The Marketing Environment of Tobacco in Australia

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Australia is known globally due to its initiative in controlling the advertisement and promotion of tobacco. There has been always a controversy concerning how the tobacco and cigarette sellers should advertise their brands. To some extent, the advertisement of the cigarettes by some of the firms in Australia is questionable due to the influence the advertisement imposes to the non-smokers.

Some debates have been conducted to put some limitations on the brands of tobacco, and try to curb the consumption of the same. This essay paper will focus on the reaction of the customers concerning tobacco, and the marketing environment of tobacco in Australia. The costs of smoking are also discussed.

On the other hand, the cigarette-manufacturing firms in Australia try to fight for their rights of marketing their products, although there are some public sectors that go against the issue. If customers are not informed correctly about the product, they may fail to make informed decisions concerning what they are purchasing.

Just like any firm that advertises its products, it is the right of tobacco manufacturers to advertise their products and inform their customers on the available products in the market. Customers react differently concerning the brand advertisement, hence affecting their choice of purchasing the same.

The major aspect in marketing is about increment, and concentrating less in dramatic changes in consumers’ behavior. The central government of Australia is working tirelessly to remove even the slightest influence on the packaging of the cigarette. The government is trying to work on this by reducing the amount of branding on a packaging.

The main reason that made the Australian government to work on reducing the use of cigarettes was the reason behind the fact that in 1945, 72% of Australian men were smokers.

This big percentage was because of the idea that smoking was accepted and an important part of Australian culture. After the interaction of the central government to the issue of smoking, the percentage of the smokers currently has reduced to 17% of the adults in Australia.

Severally, the government of Australia has tried to ban the advertising of cigarettes especially its crucial initiative it showed in 1976. Since this important initiative, the advertising and smoking of cigarettes in Australia has been regulated. This action made a great step of moving from normalization of smoking to normalization of non-smoking.

Customers’ behaviors are prone to so many changes depending on the forces in the market. Marketing of the brand in the market have a great influence on the customers’ behavior. Marketing provides awareness and influences the attitude of customers in purchasing a certain products or brands.

Consumers are always willing to change their behaviors, especially as much as products such as cigarettes are concerned. For instance, there are those customers who get the information concerning the risks of smoking, and they show willingness to quit smoking.

To some extent, customer’s behavior towards cigarettes depends on the perception of an individual. There are those who believe that smoking is bad and those who believe it is all right. Other factors may influence consumers’ behaviors. For instance, the idea of Australian government to introduce plain packaging of cigarettes may have a great influence on consumers’ behavior.

The government is proposing the cigarettes packet to be plain, with a graphic health warning, with just a small brand written in font type. The cigarette stick is proposed to be olive green in color, and the gold band removed.

This action by the federal government of Australia is meant to reduce the desire among the young people, who are mostly the smokers. The government is aiming at influencing the behaviors of the consumers.

According to the research done by specialists, it shows that modifying the graphic warning picture to be more visible, and reducing the number and size of the brand elements, will influence the behavior of the young people to quit smoking or never take it up.

The color of the packet and the cigarette stick has also great influence on these young peoples behavior. The use of a revolting color and very visible big health warnings on the packet may influence the consumers not to purchase the product. On the other hand, there are those hard-core smokers who will never change their behaviors no matter what.

Mostly, the smokers who are above 50 years will be hard to change their behaviors. Even if the government changes the brand on the packet, these old smokers will never change their behaviors. Age is a factor as far as the consumer behaviors are concerned, young consumers are likely to change their behaviors depending on the information they are getting about the product.

For the old consumers it would be hard to convince them about changing their behaviors. The type of information that consumers receive concerning the product has a great influence on their decision making processes.

The health-warning graphic on the packet of the cigarettes as proposed by the Australian government may influence the behaviors of the customers a great deal, marking a big percentage quitting smoking.

The second determinant of the consumer behavior is the price. As the government of Australia is proposing of an increased price per packet of cigarettes, this may discourage the consumers from buying and smoking. Another aspect of pricing that may change the consumers behavior is application of price discrimination to the group of people who are known to smoke heavily.

Availing the product to the customer at the right time and place may change his behavior to the positive side and even smoke more. If the product is not available whenever the consumer needs it, he or she may develop some negative attitude towards it.

Moreover, anything to do with promoting and advertising the product is very influential to the consumers’ behavior . Consumers develop more trust when they see their products being promoted and advertised regularly in the media.

The efforts of the federal government of Australia to curb the advertisement and promotion services of tobacco products may change the consumers’ behavior. Instead of advertising, the media should be giving the public the information concerning the risks of smoking as well as displaying the health warning graphics.

What influenced the government of Australia to have a great urge of discouraging smoking were the long-term health costs. Starting with the increased cases of premature deaths and disability because of smoking made the government to make a move towards discouraging smoking. Something else that cost the government a lot of money are the chronic diseases caused by smoking.

Such complications included lung cancer, a cause of many deaths in Australia, diabetes, and other life threatening diseases. According to the data that was collected in 2008, it revealed that Australia incurred a social cost worth 31.5 billion dollars because of cases of tobacco smoking . Other costs that were realized are the many lost working hours when people leave their chairs and excuse themselves to go and smoke.

That study done in 2008 in Australia revealed so many things that categorized smoking as a very costly thing . It was evident that approximately 1256 deaths had occurred because of smoking related complications, and the country incurred hospital costs of 59.8 million dollars that was meant to cater for the hospitalized patients. The worst part of the study was the fact that out of 1256 deaths, 11 of them were because of passive smoking.

Through passive smoking, the country incurred a cost of 5.9million dollars. More than 95% of the total cost that the country incurred because of passive smoking was for very young patients ranging between 0-14 years old.

This finding proved to the government that the future of Australia is at great risk if it would continue loosing people at that rate. Due to many types of illnesses that people were suffering because of smoking, the productivity in the workforce and even in the household sectors was affected a great deal decreasing with approximately 400million dollars.

Another cost that the country had to bare was about the fires caused by smoking, which was estimated to be approximately 16million dollars. All these costs made the government of Australia to realize that it is loosing a lot of money because of smoking to an extent of affecting the whole economy.

Loss of young and energetic people in the country was also alarming, as the country was to be left with very old and very young people with lower productivity.

Bibliography

Australian Medical Association, (2003), The medical journal of Australia, Tobacco , 56- 79.

Collins, D., & Lapsley, H. (2004), The costs of tobacco, alcohol & illicit drug abuse to Australian society, Canberra: Department of Health & Aging.

Hammond, D., & Parkinson, C. (2009), The impact of cigarette package design on perception of risk, Journal of Public Health , 343-353.

Hoek, J., Gendall, P., & Louviere, J. (2010), Effects oof Dissuasive Packaging on young adult smokers tobacco control, New York: Cengage Learning.

Llewellyn, M., & Mylne, L. (2009), Australia for Dummies, Tadan: Publisher for Dummies.

Miller, F., & Vandome, A. (2010), Smoking Bans in Australia, New York: VDM Publishing House Ltd.

Tyrrell, I. (2002), Deadly enemies: tobacco and its opponents in Australia, Michigan: UNSW Press.

Wakefield, M., Horan, J., & Cummings, K. (2002), The cigarette Pack as Image: New evidence from tobacco industry documents, Tobacco Control , 73-80.

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The Marketing Environment of Tobacco in Australia

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