self-benefiting (vs. other-benefiting) appeal advertising via processing fluency. In addition, we find that consumption situations moderate the interaction effect between culturally-derived power and advertising appeals on advertising attitudes. The research findings enrich the theoretical research on advertising appeals and provide practical implications for companies to improve the effectiveness of their advertisements.     

Social Consumer Neuroscience: Neurophysiological Measures of Advertising Effectiveness in a Social Context

The application of neurophysiological methods to study the effects of advertising on consumer purchase behavior has seen an enormous growth in recent years. However, little is known about the role social settings have on shaping the human brain during the processing of advertising stimuli. To address this issue, we first review previous key findings of neuroscience research on advertising effectiveness. Next, we discuss traditional advertising research into the effects social context has on the way consumers experience advertising messages and explain why marketers, who aim to predict advertising effectiveness, should place participants in social settings, in addition to the traditional ways of studying consumer brain responses to advertising in social isolation. This article contributes to the literature by offering advertising researchers a series of research agendas on the key indicators of advertising effectiveness (attention, emotion, memory, and preference). It aims to improve understanding of the impact social context has on consumers' neurophysiological responses to advertising messages.     

A Dual-Step and Dual-Process Model of Advertising Effects: Implications for Reducing the Negative Impact of Advertising on Children's Consumption Behaviour

Children are important targets of advertising campaigns from companies. However, children have been found to be particularly vulnerable to negative effects of advertising, and protecting children from these effects is an important task of consumer policy. Two important aspects have to be considered in this task. First, advertising affects judgements and behaviour not only during ad exposure but also in delayed consumption and purchase contexts. Second, advertising operates largely at an implicit level—during ad exposure as well as in consumption decisions. The current article introduces a dual-step (ad exposure vs. purchase/consumption) and dual-process (implicit vs. explicit) model of advertising effects on children. The model is based on a review of implicit advertising effects and implicit mechanisms of self-control. It implies that consumer policies intending to prevent undesired advertising effects should support interventions that strengthen advertising and purchasing literacy and, in addition, implicit self-control mechanisms in children. As self-control in consumption decisions is largely relevant for, and learned during, shopping and consumption, such interventions should focus on educating parents or other primary caregivers because they are the most likely persons to accompany children in such situations and have a great influence on children's implicit learning.     

The Advertising–price Relationship: Theory and Evidence

The relationship between advertising and price is important because the welfare effect of advertising depends upon the price effect of advertising. We attempt to provide a better understanding of the theoretical relationship between advertising and price. We establish theoretical conditions sufficient for advertising to raise prices. This will occur, for example, when firms play a supermodular game – a structure that considers the type of advertising (i.e., persuasive, image creating, or informative) and the effect that advertising has on a firm’s demand and costs. We also compare results from two simple duopoly models, one with horizontal and the other with vertical differentiation, and find that only the model with horizontal differentiation is supermodular for the forms of advertising that are thought to raise price (e.g., persuasive advertising). In consideration of these theoretical issues, we then develop an empirical model to determine whether advertising raises prices in the US brewing and cigarette industries.     

Mitigating consumer ethnocentrism via advertising and media consumption in a transitional market

Consumer ethnocentrism is considered an important barrier to consumption in the global marketplace. Although the concept of consumer ethnocentrism has been investigated over many years in developed markets, there is little research addressing the mitigation of consumer ethnocentrism in transitional economies, which are becoming increasingly important in the global marketplace. One such market, Russia, represents a major potential investment opportunity for global marketers. In this study, we undertake an exploratory study investigating consumer ethnocentrism’s negative influence on Russians’ attitudes towards foreign products and their frequency of purchase of foreign products. We also demonstrate that the influence of consumer ethnocentrism on the frequency of purchase of foreign products is moderated by consumers’ exposure to mass communication (i.e. exposure to television, exposure to foreign movies) and by marketing communication efforts (i.e. exposure to foreign product advertising, involvement with foreign product advertising). In addition to extending theoretical research to a transitional, non-Western context, the empirical results also provide implications for international advertising practitioners.     

The unbearable lightness of advertising: culture,media and the rise of advertising in socialist Bulgaria

This article offers a historical analysis of the conceptualization of advertising both as a propaganda tool and as a means of encouraging consumption in socialist Bulgaria. By exploring the public discourse on the function and importance of advertising in the popular media over the last 50 years, it seeks to explore the approach used to define the need for advertising, offering an insight into the complex ways in which socialist ideologies recognized the “inevitable” logic of the market – on one hand, acknowledging the need for consumption and on the other, recognizing the utility of advertising, which promotes and supports this very consumption as it sustains the operation of a commercially viable social system.     

Green Demarketing in Advertisements: Comparing “Buy Green” and “Buy Less” Appeals in Product and Institutional Advertising Contexts

This research compares consumer response to traditional green advertising appeals to that of less conventional, “green demarketing” (GD) appeals—messages by for-profit companies encouraging reduced category consumption for the sake of the environment. Rather than encouraging greener consumption, modern environmentalism calls for decreased consumption overall, a trend reflected in recent advertising campaigns (e.g., Patagonia's “Don't Buy This Jacket”). Despite its potential impact and unconventionality, research on GD in general is sparse, and no empirical research has examined consumer response to GD appeals relative to traditional green appeals. In three experiments, we find that, in the context of product advertising, consumers' attitudes for green ads are more favorable than those for GD ads, mediated by greater inferences of genuine environmental concern. However, we find the reverse pattern in the context of institutional ads. Further, an “anti-consumption amplifier” message embedded in the ad—espousing the potential harm of overconsumption—further boosts favorable consumer attitudes for the GD institutional ad relative to its traditional green counterpart. Importantly, we assess all effects while controlling for consumers' individual levels of green consumerism, such that implications may be applied more generally rather than to a specific segment of green consumers.