Effects of race and cigarette flavour on perception of cigarette smokers

Objective: To observe any effects of the targeted advertising of menthol cigarettes to black communities on subjects' imagery of smokers. Design: 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 complete factorial including effects of subject race (black/white), subject smoking status (ever smoked/never smoked), target race (black/white), and target cigarette flavour (menthol/regular). Setting: Community college and university. Subjects: Convenience sample of 100 black and 94 white students. Main outcome measures: Ratings of a written description of a target smoker on 15 seven-point bipolar semantic differential scales describing possible aspects of a smoker's image. Hypothesis: Consistent with targeted advertising images, black menthol target smokers and white regular target smokers would be viewed most positively. Results: Black target smokers were rated significantly more athletic, strong, winner, and works hard than white target smokers. Target race interacted with target cigarette on the athletic and winner scales. However, only one interaction was in the predicted direction. Conclusions: There is not a systematic image of a menthol smoker; menthol smoking may be determined by multiple factors rather than being driven primarily by advertising imagery. Black smokers, however, were seen consistently more positively than white smokers by both black and white subjects. This suggests that targeted advertising to black communities has been successful in creating a positive image of a black smoker. Public health efforts to counteract this effect need to be devised.