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... is clearly shown by the evidence quoted in the first section of this paper, that advertising has no significant effect on total consumption. It is obvious therefore, that people are determined to exercise their right to choose to smoke, despite advertising bans and their supposed implication of government disapproval. Indeed the very fact that "authority" disapproves of something is for some people a reason to try it.
Faced with this situation opponents of smoking fall back at times on the argument that smoking is not merely an individual responsibility, because it may lead to illness which must be treated at public expense. The argument is of course totally unsustainable because practically everything we eat, drink or do has been accused of causing disease which must be treated at public expense. Why then should smokers be singled out for special discrimination? The argument also implies that populations are incapable of looking after them and unfit to make their own decisions, in consequence of which they must be subjected to a form of censorship. Arthur Hettich in the American Business and Society Review wrote: "It is our feeling, therefore, that prohibiting cigarette advertising would be a violation of the rights of a legal segment of American business and; more important, a violation of our readers right to choose.
Should we prohibit automobile advertising from our pages because hundreds of thousands of people are maimed or killed each year from car accidents? Do you feel that we should prohibit liquor advertising because alcoholism has reached epidemic proportion in this country? The reasonable answer is, I think, that our readers are highly intelligent people who are able to make up their own minds on these questions. ") For consumers, however resolved they may be to preserve their freedom of choice, advertising bans are a menace because they deny them the right to be informed of all the factors which might influence that choice. Smokers are thus underprivileged of information on available brands, new brands, prices, tobacco qualities and, perhaps most important of all, new product innovations and developments - and the main and most efficient means of imparting this information is advertising. The European Association of Advertising Agencies' memorandum on Cigarette Advertising in June 1978, made some telling points on the assistance to the smoker arising from the provision of such information in countries where cigarette advertising exists, as opposed to the lack of it particularly information on product development - in Eastern Europe where cigarette advertising totally banned. It said: "This resulted, for example, predominance of the filter-tipped type of cigarette in most countries where advertising is allowed.
The market share of filter cigarettes in those countries is 85 % to 90 %. In Eastern Europe, however, it is well below 50 %. Moreover, advertising has helped support consumer demand for lighter brands as shown, for instance, by the development of the German cigarette market. Within twenty years the contents of condensate and nicotine in the overall German cigarette market was reduced by more than 50 %. " Finally, the referendum held in Switzerland in recent years on the question of whether or not cigarette and alcohol advertising should be banned, evoked the following comment. It was from Dr. Raymond Broker, Member of the Swiss Parliament and President of the Swiss Advertising Federation, which summarizes admirably what has been said in this section on the two principles referred to in its title: "The Swiss Parliament and the Government recommended the people of this country to reject', the postulated ban on advertising.
Our people followed this advice and I consider this to be a wise decision. Once again the Swiss people have declared themselves as being in favor of self-responsibility and freedom for the individual, and at the same time in favor of the right of the people to seek and obtain information through the advertising media. They have therefore according to their tradition, spoken out against state interference in those matters where such interference is neither effective nor appropriate. " 4. Censorship, through advertising bans, restricts competition and inflicts economic damage. Advertising bans deprive society, individuals and companies, of benefits which they stand to enjoy under a relatively free and unrestricted economic system. A system of many tobacco brands competing vigorously through advertising does bring with it distinct benefits.
These all stem from the fact that a manufacturer, who is free to advertise, will always be energized by the possibility of winning more market share by developing new, more acceptable product types, to suit current tastes, preferences and income levels, which he can bring through advertising to the attention of the consumer. Without advertising, however, there is little or no motivation for the manufacturer to invest in any product innovation. The opponents of smoking: who advocate advertising bans, seem easily to forget this when they favor the swing to filter cigarettes and advocate even greater reduction in deliveries of 'tar' and nicotine. They ignore the fact that brands of these types derived from product innovation in response to changing consumer preferences, and that advertising for these new products enabled consumers to become aware of them. From this awareness grew a trend towards these types to CD which manufacturers have responded around the world.
But such a trend, seen by many consumers to be beneficial to them, has to date made little progress in the countries of the Communist Eastern Bloc, where all advertising is banned. In those countries the filter penetration in 1980 of the market was estimated to average 43 %, compared with an equivalent figure of 86 % in the "Free World." In the same countries low delivery cigarettes - 15 mg of 'tar' or below - have an insignificant share of the market, whereas already such products account for over 20 % of consumption in the whole "Free World." To take two notable examples, in the U. S. A. the figure is 48 % to 50 % and in West Germany it is nearer 70 %.
A further benefit that advertising bans eliminate, is the cost-lowering effect of advertising. As a Netherlands study conducted by the Steering Group of the Dutch Advertising Association pointed out: "In all, advertising has a cost lowering effect, which, if competition is adequate. is passed on to the consumer as a price advantage. Advertising forces companies to make competitive offers which the consumer can verify.
Advertising therefore acts both on lowering prices and increasing quality. " In short, competition provides the incentive; advertising provides the means; consumers derive the benefits. Take out advertising, and both motivation and benefits disappear. 5. Cigarette advertising has not created and does not create a climate of acceptability for smoking Smoking is seen as acceptable for. two primary reasons. Firstly, is is part of the established social fabric and people have been smoking for centuries, since long before advertising began. Secondly, smoking products are widely and legally offered for sale.
Limiting or banning advertising would not change either of those facts and only anti smoking zealots would suggest that smokers should be disliked or that smoking should be made illegal. Smoking is acceptable because it has been accepted by many individuals as an enjoyable activity Tobacco advertising is a result of that acceptance, not a cause. 6. Advertising does not manipulate the consumer Critics of advertising, including the opponents of smoking, often view it as a manipulative force, used by advertisers to create consumer wants. This is incorrect, h 6 wever, as the' decision-making power lies not with the advertiser but with the consumer. Consumer purchasing choices are decisions purposefully made by the individual, rather than involuntary responses to a manipulative force.
Those who believe advertising to be manipulative take a rather unflattering view of the consumer as being weak-willed and without a mind of his own. The well known United States Social Observer and newspaper columnist, George Will, suggests that those intellectuals who regard the masses as sheep and themselves as shepherds maintain this view Consumers are not sheep, as some researchers have reminded advertisers. For example in his book "The Intellectual and the Market Place" Professor George Stigler contended: "The advertising industry has no sovereign power to bend men's will - we are not children who blindly follow the last announcer's instructions to rush to the store for soap. Moreover, advertising itself is a completely neutral instrument, and lends itself to the dissemination of highly contradictory desires. " According to the experts mentioned above and many other distinguished writers in this field, advertising is not a manipulative force.
Conclusion Why is it that in the US, those younger than 18 can not buy cigarettes and those younger than 21 can not buy alcohol, yet they have higher numbers of youth smoking and drinking than in any other countries, where those laws rarely exist? It is in our nature to do small illegal things, and it even pushes us towards it as toward a forbidden fruit.
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Research essay sample on Cigarette Advertising Eastern Europe
