To what extent should tobacco companies be allowed to advertise their products?

Running head: TOBACCO ADVERTISEMENT
Tobacco Advertisement
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1TOBACCO ADVERTISEMENT
To what extent should tobacco companies be allowed to advertise their products in the
media?
Thesis Statement 1: Tobacco advertising has a relatively weak force in affecting smoking
behaviour
Sub-theme 1A: The advertising has limited ability to affect customer decision making
Sub-theme 1 B: The current expenditures on the advertisement are focussing on promotions and
not upon designing effective content which provides a clear anti-
smoking message to the target section of audience
Thesis statement 2: Tobacco advertisement does not increase total tobacco consumption
Sub-theme 2 A: Corporate focus is only upon maintaining market share
Sub-theme 2B: Tobacco is a mature market and advertisement and market promotions affect
the growth of existent products little
Thesis statement 3: The Tobacco industry does not target, study or track youth smoking
Sub-theme 3A: The advertisement are focused only on a specific target population
Sub-theme 3 B: The advertisements do little effort to use individual customer experiences
in educating the wider section of audiences regarding the negative
consequences of smoking tobacco
The tobacco manufacturers in the respective industry spend huge amount of money on
advertising their product. The tobacco companies use advanced mode of marketing in order to
communicate with the target customer. The tobacco companies even use the face of celebrity,
which is mainly aimed to glorify the smoking habits among people. As mentioned by Bansal-
Travers et al. (2014), the tobacco marketing promotional campaigns are focused open brand

2TOBACCO ADVERTISEMENT
awareness rather than customer awareness. The current studies will aim to discuss the extent to
which the tobacco companies should be allowed to advertise their product in commercial social
media.
The over-consumption of tobacco product is one of the root cause of some of the public
health issues. The World Health Organization has issued a framework to ensure a high level of
awareness is generated among the public especially the younger generation, by providing
essential information related to the negative effects of over-consumption of tobacco (Liang et al.,
2015).
According to Bansal-Travers et al. (2014), the commercial advertisement is believed to
have a significant impact on the decisions taken by target section of customer for purchase of
tobacco products. As the use of tobacco smoking had been glorified by famous personalities in
media and public platform, it produces significant impact on the lifestyle of young generation.
This is one has a serious impact on the health of the young people, which is reflected during their
adulthood stage (Liang et al., 2015). However, this view is contradicted by a school of thought
which explains that tobacco is a mature product and the advertising strategies can an only affect
the sales of a newly launched product over the already existing ones. There is another counter
idea that is related with promotion of tobacco products. In the modern day due to high levels of
health awareness, is the ethical duty of every tobacco company to provide information about the
negative impact of tobacco consumption. As per a school of though the advertisement or
marketing gimmicks are used by the tobacco companies only to increase their market share and
has little educational concerns, which could reduce the addiction to smoking within people. This
can generate high level of health awareness among the young people which will encourage tthem
to take decision to reduce smoking (Goldberg, Davis & O’keefe, 2006). With sufficient