The Female Smoker Market

This article is part of the Tobacco portal on Sourcewatch funded from 2006 - 2009 by the American Legacy Foundation.

The Female Smoker Market

This paper from the Lorillard Tobacco Company explores why women are a good target market for cigarettes. Specifically, reasons include the fact that more women are starting to smoke, fewer are able to quit and women are increasing the amount that they smoke per capita:

...The growing importance of the female smoker is due to several factors including fewer females quitting, more females beginning to smoke, and female smokers increasing their daily cigarette volume....According to a recent HEW study, only 13% of adult women have given up smoking compared with 33% of adult males. Even assuming somewhat exaggerated figures, it is obvious that men are more likely to discontinue cigarette smoking.

Lorillard felt that working women needed a new cigarette, just for them:

A cigarette positioned for the working woman, to relax and steady her nerves when the tension is mounting by serving as a socially acceptable tranquilizer, deserves investigation.

Lorillard also thought that girls were an important target market because young girls were starting to take up smoking at a faster rate than young boys:

And though one million adults are quitting smoking annually, teenagers are beginning to smoke in increasing numbers, with girls accounting for a growing proportion of teenage smokers. In the last four years, smoking among the 12 to 18 year age group increased from 14.7% to 15.7% among boys and from 8.4% to 13.3% among girls.

Lorillard pondered why fewer women than men are willing or able to quit smoking: Their first hypothesis: "One is the greater concern women have that if they stop smoking they will gain weight. This fear undoubtedly prevents many women from desiring to stop smoking."

The second hypothesis indicates acknowledgement that cigarettes do, in fact, cause disease (and this was 1973):

"In addition, the first studies relating to smoking and health used male subjects. Because women were not shown evidence that smoking was equally deleterious to their own health, there was less reason for them to quit. However, recent studies have shown that as women's smoking habits become more like men's, women smokers become more prone to the same illnesses as male smokers."

Title THE FEMALE SMOKER MARKET
Person Authors FRIEDMAN
Document Date 19730628
Document Type MEMORANDUM;MARKET RESEARCH REPORT
Bates Number 03375503/5510
Collection Lorillard
Pages 8
URL: http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/lce91e00

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