Evaluating Point of Sale Tobacco Marketing Using Behavioral Laboratory Methods

Abstract

With passage of the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, the FDA has authority to regulate tobacco advertising. As bans on traditional advertising venues and promotion of tobacco products have grown, a greater emphasis has been placed on brand exposure and price promotion in displays of products at the point-of-sale (POS). POS marketing seeks to influence attitudes and behavior towards tobacco products using a variety of explicit and implicit messaging approaches. Behavioral laboratory methods have the potential to provide the FDA with a strong scientific base for regulatory actions and a model for testing future manipulations of POS advertisements. We review aspects of POS marketing that potentially influence smoking behavior, including branding, price promotions, health claims, the marketing of emerging tobacco products, and tobacco counter-advertising. We conceptualize how POS marketing potentially influence individual attention, memory, implicit attitudes, and smoking behavior. Finally, we describe specific behavioral laboratory methods that can be adapted to measure the impact of POS marketing on these domains.

Smoking susceptibility among non-smoking school-going adolescents in Malaysia: findings from a national school-based survey

“…In addition, a systematic review by Paynter et al ,52 which included 12 peer review studies, concluded that exposure to tobacco advertisements at PoS increased the likelihood of SS, as such exposure increased the perceived attractiveness of smoking and brand awareness. PoS tobacco marketing is designed to increase memorability through the mechanism of the mere exposure effect based on the limited amount of cognitive resources for perceiving, comprehending and remembering the information that the individual encounters in their environment 53. Both the direct (exposed cigarettes) and indirect (brand image) visual smoking cues, as well as related content such as tagline, commercial message and health warnings, help boost the memory of the tobacco products in the exposed population.…”

Retail endgame strategies: reduce tobacco availability and visibility and promote health equity

“…95 96 Eye tracking and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) would also improve researchers' understanding of how tobacco displays and other retail marketing stimulate craving and deter cessation. 97 For example, research that combined GPS tracking (to identify which tobacco retailers participants encountered) and fMRI (showing participants tobacco storefronts they visited and did not visit) observed differential neurobiological responses to more frequently visited tobacco storefronts. 98 Integrating novel methods may provide better insight on causal and modifiable mechanisms that perpetuate tobacco use, including tobacco displays, price discounts, as well as branded and unbranded tobacco cues in the retail environment.…”

“…EMA and GEMA have also been used to document real-time exposure to retail tobacco marketing as well as inequities in exposure 95 96. Eye tracking and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) would also improve researchers’ understanding of how tobacco displays and other retail marketing stimulate craving and deter cessation 97. For example, research that combined GPS tracking (to identify which tobacco retailers participants encountered) and fMRI (showing participants tobacco storefronts they visited and did not visit) observed differential neurobiological responses to more frequently visited tobacco storefronts 98.…”

Advances in Behavioral Laboratory Methods that Inform Tobacco Regulatory Science: A TCORS Working Group Special Issue

“…This special issue also contains a review from Robinson et al 78 of human behavioral laboratory methods that can be adapted to evaluate the impact of point of sale tobacco marketing on the attention, memory, implicit attitudes and behavior of smokers, while Tidey et al 79 contribute a review of how behavioral economic laboratory measures provide an expedited simulation of the behavioral effects of tobacco control policies within specific subpopulations of interest to FDA. These laboratory approaches are particularly important to tobacco regulatory science because the behavior of persons under the age of 18 is especially sensitive to the influence of tobacco product advertising and to product cost.…”