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This paper discusses whether companies’ over-riding profit orientation can ever promote social outcomes; Important questions exist over whether, where and how individual and corporate responsibility should intersect; these questions require explicit consideration of how best to balance the potentially competing interests of consumers and corporations.

The concepts of “market justice” and “social justice” provide a framework for addressing these questions. Using the rising popularity of electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS), as an example the paper explores the role tobacco companies have in promoting ENDS uptake and the risks that could eventuate from their involvement.

Before market and social justice can intersect and consumers can assert responsibility for their actions, corporations need to delist products that harm health and demonstrate the compatibility between their marketing strategies and public health goals. Only then will their introduction of more healthful (or less harmful) alternatives appear credible and support claims that marketing and social justice can intersect.

Debate over the role corporations could play in promoting public health is very timely, and this paper contributes to a larger conversation in critical social marketing.

Sponsors claim that ambush marketing damages the integrity and financial basis of an event, however, definitions of “ambushing” remain ambiguous, particularly where more than oneparty lays claim to specific images. When the New Zealand Rugby Football Union (NZRFU) changed its official apparel supplier from Canterbury International Limited (CIL) to adidas, CIL argued it was entitled to draw on its past involvement with the All Blacks. This paper explores ambush marketing in NZRFU v CILand concludes by offering suggestions that couldreduce the likelihood of similar situations arising

This paper aims to investigate how young adult women smokers, a group the tobacco industry has specifically targeted, interpreted dissuasive sticks. Australia’s decision to introduce plain packaging has aroused international attention and stimulated interest in complementary initiatives. To date, research attention has focused on external packaging and few studies have examined the physical objects of consumption – cigarette sticks.

We conducted two focus groups and 13 in-depth interviews using purposive recruitment. Data were analysed using thematic analysis.

We identified three overarching themes: smoking as an act of overt and conspicuous consumption; cigarette sticks as accoutrements of social acceptability and dissuasive colours as deconstructors of the social façade smokers construct. Dissuasive sticks challenged connotations of cleanliness participants sought, exposed smoking as “dirty” and connoted stereotypes participants wanted to avoid.

Although small-scale qualitative studies provide rich insights into participant’s responses, experimental work is required to estimate how a wider population comprising more varied smoker sub-groups responds to dissuasive sticks.

As policymakers internationally consider introducing plain packaging, they should examine whether dissuasive sticks could enhance measures regulating the external appearance of tobacco packages.

Smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death and disability. Plain packaging and dissuasive sticks show considerable potential to reduce smoking prevalence and the burden of ill-health that results.

This is the first study to explore how dissuasive sticks would distance smoking from the social identity smokers seek. The findings provide a platform for experimental work that estimates the potential behavioural outcomes dissuasive sticks could stimulate.

A growing number of studies have suggested that consumers hold very similar beliefs about the brands they use within a product category. This implies that experience, rather than marketing activity, leads consumers to associate attributes with brands. Replicates and extends earlier studies and addresses methodological criticisms directed at that work. Our findings reveal that descriptive attributes can be successfully predicted and they confirm that the usage level of a brand typically determines the proportion of consumers who hold favourable attitudes about that brand. The results question the popular emphasis on positioning and brand differentiation and we conclude by suggesting more behaviourally oriented strategies.

Acceptance of the benefits of market segmentation is so pervasive that it seems almost sacrilegious to question the validity of this faith in the power of segmentation as a marketing tool. But, at the risk of being labelled heretics, argues that segmentation is not the marketers’ nirvana it is sometimes made out to be. Discusses a number of assumptions and arbitrary decisions involved in the segmentation process, including beliefs about the selection of base variables, the analysis method chosen, the number and composition of segments, the validity of the solution and its stability over time. Reviews techniques for assessing the reliability of the outcome, and concludes that managers should be more aware of the limitations of segmentation studies.

The paper aims to explore the apparent tension between upstream and downstream social marketing and propose these should be treated as contiguous and complementary.

An environmental, population‐based framework is used to explore the varied roles social marketing might play in reducing public health problems.

The paper concludes that social marketers should collaborate with public health researchers to identify and ameliorate the environmental determinants of risk behaviour and create a context where downstream interventions may flourish. It is argued that the upstream measures necessary to shape supportive environments should be regarded not as constraints diminishing voluntary behaviour, but instead as the pre‐requisites enabling full and free choices.

The call for a rapprochement between upstream and downstream social marketers, and greater integration of public health and social marketing goals lead to new research opportunities that focus more effectively on consumers' choice environments.

A united voice calling for policy change that precedes and promotes individual behaviour change may help create stronger and more supportive choice environments in which risk behaviours are no longer the “easy” option.

The tension between upstream and downstream social marketing risks limiting the contribution both approaches may make and overlooks their mutual dependency. This paper evaluates this tension and suggests how it might be addressed.

Although managers can use panel data to monitor their brands’ performance in fast‐moving‐consumer‐goods categories, the regularities researchers have documented apply to stationary and unpartitioned marketplaces. However, the introduction of a new brand may alter the structure of a marketplace and thus the behaviour patterns consumers display. This paper discusses the regularities typically observed in stable markets and considers these in the context of a market that had just experienced a new brand launch. It is concluded that the new brand behaved as an established brand very quickly and that the generalisations used to benchmark existing brands provided accurate predictions of the new brand’s performance.

The promotion of tobacco products has received detailed attention. However, this research has focussed on the effects of tobacco advertising or sponsorship, and how restrictions on promotion activities affect demand. By contrast, comparatively few studies have examined the regulatory implications of variations in the guidelines or statutes governing tobacco promotions. In this paper we analyse the issues arising from inconsistencies in international tobacco promotion regulations and the proposals designed to address these. We conclude that because the development and application of consistent regulations infringes on the economic interests and traditions of civil liberties in some nations, the prospects for implementing internationally adhered to protocols is gloomy. A more practical solution may be to control the conditions of sale of tobacco products as these are more readily circumscribed by domestic regulation.

Tobacco sponsorship of sports has increasingly been cast as a public issue on the grounds that it supports pediatric smoking by circumventing advertising restrictions and communicating positive brand information to children(28,31,32). Research on tobacco sponsorship effects on children is as yet inconclusive, but growing evidence suggests that sponsorship is an effective medium for building cigarette brand awareness and image among under‐aged youth. Research in this area has been inconclusive in part because it lacks a unified framework in which the various contributions of sponsorship to brand knowledge and use can be analysed holistically. This paper proposes that the brand equity concept(1,2,18) provides such a framework. The paper reviews previous research on tobacco sponsorship and children, and presents findings from a study that assessed the relative contribution of sponsorship to brand awareness among fourteen year‐olds (n=366) in Dunedin, New Zealand. The value of sponsorship‐derived cigarette brand knowledge among youth is expressed in terms of Keller's(18) concept of customer‐based brand equity. The study found that children's awareness of tobacco brands and tobacco sponsorships varied according to their smoking experience, sports interests and gender. Cigarette brands with the strongest event associations were those that sponsored events that had a high appeal for the youth in the study. The brands with the highest unaided recall levels were those that were prominently shown in point of purchase displays in stores frequented by the youth, and included those with the highest sponsorship profiles. The research demonstrates that tobacco companies can achieve significant brand recall among children through sport sponsorship, as well as interest‐based (lifestyle) segmentation and targeting benefits, and brand positioning (personality) benefits. The findings have implications for public policy and industry practice. In policy terms, if the goal of tobacco advertising prohibitions is to denormalise smoking by restricting the positive promotional imagery of cigarettes, then sport sponsorship and point of purchase displays need to be incorporated into advertising legislation. In terms of industry practice, the fact that tobacco sponsorship reaches and influences under‐aged youth stands to be a matter of concern for any entity that does not want this social burden. It is recommended that corporations considering involvement in a tobacco‐sponsored event should evaluate the reach of the event and the potential effects of its promotions on youth. Where a youth‐interest connection has been demonstrated for the event, corporations should weigh the social risks and costs of the sponsorship. For non‐tobacco related entities these costs include the potential negative impacts of tobacco‐linked event cross‐promotions on their own brands and corporate image.