Youth Awareness of Tobacco Sponsorship As A Dimension of Brand Equity

Tobacco sponsorship of sports has increasingly been cast as a public issue on the grounds that it supports pediatric smoking by circumventing advertising restrictions and communicating positive brand information to children(28,31,32). Research on tobacco sponsorship effects on children is as yet inconclusive, but growing evidence suggests that sponsorship is an effective medium for building cigarette brand awareness and image among under‐aged youth. Research in this area has been inconclusive in part because it lacks a unified framework in which the various contributions of sponsorship to brand knowledge and use can be analysed holistically. This paper proposes that the brand equity concept(1,2,18) provides such a framework. The paper reviews previous research on tobacco sponsorship and children, and presents findings from a study that assessed the relative contribution of sponsorship to brand awareness among fourteen year‐olds (n=366) in Dunedin, New Zealand. The value of sponsorship‐derived cigarette brand knowledge among youth is expressed in terms of Keller's(18) concept of customer‐based brand equity. The study found that children's awareness of tobacco brands and tobacco sponsorships varied according to their smoking experience, sports interests and gender. Cigarette brands with the strongest event associations were those that sponsored events that had a high appeal for the youth in the study. The brands with the highest unaided recall levels were those that were prominently shown in point of purchase displays in stores frequented by the youth, and included those with the highest sponsorship profiles. The research demonstrates that tobacco companies can achieve significant brand recall among children through sport sponsorship, as well as interest‐based (lifestyle) segmentation and targeting benefits, and brand positioning (personality) benefits. The findings have implications for public policy and industry practice. In policy terms, if the goal of tobacco advertising prohibitions is to denormalise smoking by restricting the positive promotional imagery of cigarettes, then sport sponsorship and point of purchase displays need to be incorporated into advertising legislation. In terms of industry practice, the fact that tobacco sponsorship reaches and influences under‐aged youth stands to be a matter of concern for any entity that does not want this social burden. It is recommended that corporations considering involvement in a tobacco‐sponsored event should evaluate the reach of the event and the potential effects of its promotions on youth. Where a youth‐interest connection has been demonstrated for the event, corporations should weigh the social risks and costs of the sponsorship. For non‐tobacco related entities these costs include the potential negative impacts of tobacco‐linked event cross‐promotions on their own brands and corporate image.