title: Young adults' interpretations of tobacco brands: implications for tobacco control.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Marketers have long recognized the power and importance of branding, which creates aspirational attributes that increase products' attractiveness. Although brand imagery has traditionally been communicated via mass media, packaging's importance in promoting desirable brand-attribute associations has increased. Knowledge of how groups prone to smoking experimentation interpret tobacco branding would inform the debate over plain packaging currently occurring in many countries.
  
  
  METHODS
  We conducted 12 group discussions and four in-depth interviews with 66 young adult smokers and nonsmokers of varying ethnicities from two larger New Zealand cities and one provincial city. Participants evaluated 10 familiar and unfamiliar tobacco brands using brand personality attributes and discussed the associations they had made.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Participants ascribed very different images to different brands when exposed to the packaging alone, regardless of whether they had seen or heard of the brands before. Perceptual mapping of brands and image attributes highlighted how brand positions varied from older, more traditional, and male oriented to younger, feminine, and "cool."
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our findings emphasize the continuing importance of tobacco branding as a promotion tool, even when communicated only by packaging. The ease with which packaging alone enabled young people to identify brand attributes and the desirable associations these connoted illustrate how tobacco packaging functions as advertising. The results support measures such as plain packaging of tobacco products to reduce exposure to these overt behavioral cues.
authors.affiliation: Department of Marketing, Massey University, New Zealand.
authors.forename: Philip
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Gendall
authors.forename: Janet
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hoek
authors.forename: George
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Thomson
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Edwards
authors.forename: Gina
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Pene
authors.forename: Heather
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Gifford
authors.forename: Gill
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Pirikahu
authors.forename: Judith
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: McCool
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000329:Advertising / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D017144:Focus Groups; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009520:New Zealand; D019064:Product Packaging; D012907:Smoking / Q000523:psychology; D016540:Smoking Cessation / Q000379:methods; D000074606:Smoking Prevention; D019460:Tobacco Industry; D014796:Visual Perception; D055815:Young Adult