International Management and Intercultural Communication

A Collection of Case Studies; Volume 2

Elizabeth Christopher

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137553256
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Strategy
• Index: Business

International Management and Intercultural Communication consists of cases of direct observation and personal involvement in a wide variety of communication challenges in international management settings, and discusses them in terms of management theories. The cases explore interactions across national cultures and regional boundaries, demonstrating both traditional and unusual approaches to problems that sooner or later are likely to challenge all managers who operate internationally.The book is presented in two volumes. Volume 1 contains case studies concerning different aspects of international management and intercultural communication in business, marketing and politics. Volume 2 deals with cases of international management in social and educational settings.

1

The Culture of Smoking: A Case Study of Tobacco Control

Lamont Lindstrom

Editor’s introduction

This is a case of an anti-tobacco campaign involving advertising to ethnic communities. It is an unusual example of intercultural communication.

In the US until fairly recently, marketers in general were not greatly concerned with minorities. Ethnic groups were expected to assimilate over time into the cultural mainstream. Lindstrom’s case study is only one of many indicators that this reasoning is now faulty.¹

As a result of political, economic and social factors, ethnic groups such as African–Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans (among others) are fighting to maintain their own cultural integrity. Moreover, ethnic populations are increasing in numbers, large enough to be marketing targets – in this case, for tobacco marketing. According to the 2010 US Census,² approximately 36.3% of the population then belonged to a racial or ethnic minority group, including not only the three that form the basis of the case study but also Asian-Americans and Native Hawaiian or other Pacific islanders. The projected black population, either alone or in combination, and including those of more than one race, is 77.4 million by 1 July 2060. On that date, according to the projection, blacks will constitute 18.4% of the nation’s total population.³

Also, these ethnic groups are growing in affluence. For example, in 2012, the Hispanic consumer market in the US was estimated to be larger than the entire economies of all but 13 countries worldwide.⁴ Hence, they are becoming even more attractive targets for marketers. In fact, tobacco companies have been disproportionately targeting minority communities for decades.⁵ The first big minority advertising push took place from the early 1970s when major tobacco firms fought for share of the young urban African-American market in what has been coined the “Menthol Wars.”⁶

It is interesting to note that Jesse Steinfeld (US surgeon-general from 1969 to 1973) was the first ever holder of that office to be forced out by the president, after campaigning against the dangers of smoking during the Richard Nixon era.⁷ In 1971, Steinfeld proposed that smoking be prohibited in public spaces such as buses, trains, airplanes, restaurants and theatres. Representatives of tobacco interests objected strenuously to his contentions, and it is reasonable to assume that their lobbying influenced Nixon’s decision; and after he was re-elected in 1972, he accepted Steinfeld’s resignation. Years later, the New York Times reported that, while he recognized that many top officials were replaced during the transition, Steinfeld believed he lost his position partly because of his work against smoking.⁸

Lindstrom’s findings from his case study are that effective tobacco control campaigns must relate to Oklahoma’s diverse ethnic smoking cultures – and presumably those of other states. He reports growing African-American aspirations to accept responsibility for their community health and well-being, also the importance of family influence on Hispanics; and Native Americans’ distinction between traditional use and commercial sale of tobacco. His observations are in line with those of others who sponsor anti-smoking campaigns that target social and ethnic minorities. One example is a research report published in PLOS ONE,⁹ of a new study by researchers at RTI International,¹⁰ an independent, nonprofit institute. They found that general-population anti-smoking advertising effectively promotes attempts to quit smoking among vulnerable population groups, including minorities and people with lower education and income. However, advertisements with strong graphic imagery, evoking negative emotions towards smoking, are the most effective forms of campaigns for smoking cessation.

These suggestions, and those arising from Lamont’s focus groups, imply that the proposed Oklahoma campaign would do well to promote visual themes of strong community and family responsibility for vulnerable members to avoid or quit smoking (especially some women and all children and young people). Images might be both positive (“happy and healthy are the members of non-smoking families”) and negative. One example of the latter, specifically targeting young people, is a public service Facebook campaign called “Rage Against the Haze.”¹¹

Strong visual themes in public campaigns are not, of course, restricted to anti-smoking propaganda. Kay Gillis, in Volume 2, Chapter 2 of this collection, writes of successful political lobbying by a small group of local citizens with large social concerns for public health – in her case, it was an anti-opium campaign originating in Singapore.

As for Native Americans’ distinction between traditional use and commercial sale of tobacco, reports have documented strategies by commercial tobacco companies to manipulate and target Navajo and other Indian Nations’ sacred use of tobacco in an attempt to increase the industry’s bottom line.¹² To be successful, an anti-tobacco programme targeted to Native Americans apparently needs to focus on three themes:

•Tobacco is one of four sacred medicines (Sacred Tobacco, Cedar, Sage and Sweetgrass) for many Aboriginal Nations¹³ and in its original form had both honour and purpose.

•However, the chemical additives in commercial tobacco take away from its original purpose in tribal ceremonies.

•Smoking cigarettes and chewing tobacco have no connection to Aboriginal spirituality; but traditional tobacco in small amounts to accompany prayers and ceremonies is far less harmful.

Reference has been made here to the fact that this case study was based on the use of focus groups as an intercultural communication medium for research¹⁴; and this is the most widely used tool in qualitative marketing research. The technique of acquiring information through such groups was developed after World War II, to evaluate audience response to radio programmes. Since then, social scientists and programme evaluators have found focus groups to be useful in understanding how or why people hold certain beliefs about a topic or programme of interest.

Focus groups typically consist of somewhere between 7 and 10 people, unfamiliar to each other but sharing characteristics that relate to the topic under study. They are guided by trained moderators through carefully designed discussions that encourage participants to express different perceptions and points of view on the given topic. They are used to gather information for discovery, bench marking, evaluating, verifying perceptions, feelings, opinions and thoughts. The goal is to gain insights to relevant consumer attitudes and behaviour that go beyond the superficial.

Lindstrom’s case study, of focus groups whose leaders were also recruited from members of Black, Hispanic and Native American communities, neatly illustrates a number of major research advantages:

•As they consist of loosely structured sessions, moderators can guide these groups through a free flow of ideas on the topic.

•They evoke reactions to specific stimuli such as concepts, prototypes and advertising – in this case, related to tobacco marketing.

•They create valuable group dynamics, seen in real time by trained observers.

•They permit flexibility in questioning, encourage dialogue and exchange of ideas, generate hypotheses, are relatively fast and inexpensive and produce findings in a form that most users can easily understand.

•They are an appropriate type of qualitative research to use during the exploratory phase of development of a product, or – as in this case – a campaign, before anything has been put into action. They offer initial opinions and reactions prior to market launch.

•Participants are brought together because they are members of the relevant target market: that is, they possess certain characteristics related to the subject under study. In this case, they represented three ethnic communities.

•Participants influence each other through self-disclosure, responding to ideas and questions that might not otherwise emerge in other methods for measuring the quality and impact of the planned programme. Thus, focus groups are most productive when used to gain information on new proposals, to assess strengths and weaknesses and to evaluate likely success.

However, there are some disadvantages. These group interviews are not appropriate for all types of research. The technique can be misused by poorly trained moderators, interpretation of the data is tedious and time intensive, results can be overgeneralized and groups can vary considerably and be difficult to assemble.

Lindstrom’s case study illustrates also what focused group discussion cannot reveal:

•valid information about individuals;

•valid “before-and-after” information (how things have changed over time); and

•information that can be applied in general to other groups of people.

Because the idea of focus groups is to take advantage of group interactions, it is important to use the information at the group, not the individual, level. For example, focus groups are not a valid way to find out how much progress individuals have made towards their own goals. Also, because focus groups are usually made up of a very small number of people who voluntarily participate, it cannot be assumed that their views and perceptions represent those of other groups; they are not “random samples.”

Nevertheless, Lindstrom’s case study illustrates very clearly the merits of focus groups as a research tool when planning promotional campaigns, particularly those characterized by intercultural communication.

Abstract:

The case study is of a campaign to reduce tobacco consumption in Oklahoma, above average in the US and ubiquitous among Native Americans, African–Americans and Hispanics.

Researchers conducted focus groups with members of these three ethnic communities. They found that in all groups members were more willing to trust anti-tobacco messages from within their respective communities than from external sources. Researchers also discovered different views of tobacco. For example, among Hispanics, particularly recent immigrants and their children, tobacco use was associated with pressure to “fit in”; and it was suggested that Hispanic youth (especially women) are vulnerable to this sort of pressure.

Discussion of the findings concludes that effective anti-smoking campaigns should profit by noting these cross-cultural differences in marketing designs and strategies.

Keywords: African–Americans, cultural diversity, Hispanics, Native Americans, tobacco control

Introduction

Tobacco consumption in Oklahoma tops average usage elsewhere in the US and is ubiquitous among Native Americans, African-Americans and Hispanics. To promote reduction in tobacco use, a city/county health department in northwest Oklahoma prepared to launch a tobacco awareness campaign.

Money had begun to flow from the 1998 Master Settlement of a states-attorneys general lawsuit against the tobacco industry, and some of this funding would support public education. Given community diversity, the health department was rightly concerned that generic anti-smoking messages would fail to persuade, or might even offend, important segments of the intended audience.

To investigate differences in tobacco awareness and appreciation among three ethnic groups, better to inform campaign design, we invited African-Americans, Native Americans and Hispanics to take part in six focus groups, and we also used other qualitative methods to determine local meanings of tobacco and its use. Focus group data revealed broadly shared American appreciations of tobacco among the three communities, but also ethnically diverse appreciations of tobacco.

For Native Americans, tobacco played an important role in traditional societies long before it was taken up by Europeans. Native Americans stressed the importance of understanding tobacco as a sacred substance and smoking as a ritual.

African–Americans were acutely sensitive to the possibility that those who sell tobacco are oppressing their community, making money from a dangerous product.

Hispanic participants discussed smoking as an effective semiotic tool: a way to send messages about sophistication and stylishness. Recent immigrants and their children, in particular, associated tobacco use with pressure to “fit in”; and some group members suggested that youth (especially women) are vulnerable to this sort of pressure.

To be effective, anti-tobacco messaging should incorporate these three disparate tobacco cultures.

Smoking cultures

We convened six focus groups to investigate community attitudes about tobacco and perceptions of its marketing. The six groups comprised three different ethnic minorities: two groups of African-Americans, two of Hispanics and two of Native Americans.

The interpretation of focus group data is not an exact science. Because the groups are intended to encourage discussion in which different points of view are expressed, not everything that is said in a group is equally relevant when determining dominant community attitudes. It is important to attend to the emotion and demeanour with which statements are made and endorsed.

Drawing on careful analysis of group ...