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‘‘She encourages people to drink’’: A qualitative study of the use of females
to promote beer in Nigerian Institutions of Learning
Author: Dr EW Dumbili (Brunel University London)
Emeka.dumbili@brunel.ac.uk
Journal: Drugs: Education, Prevention & Policy
Volume: 23, Issue: 4 Page: 337-343
DOI: 10.3109/09687637.2015.1119246
Note: The published version of this article may vary from this version.
To access the published version, see
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/09687637.2015.1119246
Aims: University s tudents engage in heavy alcohol consumption and one factor that
facilitates their alcohol use is alcohol marketing. Diverse sophisticated promotional
strategies are used by transnational alcohol industries in Nigeria, and no policies to regulate
alcohol promotion exist. This s tudy explores the marketing strategy of using female students
to promote beer in bars, nightclubs and hotels.
Methods: Thirty-one in-depth interviews were conducted with university students (aged 19-
23 years). The data were analysed to generate themes with the aid of NVivo 10 software.
Results: The results show that female s tudents identified as ‘beautiful’ are strategically
employed to promote beer brands in bars, nig htclubs and other drinking sites. Beer
promotion involves socialising in bars and persuading customers to buy more alcohol.
Women agree to promote beer due to the commission that they are paid within a short
time period. However, promoting beer creates different levels of risk for beer promoters.
Beer promoters may be pres sured into unwanted relationships because purchasing beer, for
some men, constitutes the first step toward initiating a relationship with them. Their male
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customers are also at risk because they may drink large quantities of alcohol, either to gain
the approval of a beer promoter in the hope of a relationship or to win prizes, s uch as free
drinks and other branded paraphernalia that accompanies beer promotion.
Conclusions: The finding s suggest that us ing women to promote beer creates opportunities
for their exploitation and also contributes to growing alcohol-related problems in Nigeria.
Effective national alcohol control policies that regulate alcohol promotion should be
formulated and implemented in Nigeria.
Keywords: Alcohol promotion, beer promoters, Nigeria, university students, women
Introduction
Transnational alcohol industries are concentrating their activities in the emerging markets of
Africa. In many African countries, global alcohol producers employ sophisticated strategies
to sell their brands to target groups (Jernigan & Babor, 2015; Swahn, Palmier, & Kasirye,
2013). In Nigeria, transnational alcohol industries operate either independently or in
partnership with other companies. While some of these companies (e.g., Nig erian
Breweries/Heineken and Guinness Nigeria) have existed for over 50 years, others such as
SABMiller and Tradall SA are fairly new. Due to the stiff competition to gain and/or maintain
brand followership between these companies, they employ different sophisticated
marketing (advertising, promotion, and corporate social responsibility) strategies (De Bruijn,
2011; Dumbili, 2014; Obot, 2013). While some of these marketing practices are regulated by
federal laws, others are not: there are no laws or policies on alcohol promotion in Nigeria
(World Health Organization, 2014).
This exploratory s tudy examines the strateg y of using female students as ‘beer
promoters’1 in Nigeria. The article focuses on how beer promotion is performed, the s ites
1Beer pr omoter s a re peopl e who work in bars, hotels, restaurants, nightclubs , eateries, etc., sell ing beer or
publi cising promotional programmes or activities. They are contracted by alcohol compani es or marketers and
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where beer brands are promoted and why women are us ed as beer promoters. This is
imperative because while beer, gin, rum and other similar beverages are categorised as
‘men’s alcoholic beverages’ in Nigeria, sweetened drinks are s aid to be ‘women’s alcohol’
(Dumbili, 2015a). Some women are beginning to consume alcohol categorised as men’s, and
some are ques tioning the rationale for discriminating against women who drink these men’s
beverages; yet research shows that women who consume beer are termed ‘feckless’ by
their peers (Dumbili, 2015a). Again, through the lenses of informal structures, spaces such
as bars, restaurants, hotels and other public drinking sites are seen as men’s spaces, and
women who occupy them are said to be transgressors of femininity (Dumbili, 2015a).
Therefore, the rationale for using women to promote beer brands (that the s ociety will not
permit them to drink) in sites that are categorised as men’s, demands empirical
investigation.
Additionally, while a few studies have documented alcohol advertising in Nigeria
(e.g., de Bruijin, Ferreira-Borges, Engels, & Bhavsar, 2014; Obot & Ibanga, 2002), there is a
dearth of empirical studies on alcohol promotion. Also, to my knowledge, no study has
examined the use of females to promote alcohol in Africa (where alcohol marketing is either
not regulated at all or regulated with ineffective policies). The remainder of the article is
divided into four sections. The following section reviews s tudies that investigated the us e of
women to promote beer. This is followed by the study’s methodology. Next, the results are
presented while the following section discus s es the finding s.
The use of females to promote alcohol
Internationally, the practice and strategy of using females to promote beer have not
attracted scholarly attention except in the Asian continent (e.g., Lubek, 2005; van der Putten
& Feilzer, 2011; Webber, Spitzer, Somrongthong, Dat, & Kounnavongs a, 2015). In countries
thei r pa yment i s in the form of commis sions . Thi s commiss ion is bas ed on the number of bottl es, cans or crates
of beer they sell duri ng a s pecifi ed period.
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such as Cambodia, China, Thailand, and Laos, etc., evidence shows that young women are
used as beer promoters (Webber, Spitzer, Somrongthong, Dat, & Kounnavongs a, 2012).
In thes e countries, the practice of promoting beer involves visiting drinking spaces
such as bars, hotels , restaurants, and ‘‘beer gardens’’ to sell beer brands to customers who
are mostl y men (Kim et al., 2005; Lubek, 2005 p.2). Lubek (2005) reveals that transnational
alcohol companies provide these female promoters with uniforms of the beer brands that
they promote, making it easier for customers to identify them. Also, they are trained and
ins tructed to socialise with buyers becaus e this will increase the chances of making more
sales (Kim et al., 2005). Research shows that their salaries are poor (Kim et al., 2005) while
their bonuses hinge on the quantity of beers that they sell (Kim et al., 2005; Lubek, 2005
p.2) – an arrangement that facilitates their exploitation (Ol, 2011; van der Putten & Feilzer,
2011).
For example, beer promoters engage in sexual activities with men in a bid to make
extra income to supplement their low payment (Kim et al., 2005). Additionally, some
customers buy beer brands on the condition that beer promoters will engage in sexual
activities with them while others are raped or abused by drunken cus tomers (van der
Putten, 2011). In s ome cas es, the consequences of this is contraction of HIV and other
sexually transmitted diseases (Kim et al., 2005), and some have subsequently died from
AIDS (Lubek, 2005). Ma ny beer promoters cannot access quality medical treatment due to
their inability to pay, or because of stigmatization attached to the job, as beer promoters
may be reg arded as indirect s ex workers (Webber et al., 2012; Webber et al., 2015).
Methods
This Project and Procedure
The article draws on a recently concluded doctoral study exploring the interplay between
young people’s media consumption and alcohol use, the role of alcohol marketing in
students’ drinking behaviour and the gendering of alcohol. I have drawn upon the data sets
to produce works focusing on alcohol consumption and the cons truction of social identity
(Dumbili, 2015a), and alcohol consumption and g endered sexual behaviour (under review).
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This article focuses on the second objective which is the role alcohol marketing plays in
students’ drinking behaviour. The study was conducted on a university campus located in a
city of Anambra State, south-eastern Nigeria. The Office of the Dean of Students’ Affairs of
the Nigerian university and the Brunel University London Ethics Board approved the study
before I collected data between September and December 2013.
The participants were recruited from across nine faculties on the university campus
using a word-of-mouth approach and snowball sampling. These were particularly successful
methods of recruitment in relation to female participants. Alcohol consumption among
young people is a sensitive topic in Nigeria. Young people, especially females, are often
reluctant to participate in studies and reaching them through any means that may expose
their identity will hinder their participation. The difficulties of recruiting willing participants,
which I encountered during the pilot studies, necessitated the adoption of these processes.
Participants, interviews and data analysis
Thi rty-one in-depth interviews lasting approximately 33-90 minutes were conducted with 22
male and nine female undergraduate students, aged 19-23 years. The interviews were
recorded with a digital device with the permission of the participants. It is worth highlighting
that no incentive was given to the participants ; this was to ensure voluntary participation.
Als o, the names used in the results s ection are not participants ’ real names.
The interviews were transcribed verbatim, and a thematic analysis was undertaken
to identify rich and detailed patterns of meaning in the data s et (Braun & Clarke, 2006).
Because Silverman (2011) has advised that one of the ways to guarantee quality and timely
analysis is to begin early, I initiated the preliminary analysis immediately after the first
interview was conducted. Here, I read and re-read the notes that I had taken during the
interview and lis tened to the audio to check for accuracy. This provided an opportunity to
identify new areas to probe and explore further in the subsequent interviews. It als o helped
me to write down some tentative coding schemes (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Following this, I
transcribed the first interview. As the audiotape was being trans cribed, I began to categorise
the initial extracts into broad themes and subthemes. This process was repeated for the
next six interviews. Additionally, because it was imperative to assess my initial thoughts and
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ideas about my coding, some academic colleagues read and commented on the interviews
and the preliminary analysis. Thes e processes turned out to be very us eful because they
assisted me in obtaining an early grasp of my data (Morse, 2012) and some of thes e
subthemes, grouped manually, became the parent nodes, while others were condensed
(Saldaña, 2012) into different child nodes when the transcripts were imported into Nvivo 10
for further analysis.
When all 31 interviews had been transcribed, I read the transcripts several times ,
crosschecking and reconciling them with the audio recordings before importing them into
Nvivo 10. Following this , I conducted a number of queries , the first of which was a word
frequency query to gain an ins ight into words most frequently us ed by the participants and
how this could help in understanding the patterns within the whole data set. It also helped
me to further code the data easily. When the coding was completed, I read the nodes
thoroughly to identify incompatible quotes. Through these means, I was able to condense or
expand such quotes into the existing child nodes or create new nodes before running matrix
coding queries. At the end of the matrix queries, I exported the nodes to the word
document and read them several times. Here, I did s ome comparison with themes that had
been generated manually before writing down the patterns of meaning from the themes
that had been identified.
Results
Women beer promoters and why they work as promoters
I began by exploring participants ’ general knowledge of alcohol promotion on campus. Here,
both male and female participants recalled that alcohol promotion is ubiquitous on and
around this university campus. The participants reported that promotional activities such as
‘‘buy-two-get-one-free’’, ‘‘buy-and-win-prizes’’ such as cars, cash, television sets, mobile
phones, free drinks and the type that involves a price reduction are popular in bars,
nightclubs, hotels and restaurant around this campus.
When the question on who actually promotes the beer brands in these bars,
nightclubs or hotels was asked, a vast majority of bar-attending patrons argued that young
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and beautiful female students are used as beer promoters. A self-confes sed regular bar
patron revealed that these female students wear branded uniforms and pos ition themselves
in s trategic places within the bars. He recalled that beer promoters often use well-known
bars and the reason why can be understood from his account:
…When you walk into a bar, not all bars but well-known bars where people go
all the time, you might see a lady wearing a shirt bearing Star [beer] and
another lady wearing the one of Harp [beer]. You might be sitting, and they
walk up to you and ask you what you want. When you tell them that you want
Star [beer], they will tell you that there is a promo going on where you buy
two bottles of Star [beer], and you get one free and under the crown cock
you’ll also win a T-shirt… (Edulim, 23 years, male)
A female s tudent who had applied to work as a beer promoter also shared her experience.
What is interesting from her account is how she revealed that the s trategy of us ing females
to promote beer is popular around this campus and in the city where the university is
located:
I was supposed to be a part of the marketing experience some time ago… It
was all about advertising their products to people in ‘beer parlours’ [bars].
(Pretty, 23 years, female)
Interviewer: Can you shed more light on how it is done in thes e beer parlours?
…What you do is to tell people what your products can offer them [the
benefits of the brand]. You make it sound better than other products, and
when they buy it, you give them gifts [prizes] like umbrellas, T-shirts and stuff
like that. And they sell it at cheaper rates. It is a very popular thing; you see
students dressed up in their T-shirts. It is either this company or another that is
advertising their products. (Pretty, 23 years, female)
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She als o shed light on the fact that alcohol industries provide these promoters with branded
paraphernalia (e.g., T-shirt, caps, glassware, etc.) and free dri nks, which they give to
customers who buy beer from them, with the aim of encouraging more purchas es. A similar
account that revealed that beer promoters give away prizes was shared by another female
participant:
When you go to beer parlour [bars] and you wanna drink, you’ll see them
wearing T-shirt; they will come and meet you and say hello… They will tell you
that when you buy two bottles, they will give you one free. Even Guilder
[beer], Heineken and Hero [beer] do it. (Agatha, 21 years, female)
It is worthy to note that none of the female participants in this study consumes beer.
Although some of them did reveal that they consume sweetened female-friendly alcoholic
beverages, they reported that drinking beer is unfeminine.
When I asked the participants to explain the reason why female students (who will
not drink beer) agree to promote beer brands, the reas on was explained:
Students do it often because of the quick cash they can get from it... If you go
down to [name of promotion site], you will see students dressed in polo [T-
shirts], advertising one product or another… You can do it within the space of
six weeks, and you will be paid. (Pretty, 23 years, female)
The use of women as beer promoters was also expressed by Chioma (21 years, female), a
self-confessed ex-promoter. She shared her experience which shows that alcohol producers
regularly us e women to market alcohol in this city. When I as ked her whether or not she
had accepted the offer to promote alcohol, she s aid: ‘‘…I was one of their ushers when they
did their promotion in [name of city]’’. She revealed that getting a job to promote beer is
highly competitive becaus e alcohol companies employ only a few promoters. On how she
got the job, she recalled that her female friend who also worked as a promoter introduced
her to the company’s manager. Following this, I asked her why she agreed to promote
alcohol, and s he added that it was becaus e of ‘‘the money’’ she was expected to make
within a short time. An additional account was provided by Las to support the fact that
female students are used to create brand awareness or to promote different products:
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They have all these agents who will equally be fellow students. They dress up
in their attire, but they are fellow students; they kind of approach people and
since you are a student like them, they will use the familiarity to sell their
products to you. (Las, 21 years, male)
Females are used to attract men to buy beer
When I probed further to understand why females (as oppos ed to men who drink beer) are
used to promote alcohol on and around this campus and why men patronise them, the male
participants revealed that beautiful young females are employed because they attract men
to buy alcohol:
They usually use girls because the personality talking to you can attract you to
buy a product. They use fine [beautiful] girls and because of youthful
exuberance [boys patronise them]. When you see a fine girl putting on a T-
shirt and a face cap, the way she will talk to you will make you buy drinks
rather than when an old woman [approaches you]… Attractive girls are used to
get men to buy their products. It’s a promo tactic. (Levin, 21 years, male)
Another participant also provided other interrelated reasons why young females, especially
students, are used as beer promoters. He revealed how this s trategy could encourage not
just drinking but other motives, one of which is sexual negotiation:
It can affect drinking because if an old person comes and starts telling you that
this drink is good for your health, you will… say, please forget it. But when you
see a fellow youth like you… who comes as a marketer and tells you that ‘I
have this drink, if you drink two bottles you are going to get a prize’, the guys
may be carried away because when you talk of alcohol there is this ‘feeling and
expectation’. Another reason is that if you hang out as guys do, maybe you see
a lady selling drinks, some guys will buy her products in order to get into
rapport with the girl. (Las, 21 years, male)
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Las also shed light on why students patronis e their fellow s tudents, and this may be one of
the reasons why students are used to promote beer on and around this campus:
…Because young people who are selling it are your fellow students, you see it
as no problem to buy it either because you know the person, or you want the
person to make sales. (Las, 21 years, male)
As he explained, students prefer to patronis e a fellow student. It could be considered that
this is largely due to s tudent unionism that is very popular on Nigerian campuses. It appears
they crave to maintain solidarity (because young people who are selling it are your fellow
students) and the fact that they know that the student-promoter will need the commis s ion,
encourages their patronage. This may be another reas on why employers use s tudents as
beer promoters.
Beer promoters encourage people to drink more alcohol
The participants also explained that the use of these female promoters encourages people
to drink more alcohol than they would drink on a normal occas ion. For example, Chike
reflected on his recent experience with thes e beer promoters and how it made him and his
friends cons ume more alcohol than they had intended:
…Last two months, one of my friends decided to take us out to drink. We were
supposed to actually get Star and Hero [beers] but a lady approached us and
was like, ‘do you want to buy beer?’ And we were like, ‘we are already buying’.
She said that she was from Legend stout and that she was doing a promo of –
‘buy-two-get-one-free’. We were six guys, and the six of us had planned to
have an average of two bottles each. So, everybody changed immediately [to
Legend]. Everyone said, ‘we’ll have two bottles of Legend’, and they gave us
one more bottle each too. And then everyone actually drank three bottles
instead of two. (Chike, 21 years, male)
An interesting part of this practice of using females to promote alcohol is that the majority
of bar patrons revealed that at least once, this strateg y has resulted in them drinking more
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than they had planned to. Levin, for instance, stressed that these promoters have the ability
to persuade people to drink or to consume more alcohol, and his views are in tandem with
Dozie’s :
Alcohol promotion is booming here on this campus. Just recently, a friend of
mine actually [became a promoter]. She is working for Star beer. (Dozie, 23
years, male)
Interviewer: Okay, is this your friend a student?
Yes, she is a student... Actually, what she does is that she encourages people
to drink, and if you drink two bottles, you can win a prize like key holders,
pens, free drinks, cap, T-shirt, etc. (Dozie, 23 years, male)
As these accounts show, it can be inferred that thes e beer promoters are trained to
socialise, encourage or persuade people to drink more than they planned before going to a
bar, and this is likely because their commis s ion depends on how many bottles, cans or
crates of beer they sell (Lubek, 2005). The female’s accounts also revealed that these
promoters pers uade not only men but women who visit bars to drink more:
…I wanted to drink one bottle, but the girl came to me and said: ‘if you drink
two bottles you’ll have a gift’ [a prize], so I was moved. I asked her, ‘what is
the gift?’ She just said that I should drink the two bottles and have a gift. I
ended up drinking the two bottles and to my surprise she gave me a gift, but it
was just a band [laughs]. It was a hand band, so I was like, ‘this is not the gift’
[I expected]. She just wanted to make her sales of which she did. She even
made me drink above my plan. (Chimanda, 22 years, female)
As these foregoing accounts have revealed, female students are used to promote diverse
beer brands on and around this campus and this (in combination with different promotions
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such as buy-two-get-one-free) encourages people to drink, or drink more than they had
planned. This may be one of the reasons why thes e females are used to promote beers in
this city.
Discussion
This study is the first attempt to explore the use of women to promote beer in Nigeria, and
the res ults confirmed and contributed to the findings of previous research. The s tudy found
that young women are used to promote beer on this campus and the surrounding bars,
nightclubs and hotels. This confirms Webber et al.'s (2015) finding s among Thai beer
promoters. An unexpected aspect of this particular result suggests that to be employed as a
beer promoter requires physical beauty or attractiveness, and the reason may be to draw
the attention of male patrons. This marketing strategy of using attractive females as beer
promoters creates and reaffirms particular social meanings about beer in Nigeria: it
sexualises beer (i.e., men equate it with attractive women), and it reaffirms beer drinking as
something that heterosexual men 'should do'. In fact, beer drinking thus becomes a
masculine, heterosexual practice.
As Lubek (2005) reported, to be identified eas ily and also to distinguish each
company and their brands , these Nigerian women are clothed with uniforms that reflect the
beer brands they promote. This is a sophis ticated marketing strategy because it not only
differentiates these beer promoters from other women who may be present in such bars or
nightclub, but it also serves as an advertising strategy. (i.e., branded uniforms help to
advertis e the brands that they promote). As such, beer promoters may be regarded as
walking billboards.
The data also provide other interesting revelations by s howing the reason why
female students agree to be used to promote beer: to make quick cash. Although this study
did not explore how much Nigerian beer promoters are paid, previous research s hows that
beer promoters are underpaid and exploited (Ol, 2011; van der Putten & Feilzer, 2011). One
of the reasons for this exploitation is that their payment is determined by their sales (Ki m et
al., 2005; Lubek, 2005). Despite the fact that Nigeria is an oil-producing country, the rate of
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poverty is high and social support is not available. As Lubek (2005) reported that Asian
women from poor background work as beer promoters, this arguably is one of the reas ons
why these female s tudents agree to promote beer brands . This supports Ruddock's (2012
p.63) assertion that while to be used as a salesgirl or marketer is one of the ‘‘choices women
in Western nations freely make, such is ‘‘forced on others in developing world, who must
respond to neo-liberal demands ’’ due to a dearth of economic res ources.
Women beer promoters also encourage customers to cons ume more alcohol, and
this is to make more sales. In each bar or other drinking spaces, there is a social competition
among beer promoters. One of the reasons is because those who sell more will receive
higher commission, in that their payment is bas ed on the quantity they sell. Another reason
is that becaus e beer promoters work for different alcohol companies, they must compete to
sell their companies’ brands and gain their share of the market. This may encourage these
females to socialise or even flirt with patrons so as to make higher sales and gain brand
followership as found by Kim et al. (2005). Similarly, these beer promoters may be
pressured into unwanted relations hips or coerced s exual activities (Webber & Spitzer,
2010). As Lee et al.'s (2010) results show, this current s tudy found that buying beer from
these women is, f or some men, the first s tep toward establishing a rapport that may lead to
a relationship with a promoter. Thus , beer promoters are at risk of workplace harm or
sexual assaults that may not be reported to the police due to the stigma attached to s uch in
Nigeria (Fawole, Ajuwon, Osung bade, & Faweya, 2002).
As earlier noted, Nigeria is a patriarchal society where men’s and women’s spaces
are clearly differentiated. Dumbili (2015a) revealed that men do not consider the act of
drinking beer or occupying spaces such as bars, nightclubs, hotels and other similar public
sites as appropriate feminine gender behaviour. Thus, the use of women to promote beers
in these spaces reveals a double s tandard practice and s hows how women are exploited in
contemporary Nigeria by alcohol producers.
One of the implications of this practice is that men may belittle these female alcohol
promoters who work in bars. Des pite the fact that young girls (mainly uneducated or
secondary school leavers) are used as salesgirls in some eateries or restaurants in Nigeria,
females who work or are regularly s een in bars, restaurants, hotels, and similar places are
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often disrespected or labelled ‘‘drinkers , wild or irresponsible’’ (Dumbili, 2015a). This is not
unconnected with the notion of respectable femininity (women are not suppos ed to be seen
in places where men always gather) that are prevalent in Nigeria (Dumbili, 2015a). This is
why Ikuesan (1994) notes that the fate of such women (and their female siblings who may
not use alcohol) hangs in the balance in terms of attracting a suitor.
In fact, as the use of women to promote beer creates risks for female promoters, her
customers are at risk too. This is because drinking more alcohol because of the unrealistic
fantasies propagated to sell drinks (e.g., drink and win a prize) expos es the drinker to
alcohol-related problems. Second, buying alcohol just to initiate a rapport with a female
promoter (i.e., to satisfy the female promoter in order to initiate a relationship) may
necessitate that the customer drinks a large quantity of alcohol within a short time. Here,
binge drinking is inevitable, especially because in Nigeria, beer is sold in terms of liquid
content only. That is, someone who buys a bottle of beer, for instance, buys only the liquid
content and cannot go away with the bottles (unless the seller agrees to collect money as
collateral Dumbili, 2015b)).
Additionally, unlike what occurs in most development countries where beer is s old in
standardised glasses, beers are sold in bottles (and more recently, in cans) in Nigeria
(Dumbili, 2015b). Thus, every bottle of beer bought must be consumed at the point of
purchase so that the seller can retrieve the bottles). Because these beer promoters also
promote free drinks (e.g., buy-two-and-get-one-free) and other prizes , the chances of
drinking many bottles to win a prize are increased. Again, this may expose customers to
alcohol-related problems that are associated with heavy alcohol consumption. Therefore,
alcohol promotion and the strategy of using females to promote beer brands contribute to
the rising alcohol-related problems among young people in Nigeria (World Health
Organization, 2014).
This exploratory study has several limitations. First, it focused on one campus and
did not examine other universities that are located either in the region where this study was
conducted or in other regions of Nigeria. Nigeria is a multi-ethnic and religious country.
Thus, these diversities may mediate women’s acceptance or rejection to be used as beer
promoters in other regions. Another shortcoming is that it did not elicit data from many
15
women, and particularly beer promoting women, in that some females that were
approached during the fieldwork rejected the invitation to participate (due to the sens itive
nature of this research). Similarly, the study only relied on interviews with the participants
and did not obs erve the activities of beer promoters or their customers at drinking s ites.
Des pite these limitations , the study has attempted to document how contemporary alcohol
marketing strategies create risks for young women and their customers in Nigeria.
It appears that because there are no policies or laws to regulate alcohol promotion
in Nigeria (World Health Organization, 2014), alcohol producers may be engag ing in
activities that contravene international standards. Therefore, there is a need to formulate
and implement comprehens ive alcohol control policies that regulate promotional activities
in Nigeria. Effective alcohol control policies are necessary to protect these females from
workplace harm. This will also help to prevent experiences similar to the Asian beer
promoters who contracted and died of sexually transmitted infections because they were
pres s ured to work as indirect sex workers (i.e., non-brothel based sex workers). There is a
need to build on this res earch. Studies that will help to reveal the terms and conditions of
beer promoters’ contracts are needed. This will help to facilitate policy formulation that will
protect beer promoters in Nigeria. Also, future research that will focus on the risks (social
and health) or harm associated with the job of promoting beer brands is needed. In
summary, the findings of this s tudy have provided a lens through which us eful interventions
on alcohol promotion and its effects on young people can be implemented in Nigeria.
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