REPORT FOR: Imperial Tobacco Limited
Jump to full article: Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, 1977-10-18
Author: KWECHANSKY MARKETING RESEARCH INC.
Intro: HOW SMOKING BEINGS (sic)
1) Peer Influence Is Everything 9
2) C'Mon, You Chicken 12
3) I Want To Be Like You 14
WHAT STARTING IS LIKE
4) 1 Wonder What It's All About 17
5) Forbidden Fruit 17
6) How It Tasted 19
7) Being Away From Home 21
8) Starting Age 24
THE ROLE OF THE FAMILY
9) The Fear Of Being Found Out 27
10) Accidental Discovery 25
11) The Big Announcement 32
12) Continuing Concealment 35
HOSTILITY AND THE FAMILY
13) Parental Reactions 36
14) Hassling Breeds Hostility 39
15) The Influence of Siblings 42
16) Oh Sweet Daughter, How Could You? 43
17) The Sounds of Hostility 44
SMOKING AND THE SCHOOL
15) With Or Without Permission 48
19) Smoking Behavior During School 49
20) Attitudes Towards Teachers 51
21) Stop Hassling Me! 53
SOCIAL FACTORS
22) Favorite Times For Smoking 55
23) Consumption And Stress 58
24) Smoking AsAPasstime 59
25) Smoking As A Social Crutch 60
26) Smoking, Dating and Double Standards 61
27) The Role Of Price 63
SMOKING TODAY AND THE FUTURE
28) Feelings Of Regret 65
29) Peer Pressure at 16 66
30) Views About Quitting 69
31) Quitting Is Not Easy 71
32) Fatalists 72
33) The Health Warning Clause 76
34) The View of Non Smokers 78
35) The View Down The Road 80
BRAND SELECTION
36) Choosing That First Brand . . . . 83
37) What The Boys Prefer 83
38) What The Girls Prefer 85
39) T & N Awareness , , 8$
ADVERTISING
40 General Attitudes . 87
41 Perception Of Test Ads • 88
42 Players (horses) 89
43 Export A And Winston • 90
44 Other Tobacco Ads 93
45 Wrigley Doublemlnt Gum 94
46 Hires Root Beer 94
47 Wella Balsam 95
48 Other Ads 96
49 The Vantage Ad 96
50 General Principles 97
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS
•• There is no doubt that peer group influence is the single most important factor in the decision by an adolescent to smoke.
•• Around the age of 11 to 13, there is peer pressure exerted by smokers on non smokers that amounts to taunting and goading of the latter to get them to smoke.
•• In some cases, the beginning smoker is not just emulating the peer group in general, but copying a specific member of it that is respected and admired. This can, on occasion, be an older sibling.
•• One of the reasons for adolescent attraction to smoking is curiosity about the physical sensations of it.
•• More important reasons for this attraction are the 'forbidden fruits' aspect of cigarettes. The adolescent seeks 'to display his new urge for independence with a symbol, and cigarettes are such a symbol since they are associated with adulthood and at the same time adults seek to deny them to the young. By deliberately flaunting out this denial, the adolescent proclaims his break with childhood, at least to his peers.
•• While some enjoy their first cigarette (both taste and self-image). many are rewarded for their daring with nausea. This perceived failure spurs them on to try again, and not fail.
•• First cigarette experiences often took place either actually or perceptually some distance removed from the nearness of parental authority.
•• Serious efforts to learn to smoke occur between ages 12 and 13 in most case. Playful experimentations, especially by children from smoking homes, can take place as early as 5 years of age, but most often around 7 or 8.
•• Part of the thrill of adolescent smoking is the thrill of hiding it from parental wrath.
•• Sometimes, the inevitable efforts to conceal adolescent smoking fail, and the smoker is discovered. Often, the risk of this happening is made greater by secret smoking in the home itself.
•• If successfully hidden, the young smoker will announce his smoking around the age of 15 or 16. This can either be done all at once, or gradually, dropping hints over a period of time. Smoking parents sometimes take this initiative when they have known the truth for some time.
•• In cases where young smokers feel the confrontation with parents will be overpowering, there are efforts to continue the concealment.
•• There is a greater tendency among smoking parents to accept the use of cigarettes by their child than among non smoking ones. More often, there is continuing parental nagging about it.
•• Although adolescent smoking begins largely without intent to spite parents, parental nagging can give rise to spiteful feelings where none existed before.
•• The role of siblings is not usually important. Somewhat rarely, an older smoking sibling may be an emulated figure.
•• Girls are less accepted by their parents as smokers than boys are.
•• Young smokers nagged by parents about their use of cigarettes can, and do, harbour considerable hostility that they normally do not give voice to in order to prevent internecine battles.
•• Whether schools do or do not officially tolerate smoking, it occurs in any case, but consumption is probably greater in school where smelting is officially allowed.
•• During school hours, smoking is a social activity and a way to pass time.
•• Teachers who admonish students about smoking are not listened to, especially when such warnings as perceived as hypocritical when the teacher is a smoker.
•• Reactions to formal school lectures and films about smoking are mainly anger over a perceived intrusion on the right of the smoker to do as he wishes without unsought advice intruding on his liberty. -
•• However, while the informing methods are disliked, there is no question that the respondents behaved that smoking is a hazard to health.
•• Smoking by teens is heavier during leisure time than during school time.
•• Stress causes consumption to increase, much as is true for adults.
•• Many smoke cigarettes simply to help pass the time.
•• In strange social situations, smoking is sometimes perceived as a prop that eases such social discomfort.
•• Smokers sometimes date other smokers to avoid the 'hassling' that non smokers sometimes do about smoking. Girls are more vulnerable than bays to such 'hassling'.
•• The respondents, largely from comfortable if not affluent homes, were not significantly affected by the price of cigarettes.
•• However intriguing smoking was at 11, 12 or 13. by the age of 16 or 17 many regretted their use of cigarettes for health reasons and because they feel unable to stop smoking when they want to.
•• By the age of 16. any peer pressure to initiate others to smoking is gone. In fact, smokers openly bemoan the sight of 11 or 12 year olds that they see smoking, and in effect, the 16 year olds now act towards their juniors as their own parents act towards them.
•• Still, smoking provides a reason for socializing with other smokers, and to some this is reason enough to continue.
•• Many claim they wish to quit, but it is doubtful if many will take action on their desire.
•• Those who had tried quitting were not successful, though any that had been would not have been part of this study.
•• Though they accept health warnings as true, the threat is perceived as so far in the future as to be scarcely related to actions taken now.
•• The health warning clause is perceived as an intrusion by government on individual rights', and a sham since governments make vast sums on tobacco tax, and alcohol, also perceived as dangerous, bears no warning clause.
•• The 'avoid inhaling' words are singled out for the strongest derision since smoking a cigarette in this way is seen as a waste and, in their word, 'goofy'.
•• Non smoking peers, especially those who have quit, are respected and admired.
•• Smokers tend to feel non smokers are more sure of themselves, less nervous, but perhaps less sociable and outgoing.
•• There is little reason to believe that, barring a drastic shift in social or governmental attitudes, smoking among the adolescents will lose its appeal, or that teenage smokers will turn their lip service to quitting into real action.
•• The first brand chosen by the beginning smoker is usually the first brand tried. This was DuMaurier in more instances than any other brand. As smoking proficiency grows, brand experimentation takes place.
•• The boys tended towards higher tar regular length brands such as Export A, Players and DuMaurier. Low tar brands were much disliked.
•• The girls, on average preferred higher tar King Size brands, but especially in Toronto, some smoked lower tar brands.
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