Smeal Professor To Testify Before U.S. Senate Commerce Committee
Marvin Goldberg, Bard Professor of Business Administration at Penn State's Smeal College of Business, is scheduled to testify tomorrow before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation in a hearing on the accuracy of the Federal Trade Commission’s tar and nicotine cigarette rating system.
Smeal Professor To Testify Before U.S. Senate Commerce Committee
UNIVERSITY PARK, PA (November 12, 2007) – Marvin Goldberg, Bard Professor of Business Administration at Penn State's Smeal College of Business, is scheduled to testify today before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation in a hearing on the accuracy of the Federal Trade Commission's tar and nicotine cigarette rating system.
The 2:30 p.m. hearing will also examine the marketing claims of cigarette companies based on the FTC ratings.
Goldberg, who has spent decades studying alcohol and tobacco advertising, will testify on the tobacco industry's marketing of light cigarettes and the public's perception that they offer fewer health risks than regular cigarettes.
Citing internal tobacco industry documents, academic research, and some of his own research on tobacco marketing, Goldberg will argue that cigarette companies have encouraged the perception that light cigarettes are healthier than regular cigarettes, while publicly admitting that there is no safe cigarette.
According to a 1998 study co-authored by Goldberg and published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 76 percent of light cigarette smokers responded that people might choose to smoke light cigarettes because of health-related reasons.
The marketing strategies used to promote light cigarettes reinforce this perception, according to Goldberg. When light brands advertise lower tar and less nicotine, the consumer equates this with the brands being healthier. Additionally, Goldberg says that the use of white and light colors in light cigarette packaging and advertising leads consumers to believe they are somehow purer or healthier.
Despite the tobacco industry's acknowledgement that smoking causes serious disease, Goldberg will tell the committee that the marketing efforts of cigarette companies provide "the smoker with considerable 'wiggle room' to justify (continued) smoking.
"In effect," Goldberg writes in his submitted testimony, "smokers are still encouraged to search for a safer 'type of tobacco product'—most typically a 'light' one."
The complete hearing can be viewed live online at www.commerce.senate.gov.
REPORTERS & EDITORS: For more information, please contact Wyatt DuBois in the Smeal College of Business Media Relations Office at 814-863-3798 or wed112@psu.edu.
Penn State's Smeal College of Business offers highly ranked undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA, Ph.D., and executive education opportunities to more than 5,500 students at all levels. Featuring academic departments of accounting, finance, marketing, insurance and real estate, management, and supply chain and information systems, the college is also home to major research centers such as the Center for Supply Chain Research, the Institute for the Study of Business Markets, the Center for Digital Transformation, the Farrell Center for Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the Center for Global Business Studies, and the Center for the Management of Technological and Organizational Change.
