Role Of Cigarette Companies’ Promotion And Advertisement In The Tobacco Use

Abstract

Tobacco use kills nearly six million people worldwide each year. Sadly, of the more than 6 million tobacco-related deaths which are caused every year across the world, one-sixth happen in our country - India alone. Though the ill-effects of tobacco addiction are well-known, its consumption hasn't gone down. The smokers have a bias attitude towards their act. Even aware of the fact they are doing harm to their health and society, they try to justify it because they feel overconfident about themselves and think that smoking elevates their high self-esteem. Therefore, the cause of failure of anti-smoking advertising to reach youths due to their optimism bias is evident. If the smoker feels that he or she is healthy enough and does not fear sickness after consuming the cigarettes he turns a deaf ear to all the advises and messages conveyed to him. So, they will ignore the anti-smoking advertisement by all means which becomes a major challenge to convince them for the harm they are doing to themselves. The government and its associated bodies/agencies are taking lot of initiatives to reduce the consumption of tobacco. Tobacco advertisement and promotions are clearly on the rise, In India cigarette companies spend almost 15% of their total revenue on advertisement and promotions. Due to stringent law of COTPA, cigarette companies have come with innovative ideas to promote their brands, like usage of more and more Point of sales material, Incentivizing the retailers and giving discounts to retails outlet, digital promotion of brand by giving lucrative gifts to smokers etc. Introduction Every day, children and youth in India are being exposed to a wide array of persuasive, ambitious, youth oriented, coveted commercial advertisements encouraging the use of tobacco products. Smoking is the most ordinary form of recreational drug used among Youth. Everyone knows smoking is bad for health but only few people, however, realize the different ways in which it great harm to individual’s mind and body. Smoking cigarette harms nearly every part of the human body. Smoking is a major reason of death and permanent disability than any single disease. As per World Health Organization (WHO), nearly 6 million human beings worldwide die due to smoking cigarettes. Media is undoubtedly the majorly used source to publicize information and create awareness among the people & society. The inherent health hazards of smoking have caused government to launch Anti-smoking campaigns every year to curb and control tobacco smoking. The First legislation in India regarding tobacco was the Cigarettes (Regulation of Production, Supply and Distribution) Act, 1975, which mandated statutory health warnings on all cigarettes packs since 1975. The Anti-Smoking campaign emerged since smoking ban in public places in the early 20’s. In India, anti-smoking campaign started by the display of pictorial health warning on all tobacco products in 2008 as people easily relate to what they see. As per WHO report over 2 million, out of the existing 100 million smokers in India, had enrolled themselves in the first year of quit tobacco initiative of Indian Government started in the year 2016.

An evaluation by the health ministry shows that an average of about 7 percent enrolled participants both smokers and smokeless tobacco consumers has demonstrated intention to quit tobacco. For Tobacco companies to maintain current level of tobacco uses and revenues requirements, aggressive addition of new smokers are required, including children, youth and women are most likely source of new smokers. Review of Literature According to internal surveys of tobacco companies 89% of respondent’ age group 30-39 years who ever smoked daily tried his first cigarette at age of 11 years. 18. 62% by the age of 16 years and over 92% of respondent were found smoking cigarette regularly before age 20 years. These trends have caused a growing demand for role of marketing (advertising and other promotional activities) in making tobacco use attractive to children and youths and in encouraging them to use cigarette and smokeless tobacco. The trend for girls to begin smoking at an earlier age began between 2015-2016, another emerging trend observed during the same period in tobacco use more and more, youths began using smokeless tobacco products like E cigarettes. What factors have contributed to lessen the declining smoking rates and to increased rates of tobacco uses among children and youths, but have proven to be less effective in sustaining tobacco uses by adults. Public health agencies suggest that youth have a heightened sensitivity to image advertising and promotion themes at a time in their own lives when they are struggling to define their own identities. Cigarettes advertisement are often evocative and play off adolescence development challenges, with addition to positioning the brand message to appeal to specific groups defined by social class, to show them apart from crowd, attention seeking behavior of youth. Meyrick mentioned that the message of advertising became more effective if the target audience experienced a feeling of involvement towards anti-smoking advertisements, besides, youth might have optimistic bias on them. This was majorly because they felt overconfident about themselves and had self-esteem which might cause the failure of anti-smoking advertising to reach them due to their optimism bias. Wolburg mentioned that social anti-smoking advertising was usually not effective, majorly because advertising messages generally encouraged consumption rather than discouraging consumption behavior due to media being the wrong platform for Promoting anti consumption message like “don’t smoke” Sly et al. , reveal that these awareness campaigns not only have direct effect, but also an indirect effect on smoking behavior of an individual, which goes through its effects on perceived influence of message theme and individual anti-smoking attitudes. Tobacco advertising and promotions are clearly on the rise, In India cigarette companies spend almost 15% of their total revenue on advertisement and promotions. Due to stringent law of COTPA, cigarette companies have come with innovative ideas to promote their brands like.

1. Usage of more and more point of sales material
2. Incentivizing the retailers and giving discounts to retails outlet
3. Free sampling including lucrative gifts/ merchandising to smokers.

In 2004, India was the first countries to ratify the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) treaty. The FCTC pact has 181 members and contains a raft of anti-smoking provisions, including tobacco taxes, warning labels on cigarette packs and advertising bans. Forms of Cigarette advertisement and promotion

Advertising

• Point of Sale-(POS) Tobacco companies pay retailers to allow them to do point of sales visibility in forms of counter posters, signage on shop, since COTPA 2003, allows the Point of Sale visibility.
• Internet: With the rise of various youth oriented YouTube channels, promotion and endorsing of various cigarette brand is becoming popular among cigarette companies. Being youth primary audience of such YouTube channel, and having zero censor, this channel has emerged as very vital platform for Cigarette Companies promotion.

Promotion

Merchandise such as Tobacco-branded T shirts given to retailers, backpacks, hats. Non Smokers are more prone to get attracted to smoking to get these merchandising for example Ferrari Lighter, Pen, and backpacks distributed by Phillips Morris.

Product display at retail outlets at favorable spots, retailers get paid from tobacco companies in form of display payment for this. A specific Planogramming (a predefined sequence of putting cigarette packets, i. e. from High MRP to Low MRP and Based on length of Cigarette, intentionally avoiding the Graphical Health Warning Side of the packet visibility) is maintained by retailer/ company promoters at retail to better communicate with smokers. CBU Visibility: In accordance with COTPA, (which doesn’t restrict product stacking in outlets at candy and eye level,) also lot of dummy packets stacking is done to increase visibility. Cigarette Companies put lot of empty Cardboard Outer (CBU) which is a wholesale package of cigarette, where Graphical health warning rule of COTPA, doesn’t apply which is very appealing method to increase the product appeal by keeping it at candy and eye level. Anticipating future advertising restriction, tobacco companies have moved from traditional form of advertisement to Point of sale promotion (within framework of COTPA 2003) and other subtle form of advertising and promotions. Research conducted in 2007, suggest that Point of sale advertising directly influence youth to start smoking and influence regular smoker to increase daily consumption.

Free Sampling: Often camouflaged in form of Product Survey Programme (PSP) Tobacco companies hire third party vendors to conduct PSP and give away free samples and gifts to the youth, at high footfall areas like Shopping malls, Educational Institution, Hostels and PG area. Monitoring of free sampling has been poor, and cigarette companies who contract out free sample distribution have taken no responsibility for cited violation in which minors have been given free samples. Kiosk Advertising: After the entrance of Phillips Morris in Indian market, competition between ITC (which hold almost 80% of the market share) and Phillip Morris has got intense. Phillip Morris goal is to make sure that “every adult Indian smoker should be able to buy Marlboro within walking distance”- as per Reuters report. In order to achieve this Tobacco companies gives free Kiosk to Retailer (entirely designed by tobacco companies and costing is sometimes as high as 10 lakhs for one Kiosk) In Jaipur only ITC, Godfrey Phillips and Phillip Morris combined has more than 700 Company provided kiosk in high public footfall areas. Sponsorship: Tobacco company’s sponsorship of bars and nightclubs has increased drastically, accompanied by cigarette brand paraphernalia, advertisements and entertainment events, bars and clubs. Though direct sponsorship to any event is prohibited but cigarette companies still give away a lot of money for sponsoring music concert, rock show, discos. Cigarette companies often flout the India’s tobacco control regulations as per their convenience. There are number of other ways also in which tobacco advertising and promotion increases consumption and exacerbates the harmful impact of tobacco use on public health. It can reduce and hamper current smoker’s willingness to quit smoking and on the other hand increase their smoking frequency and consumption, and lure youth to try tobacco and initiate regular use.

Objectives of Study:

• To examine the extent and types of cigarette advertisement and promotions done by cigarette companies and their impact.
• How cigarette companies prioritize their utilization of Retail space effective advertisement.
• How cigarette companies ensure product placement at prime location of outlets and cigarette company’s incentive plans for retailers.

Research Methodology

The study was conducted to understand the Impact of Cigarette companies’ promotion & advertising on change in smoking habits among youth. The scope of this study also covers the smoking routine, motivation and impact of Advertising and Promotion. In depth qualitative interviews with a convenience sample of 50 Tobacco retailers and Questionnaire based survey for 29 Smokers were conducted. Qualitative interviews were conducted with owner of retail outlets (as often more than one-person manage the retail outlet) those selling tobacco products, to learn about modes and means of Cigarette Companies display payouts and incentive plan, how it impacts retail layout in terms of products placement and find out possible visual impact of Cigarette companies display payouts. Retailers were shortlisted on the basis of number packets sold every day to ensure all volume class outlets are covered (1-20 Packets per day, 21-50 packets per day and 51- 100 packets per day and more than 100 packets in a day) then it was divided into main clusters of Jaipur covering Educational institutional areas, Shopping malls, Hostel, and PG area.

Data Analysis

A multi-step process was used to identify the key findings from the interviews. A subset of the major topics was assigned to cluster retailer comments accordingly. After reviewing transcripts, key themes were identified in major topic area.

Findings of the Study

• There is a correlation between cigarette advertisement and promotional efforts and the initiation and progression of cigarette among the youth.
• Certain cigarette brands are advertised and promoted to specific age group and gender, for example, Flake Excel (ITC brands) targets low income group students, and Classic Verve (Slims Cigarette) targets girls.
• An average of 13 cigarette ads and promotional materials, such as display racks, Brand Boards, Ad sign boards ( Themetical, non-branded), and branded functional items (example, clocks, t shirts, mugs, etc. ) were located at eye level, and prime location, often in the Back-wall of About 90% of typical Pan shops. The results suggest that Cigarette companies have made strategic use of Retail outlet space to promote their brands.
• Cigarette advertisement and promotion contributes to increase smoking continuum, from trial and experimentation to regular smoking and cigarette promotion increased the chances that youth would move from casual smoker to regular smoker.
• Since all display incentives are negotiated privately and are unique to each outlet, of the record retailer accepted that display payout to these retailers contribute to more than 30% (sometime it is as high as 60%, based on location of outlet) of their total income from cigarette. Careful observation and interview discussion suggest that display payout given by Tobacco companies to have a fair control over product placement, advertisement and price control of loose cigarette sales.
• Kiosk and Standalone outlet have different display and incentive Programme, Kiosk given by Cigarette company have standard visibility elements to ensure maximum space is taken by provider company visibility and retailer have little control over product placement of competition products, whereas Standalone outlets have more control over product placement and better negotiation power to enroll them for display payouts and other volume linked incentive plans.
• Imported cigarette (smuggled) are threat to attract adolescence and youth smoker, as they do not carry Graphical Health Warning and cheaper rates increases the smoking frequency of regular smoker and lure adolescence for trial. Over 56% of smokers prefer attractive packaging of foreign smuggled brands which doesn’t adhere to Indian regulations like Pictorial Warning (GHW) on 85 percent of the cigarette packets.
• Due to steep rise in taxation on cigarette, smoking frequency has gone down, 74% smokers are willing to switch to cheaper smuggled cigarettes, smoker is looking for a cheaper option, so in order to curve the menace of Cigarette Taxes on Tobacco product is to be increased periodically, and more stringent laws should be made and serious efforts in the implementation these laws should be ensured.
• More than 2/3 of total retailer participants in at least one kind of payout plan/ incentive plan and very keen to be part of other tobacco company’s incentives plan, even retailer approaches to competitive tobacco companies to change their existing display layout for a better payout.
• Almost all Standlone outlets are ready to participate in more than one cigarette company’s incentive Programme to earn more, more than 80% of targeted cluster outlet were found to be participating in more than one Cigarette company incentive plans

The only legal advertising venue allowed in India for the Tobacco industry is “on Pack” and Point of sales advertisement. More than 80% of the respondent believed that plain packaging would reduce the attractiveness, appeal, and promotional value of the cigarette pack, over 60% believed that packaging would help in reducing experimentation and initiation of Cigarette among youth and over 80% believed that it would motivates user to quit/reduce usage. Conclusion Tobacco companies are concentrating their marketing efforts at the point-of-sale and Kiosk advertisement to the extent that the store is their primary communication channel with customers. As a result, all Retailers regardless of age or smoking status are exposed to pro-smoking messages. Given the financial resources spent by Cigarette companies in stores, this venue warrants closer scrutiny by researchers and tobacco control advocates. The retail outlet is the major communication medium between the Cigarette companies and their current smokers and future smokers. To stimulate push sale of their products, the tobacco companies offers a variety of incentive. For Jaipur town itself Cigarette companies spends a whopping 1. 5 crore per month, for retailer display incentive, product discounts, these expenditures are intended to increase demand and to ensure proper availability, visibility and freshness of their products to the regular smokers. The WHO, has proposed a 30 percent reduction in tobacco use globally in 2025. The Global narrative on tobacco control is increasingly exploring the concept of Tobacco endgame, which envisions reducing tobacco prevalence and availability to minimal levels. This would require Tobacco Control measures be strictly complied as per FCTC guidelines and innovative measure beyond FCTC be introduced in countries having political commitment to end the tobacco epidemic in the country.

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