Gill Pirikahu

Publications (2)4.77 Total impact

• Article: Tobacco branding, plain packaging, pictorial warnings, and symbolic consumption.

  Janet Hoek, Philip Gendall, Heather Gifford, Gill Pirikahu, Judith McCool, Gina Pene, Richard Edwards, George Thomson
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  ABSTRACT: We use brand association and symbolic consumption theory to explore how plain cigarette packaging would influence the identities young adults cocreate with tobacco products. Group discussions and in-depth interviews with 86 young adult smokers and nonsmokers investigated how participants perceive tobacco branding and plain cigarette packaging with larger health warnings. We examined the transcript data using thematic analysis and explored how removing tobacco branding and replacing this with larger warnings would affect the symbolic status of tobacco brands and their social connotations. Smokers used tobacco brand imagery to define their social attributes and standing, and their connection with specific groups. Plain cigarette packaging usurped this process by undermining aspirational connotations and exposing tobacco products as toxic. Replacing tobacco branding with larger health warnings diminishes the cachet brand insignia creates, weakens the social benefits brands confer on users, and represents a potentially powerful policy measure.
  Qualitative Health Research 12/2011; 22(5):630-9. · 2.19 Impact Factor
• Article: Young adults' interpretations of tobacco brands: implications for tobacco control.

  Philip Gendall, Janet Hoek, George Thomson, Richard Edwards, Gina Pene, Heather Gifford, Gill Pirikahu, Judith McCool
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  ABSTRACT: Marketers have long recognized the power and importance of branding, which creates aspirational attributes that increase products' attractiveness. Although brand imagery has traditionally been communicated via mass media, packaging's importance in promoting desirable brand-attribute associations has increased. Knowledge of how groups prone to smoking experimentation interpret tobacco branding would inform the debate over plain packaging currently occurring in many countries. We conducted 12 group discussions and four in-depth interviews with 66 young adult smokers and nonsmokers of varying ethnicities from two larger New Zealand cities and one provincial city. Participants evaluated 10 familiar and unfamiliar tobacco brands using brand personality attributes and discussed the associations they had made. Participants ascribed very different images to different brands when exposed to the packaging alone, regardless of whether they had seen or heard of the brands before. Perceptual mapping of brands and image attributes highlighted how brand positions varied from older, more traditional, and male oriented to younger, feminine, and "cool." Our findings emphasize the continuing importance of tobacco branding as a promotion tool, even when communicated only by packaging. The ease with which packaging alone enabled young people to identify brand attributes and the desirable associations these connoted illustrate how tobacco packaging functions as advertising. The results support measures such as plain packaging of tobacco products to reduce exposure to these overt behavioral cues.
  Nicotine & Tobacco Research 06/2011; 13(10):911-8. · 2.58 Impact Factor