Abstract
BackgroundCigarette lifestyle marketing with psychographic targeting has been well documented, but few studies address non-cigarette tobacco products. This study examined how young adults respond to e-cigarette advertisements featuring diverse peer crowds – peer groups with shared identities and lifestyles – to inform tobacco counter-marketing design.MethodsFifty-nine young adult tobacco users in California participated in interviews and viewed four to five e-cigarette advertisements that featured characters from various peer crowd groups. For each participant, half of the advertisements they viewed showed characters from the same peer crowd as their own, and the other half of the advertisements featured characters from a different peer crowd. Advertisements were presented in random order. Questions probed what types of cues are noticed in the advertisements, and whether and how much participants liked or disliked the advertisements.ResultsResults suggest that participants liked and provided richer descriptions of characters and social situations in the advertisements featuring their own peer crowd more than the advertisements featuring a different peer crowd. Mismatching age or device type was also noted: participants reported advertisements showing older adults were not intended for them. Participants who used larger vaporizers tended to dislike cigalike advertisements even if they featured a matching peer crowd.ConclusionPeer crowd and lifestyle cues, age and device type are all salient features of e-cigarette advertising for young adults. Similarly, educational campaigns about e-cigarettes should employ peer crowd-based targeting to engage young adults, though messages should be carefully tested to ensure authentic and realistic portrayals.
Highlights
Cigarette lifestyle marketing with psychographic targeting has been well documented, but few studies address non-cigarette tobacco products
We examined the salience of peer crowd and other cues when young adults gave qualitative descriptions as they viewed advertisements featuring matching and non-matching peer crowds
We explored if and how peer crowd matching impacted liking of the advertisements, and how young adults accounted for similarities or differences between the peer crowds represented in the advertisements and themselves
Summary
Targeting by demographic factors, such as race/ethnicity, age groups, gender, or socioeconomic status, is one of the easiest and most salient strategies to adapt messages for a target audience Research such as that done by Boslaugh and colleagues has found that variables including self-efficacy, perceived barriers to engaging in the promoted behavior, and social support can be better predictors of health behavior than demographics [3]. Psychographic characteristics, such as attitudes, values, and lifestyles, can affect the audience’s social identity and perceived social norms by forming a reference or peer group [4], and can be effective variables for audience segmentation. Identification with peer groups defined based on psychographics was found to be a significant predictor of tobacco products among young adults [6, 7], suggesting its value as a meaningful segmentation criterion for tobacco-related communication [2]
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