Marketing social a través del envaseinvestigación sobre los efectos del etiquetado del alcohol y del tabaco en la atención visual, las reacciones y las actitudes

Abstract

Proposal/Objectives: Alcohol and tobacco consumption are leading causes of morbidity and mortality in the world. In this sense, tobacco and alcohol policies, such as product labelling, are essential in reducing these harms. This thesis, from a perspective of social marketing (i.e., the application of marketing knowledge and tools for individuals and society’s benefit), aims to investigate through objective behavioural methodology the effects of alcohol and tobacco labelling on behaviour, focusing on visual attention. Through five empirical studies, this thesis tries to understand how alcohol and tobacco labelling should be presented, how individual differences influence labelling effectiveness, whether self-affirmation (i.e. maintaining or restoring individual’s self-image from threats) is an effective strategy to prevent defensive reactions and promote positive ones and if eye-tracking methodology is useful for assessing alcohol and tobacco labelling policies. Design/Methodology/Approach: To meet the objectives of this thesis, a total of five studies were conducted: two studies about alcohol labelling and three about tobacco labelling. In all these studies, we applied experimental human laboratory designs where we measured the attention, reactions and attitudes toward alcohol and tobacco labelling. To measure attention, we tracked the eye-movements from participants that were complemented with traditional methodologies, such as self-reported measures or qualitative interviews. Eye-tracking methodology has been shown to provide a valid measure of visual attention, it could also provide further information about how individuals react to labelling and it can be complemented with traditional methods. Findings: The experiments performed about alcohol labelling suggest an improvement on alcohol labels’ salience to attract higher levels of visual attention. Moreover, we propose the inclusion of large pictorial health warnings on alcoholic beverages with highly severe content to optimise visual attention toward them and because they are perceived as more effective, threatening, and lead to higher levels of motivation to reduce drinking. The findings about tobacco health warnings suggest that loss-framed, highly-severe health warnings showing the consequences of smoking in the long term are perceived as more threatening and so they can lead to higher levels of engagement such as slightly higher levels of visual attention or higher levels of motivation to stop smoking. However, this research suggests that individual differences and their effect on possible defensive reaction such as visual avoidance among smokers, especially among weekly smokers must be taken into consideration. The results from self-affirmation research call into question the effectiveness of self-affirmation in reducing defensive reactions toward health warnings and promoting positive ones. Finally, this thesis highlights the importance of using objective behavioural methods, such as eye-tracking, to assess alcohol and tobacco policies such as alcohol and tobacco labelling. Eye-tracking provides a valid measure of visual attention, it could also provide further information about how individuals react to labelling and it can be complemented with traditional methods based on self-reported measures. Originality/Value: Overall, this thesis provides important information about how alcohol and tobacco labelling can be used to increase attention toward them and how saliency and individual differences can affect alcohol and tobacco labelling effectiveness on visual attention, reactions and attitudes. Beyond these scientific implications, the work conducted here can have an impact on upstream marketing social interventions and policymakers to change behaviour via alcohol and tobacco labels. Finally, this thesis supports the importance of using other methodological approaches such as eye-tracking to assess these labelling policies.