Original articleAdolescents' Perceptions of Cigarette Brand Image: Does Plain Packaging Make a Difference?
Section snippets
Design
This study used a 5 (degree of plain packaging and graphic health warning) × 3 (brand types) between-subjects experimental design, using a Web-based methodology to expose adolescents to one randomly selected cigarette pack, during which respondents completed ratings of the pack.
Ethical approval to conduct this study was obtained from The Cancer Council Victoria Human Research Ethics Committee.
Procedure
Members of an existing national online panel who were identified as having children between the ages of
Sample characteristics and group assignment
Overall, 1087 adolescents completed the survey, yielding a response rate of 15% of all the e-mail invitations sent. Table 1 shows that neither respondents' demographic characteristics nor smoking experience varied significantly across the different pack conditions. An average of 217 respondents (minimum = 204; maximum = 232) were randomly allocated to each of the five pack conditions, with a relatively equal distribution of the three brands across these five conditions.
Effect of increasingly plain packaging on perceptions
For all brands combined, pack
Discussion
Our study demonstrates that when a cigarette pack is progressively stripped of its color, imagery, and branded fonts, adolescents perceive packs as less appealing. Progressively removing branding from a pack also resulted in less favorable perceived attributes of a typical smoker of the pack, and more negative expectations of cigarette taste. Our experimental findings support previous descriptive research [17], [18], [20], indicating that among adolescents branded cigarette packs communicate
Acknowledgments
This study was funded by Quit Victoria and the Cancer Council Victoria. There are no conflicts of interest for any author.
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