Effects of race and cigarette flavour on perception of cigarette smokers.

Objective - To observe any effects of the targeted advertising of menthol cigar ettes to black communities on subjects' imagery of smokers. Design-2x2x2x2 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 uni versity. 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 differ ential 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 win ner 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 pri marily by advertising imagery. Black smokers, however, were seen consistently more positively than white smokers by both black and white subjects. This sug gests that targeted advertising to black communities has been successful in cre ating a positive image of a black smoker. Public health efforts to counteract this effect need to be devised. (Tobacco Control 1994; 3: 30-36)