Why do public policy-makers ignore marketing and consumer research? A case study of policy-making for alcohol advertising

ABSTRACT

Public policy-makers have been noted to sometimes ignore marketing/consumer research, even when the policy issue clearly pertains to consumption markets. We embark to identify factors that may explain policy-makers’ limited attention to marketing/consumer research, especially in cases related to consumer affairs that may have public health implications. Empirically, we focus on policy-making around the advertising of alcohol products. Having been involved in this policy-making process in Finland, we elucidate the case through an introspective narrative. We find that the factors explaining policy-makers’ limited attention to marketing/consumer research range from the decision-making characteristics of policy-makers, through inconsistent definitions for key terminology, to the fear of over-generalizing certain theories of marketing/consumer research. Regarding the latter, a key issue in the present case was that public policy-makers were unconvinced about the generic marketing theory stating that in mature markets, advertising will not increase the total consumption demand of a product category.

KEYWORDS:

• Alcohol advertising
• alcohol regulation
• advertising regulation
• policy design
• marketing research
• adolescents
• public policy-making

Acknowledgements

The authors have received no funding from alcohol industries. This study is a purely scientific endeavor.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 While the methodological weaknesses are, here, assessed against the common standards of marketing/consumer research and journal publications, it must be noted that within their own discipline and journals (i.e. the public health discipline), not all the weaknesses identified may be considered weaknesses. This is because of the different scientific paradigms applied, as well as possibly different standards adopted by the journals.

2 However, it could also be considered that these self-reported intention variables are the best ones available – as obtaining data on the actual alcohol consumption or purchases of adolescents could be difficult because adolescents cannot legally buy alcohol anywhere (leading to unobserved/unregistered data on their purchases).

3 It can also be argued that the omission of price controls (as well as distribution coverage controls) is not a substantial weakness in the studies, because under-age adolescents cannot legally buy alcohol at stores in any case, and need to get access to alcohol by some alternative routes and means. Still, we maintain that there is likely to be a substantial indirect effect by pricing – for instance, even if a teenager asks an adult from the street to buy alcohol products on his/her behalf, the teenager likely needs to pay the money for the products indirectly. Therefore, it would eliminate a potential methodological weakness to include the price control variables.