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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Susan E. Middlestadt, PhD¹, Jesse Gelwicks², Junette McWilliams², and Rachel C. Gross, PhD, CHES². (1) Applied Health Science, Indiana University, 116 HPER, Bloomington, IN 47405-4801, 812/856-5768, semiddle@indiana.edu, (2) Center for Applied Behavioral and Evaluation Research, Academy for Educational Development, 1825 Connecticut Ave, Washington, DC 20009

Background: Building capacity to conduct solid consumer research is vital to the success of tobacco control development of effective counter-marketing campaigns. The tobacco industry uses a variety of consumer, advertising, and marketing research strategies in developing its marketing and public relations campaigns.

Purpose: The purpose of this presentation is to describe a number of marketing and consumer research techniques used by the tobacco industry and to suggest how these techniques can be used to develop and evaluate counter-marketing campaigns.

Methods: Internal tobacco industry documents dealing with marketing and advertising research available through the Master Settlement Agreement were analyzed to identify research techniques and approaches that might be useful to the public health community interested in tobacco prevention and control.

Results: The analysis of internal tobacco industry documents revealed the following research techniques: concept and message testing using a forced exposure national probability sample survey method; testing of negative as well as positive messages to prepare for potential responses by the opposition; repeated waves of monitoring during evaluation of campaigns; and over-sampling of key populations like “ad awares” and opinion leaders. For each of these techniques, this presentation will outline the tobacco industry approach, show documents describing that approach, and discuss the implications for counter-marketing research.

Learning Objectives:

• Participants will be able to identify consumer and advertising reseach methods that might be useful in developing and evaluating counter-marketing programs

Keywords: Research, Social Marketing

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Not Answered