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techniques does the industry use to fend off challenges to the policy response (industry ‘self regulation’), despite ample evidence of ineffectiveness [13]? The current paper confines itself to one aspect of alcohol marketing (what the industry calls ‘consumer education’). The field also needs to pay attention to the extent, nature and impact of stakeholder marketing. The engagement of producers and their front organizations in disaster relief (distributing water in bottles labelled with company name and logo [14]), international political events (Diageo’s sponsorship of the G8 Summit held at Gleneagles, Scotland in July 2005 [15]), strategically ambiguous Drinking Responsibly campaigns [16], conference sponsorship [17], publications (e.g. [18]) and policy development [19] is beginning to be documented. This stakeholder marketing, ubiquitous throughout the world, and its potential influence on the uptake of effective alcohol control policy, requires further elucidation and may turn out to be one of the most important contributions the research field could make to achieving effective change to reduce alcohol-related harm.
10. 11.
12. 13.
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16.
Declaration of interests None. Keywords
9.
17.
Alcohol, marketing, policy. 18. SALLY CASSWELL
Massey University, SHORE and Whariki Research Centre, School of Public Health, PO Box 6137, Wellesley Street, Auckland 1141, New Zealand. E-mail:
[email protected]
References 1. Meier P. S. Alcohol marketing research: the need for a new agenda. Addiction 2011; 106: 466–71. 2. Saffer H. Alcohol advertising and alcohol consumption: econometric studies. In: Martin S., Mail P., editors. The Effects of the Mass Media on the Use and Abuse of Alcohol. Rockville, MD: National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism; 1995. 3. Saffer H. Studying the effects of alcohol advertising on consumption. Alcohol Health Res World 1996; 20: 266–72. 4. Saffer H. Alcohol advertising and motor vehicle fatalities. Rev Econ Stat 1997; 79: 431–42. 5. Saffer H. Economic issues in cigarette and alcohol advertising. J Drug Issues 1998; 28: 781–93. 6. McGuiness T. The demand for beer, wine and spirits in the UK: 1956–1979. In: Grant M., Plant M., Williams A., editors. Economics and Alcohol: Consumption and Controls. London: Croom Helm; 1983, p. 238–42. 7. Gordon R., Hastings G., Moodie C. Alcohol marketing and young people’s drinking: what the evidence base suggests for policy. J Public Aff 2010; 10: 88–101. 8. European Spirits. Getting the facts right on alcohol advertising and consumption. European Spirits Organization; 2009. © 2011 The Authors, Addiction © 2011 Society for the Study of Addiction
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Available at: http://www.europeanspirits.org/documents/ Factsheets/CPAS0772009_Fact_Sheet_advertising.pdf (accessed 12 October 2010; archived by WebCite® at: http:// www.webcitation.org/5tQpPCypT). Snyder L., Milici F., Slater M., Sun H., Strizhakova Y. Effects of advertising exposure on drinking among youth. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med 2006; 160: 18–24. Saffer H., Dave D. Alcohol advertising and alcohol consumption by adolescents. Health Econ 2006; 15: 617–37. Thompson C. Interpreting consumers: a hermeneutical framework for deriving marketing insights from the texts of consumers’ consumption stories. J Mark Res 1997; 34: 438–55. Braillon A., Dubois G. Public health, politicians’ decisions, and the citizen. Health Policy 2009; 93: 225. Babor T., Caetano R., Casswell S., Edwards G., Giesbrecht N., Graham K. et al. Alcohol: No Ordinary Commodity, 2nd edn. London: Oxford University Press; 2010. IOGT International. Money from misery. 2006. Available at: http://www.iogt.org/viewarticle.php?id=330&type= sub&t=home (accessed 12 October 2010; archived by WebCite® at: http://www.webcitation.org/5tQpfWupv). Corporate watch. Diageo PLC—a corporate profile. 2005. Available at: http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/?lid= 1705 (accessed 12 October 2010; archived by WebCite® at: http://www.webcitation.org/5tQpoyQwV). Smith S., Atkin C., Roznowski J. Are ‘drink responsibly’ alcohol campaigns strategically ambiguous? Health Comm 2006; 20: 1–111. Babor T. Alcohol research and the alcoholic beverage industry: issues, concerns and conflicts of interest. Addiction 2009; 104: 34–47. International Center for Alcohol Policies. Beverage Alcohol Availability Controls. Washington, DC: ICAP; 2005. Bakke O., Endal D. Vested interests in addiction research and policy alcohol policies out of context: drinks industry supplanting government role in alcohol policies in sub-Saharan Africa. Addiction 2010; 105: 22–8.
ADVERTISING RESEARCH—CALLS FOR AN EVEN MORE AMBITIOUS AGENDA? I appreciate the thoughtful and thought-provoking contributions on our paper [1]. The commentators agree that the paper identifies valid research directions, but Jones [2] rightly points out that research agendas are not shaped only by scientists, and that we need more than ‘willing researchers’. Scientific progress is constrained by the lack of longer-term financial support, industry not being required to provide access to data, and some avenues of research being considered intrusive by ethics committees [2]. I also agree with Casswell [3] that to maximize the impact of new evidence we need to strive for a better understanding of how evidence can be used to inform the policy process, given a powerful pro-marketing lobby. Related to this, Casswell points out that a broad definition of marketing should include industry sponsorship of political events, lobbying and corporate social responsibility activity and that research is needed on the influences of such marketing on policy making. My paper Addiction, 106, 472–479
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focuses on the effects of alcohol marketing on consumption, but these are clearly important and complementary areas of research. The commentators also raised a number of points that I feel warrant further discussion. While we have long known about some of the weaknesses in the econometric literature [3], such papers are still being published, reviewed and cited by industry stake-holders and they continue to shape policy in many countries. I would argue that the main reason why this literature continues to be so influential is because there is an evidence need that scientists have not been able to meet: there are currently no accepted alternative methods to quantify population-wide marketing impact. This is why I tend to disagree with Casswell’s optimistic assessment that we have now moved beyond the limitations of the econometric approach [3]. There are indeed now good-quality longitudinal studies showing the size and cumulative impacts of certain types of advertising on youth populations. The studies on regional advertising budgets that were also mentioned are again youthspecific and the proportion that was spent on advertising relevant to this population remains unknown. As argued in the original paper, a proper consideration of targeting might result in substantially larger effect sizes, and thus at best such studies may provide information on the probable lower bounds of effect sizes for young people. Saffer [4] points to the recent neuro-economic model of addiction as an explanatory framework applicable to advertising effects. Like many behavioural economic theories, it does not seem all that different to existing cognitive psychology theories. For example, both neuroeconomic and the older dual processing models of decision-making assume a duality of slower and more rational cognitive processes versus faster impulse-driven processes. Which type of process is active is determined by individual factors (e.g. prior learning or cognitive capacity in psychology or ‘addictive stock’ in neuroeconomics) and environmental cues, the response to which may be formed by conditioning and social learning. A problem I see with both models is the lack of evidence that these processes are indeed two distinct states between which individuals switch, as apposed to moving along a continuum between ‘rationality and irrationality’ (economics) or ‘analytical and heuristic’ (psychology). When determining the proportions of consumption which should be subject to standard versus modified demand estimation, this becomes of paramount importance. Neuro-economic theory understands price as purely rational information as opposed to the irrational cues of advertising. According to the theory, heavy consumers are less rational and thus more sensitive to advertising and less sensitive to price. There is no good evidence that this is the case and I remain unconvinced, at least when © 2011 The Authors, Addiction © 2011 Society for the Study of Addiction
the focus is on price as experienced in a real-life purchasing situation. In consumer psychology it has long been known that buyers rate the same product as more desirable when more expensive (price heuristics) [5] and that their perceptions and interpretations of a product’s price can be variable and determined by situational factors (e.g. purchasing context, the way prices are shown, time pressure) [6,7]. In a recent signal processing experiment consumers accepted low price signals in the form of price match promises as an indicator of actual low price, unless they were in a condition that promoted scepticism and full cognitive elaboration[8]. Consumers may therefore make different—including ‘irrational’—purchasing decisions based on price, even when faced with the same price for the same product in comparable settings. Engels & Koordeman [9] outline further findings of studies that have become available since I wrote my paper. The authors’ findings were that alcohol marketing might be far more powerful when embedded contextually in a manner that makes sense to the viewer, or where attention to content lends empirical support to the applicability of dual processing models in advertising research, and they stress the importance of attending to message targeting and context. In addition to continuing this strand of experimental research, I agree with Saffer [4] that we must seek to find ways of studying susceptibility to micro-environmental factors across populations and in non-experimental settings. Finally, I am cautiously optimistic that the time-scales involved in detecting first influences of policies such as marketing bans may be shorter than Jones [2] fears. If there is a substantial immediate effect of marketing cues that prompt people to drink beyond what they initially intended to consume, then some population-level consumption reductions might well be observed shortly after policy implementation. Declaration of interests P.M. has presented research findings to an industrysponsored self-regulatory body and has received reimbursement of travel expenses. Keywords
Advertising, alcohol, marketing, policy. PETRA MEIER
University of Sheffield, School of Health and Related Research, ScHARR, Regent Court, 30 Regent Street, Sheffield S1 4DA, UK. E-mail:
[email protected] References 1. Meier P. S. Alcohol marketing research: the need for a new agenda. Addiction 2011; 106: 466–71. 2. Jones S. It’s not just researchers who need a new agenda. Addiction 2011; 106: 474–6. Addiction, 106, 472–479
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3. Casswell S. Alcohol marketing research agenda—let’s look at the how the industry maintains its hegemony. Addiction 2011; 106: 476–7. 4. Saffer H. New approaches to alcohol marketing research. Addiction 2011; 106: 473–4. 5. Monroe K. B., Krishnan R. The effect of price on subjective product evaluations. In: Jacoby J., Olson J. C., editors. Perceived Quality: How Consumers View Stores and Merchandise. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books; 1985. p. 209–32. 6. Mitra A. Price cue utilization in product evaluations: the moderating role of motivation and attribute information. J Bus Res 1995; 33: 187–95.
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7. Vermeir I., Van Kenhove P. The influence of need for closure and perceived time pressure on search effort for price and promotional information in a grocery shopping context. Psychol Mark 2005; 22: 71–95. 8. Dutta S., Bhowmick S. Consumer responses to offline and online low price signals: the role of cognitive elaboration. J Bus Res 2009; 62: 629–35. 9. Engels R., Koordeman R. Do alcohol portrayals in movies and commercials directly affect consumption. Addiction 2011; 106: 472–3.
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