Source: www.newswise.com Author: staff Marketing researchers at the University of Arkansas, Villanova University and Marquette University surveyed more than 500 U.S. and Canadian smokers and found that the highly graphic images of the negative consequences of smoking have the greatest impact on smokers’ intentions to quit. The most graphic images, such as those showing severe mouth diseases, including disfigured, blackened and cancerous tissue, evoked fear about the consequences of smoking and thus influenced consumer intentions to quit. “These results suggest that there appears to be little downside on intentions to quit from using extremely graphic pictorial depictions of the negative health outcomes due to smoking,” said Scot Burton, co-author of the study and marketing professor in the Sam M. Walton College of Business. “Our research shows that strong, negative graphic imagery – and fear evoked from such imagery – influences smokers’ intentions to quit. We also found this to be the case even though recall of the written messages on package labels was reduced by the more graphic images. In other words, smokers were influenced primarily by the images and not by the written message.” Burton, Jeremy Kees and John Kozup, both marketing professors at the Villanova University, and Craig Andrews, marketing professor at Marquette University, developed the study to help officials at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services better understand what types of pictorial warnings are most effective and why they are effective. These agencies are responsible for implementing the [...]