Literature Review

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Birmingham Business School

Student ID Number:  1732353

Programme Of Study:  Business

Module:  Social Marketing         

Assignment Title:  Literature Review

Date and Time of Submission:  Nov. 10 2016, 11:00am

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Tobacco companies appeal to specific consumers through the packaging of their products.  They rely on brand elements, colours, fonts, logos and images to convey brand personalities and influence consumers on the way they think about the product in relation to many attributes that would be desirable for consumers. Plain packaging standardizes the appearance of cigarette packs by removing any identifying brands, logos, colours, and trademarks.  The packs are stripped of colour, and only the brand name in a mandated font, size, and location, with visual graphic health warnings adorns the package. By removing brand elements and making the pack, and therefore smoking, appear more unappealing or desirable, adolescents can either be influenced positively or negatively. This literature review will focus on the effectiveness of plain packaging, and it will comprise results from different studies evaluating if plain packaging is effective at dissuading children from smoking.

Much of the literature evaluates how the adolescents who participated in the studies perceived other individual’s who smoke plain packs (Germain, Wakefield, and Durkin, 2010; McCool et al., 2012; Hammond, Daniel and White, 2012; Lund and Scheffels, 2013; Moodie et al., 2011).  Respondents indicated that they perceived smokers as having an “addictive personality” and being seen as “untrustworthy” (McCool et al., 2012), and female respondents rated plain packs lower on an index scale of 0-10 regarding smoker image traits, including female, slim, glamorous, cool, popular, attractive, and sophisticated (Hammond, Daniel and White, 2012). Adolescents perceive plain packs as unattractive, cheap, uncool, and associate them with unfashionable, boring, and older people (Moodie et al., 2011).  Smokers of plain packs are regarded negatively in terms of seven user characteristic sum-scores according to: gender, glamour, style, popularity, coolness, sophistication, and slimness (Lund and Scheffels, 2013), and when the pack is perceived to be increasingly unappealing, so are the perceptions adolescents have regarding a typical smoker of the pack (Germain, Wakefield, and Durkin, 2010).