Alcohol Beverages Marketing and Youth Consumption Behaviour: A Research Agenda for Nigeria

Abstract

This paper was inspired by a review of literature on alcohol beverage marketing that exposes the world population was drinking in increasingly harmful ways that have resulted in a plethora of avoidable medical expenses, psychological and social harms, and have done damages to human lives leading to early deaths. It is astonishingly difficult to find evidence that can inform policy appraisals in sub-Sahara Africa especially Nigeria. The identified evidence requirements include; research evidence of the size of marketing effects on the whole population and for policy-relevant population subgroups including heavy and binge drinkers, research to show the balance between immediate and long-term effects by providing information on time lag, duration and cumulative build-up of longer-term effects and research to show a range of comprehensive and partial marketing restrictions on consumption and harm, including effect estimates for population sub-groups. This paper suggests that these knowledge gaps can impede the evaluation and appraisal of existing and new policy interventions in Nigeria. Without understanding these research needs, researchers may neglect the required focus on this sub group. The cumulative effect of exposure across multiple marketing channels known as alcohol beverages marketing, targeting of messages at certain population groups and indirect effects of advertising on consumption have rarely been considered in Nigeria.. It is important that future research into marketing efforts in Nigeria are strongly anchored in theory that will help to measure effect that are well-justified so that the complexities of alcohol marketing efforts are fully recognised and appreciated in Nigeria.