Smokers' attitudes and behaviors related to consumer demand for cessation counseling in the medical care setting.

This study describes a new segmentation strategy exploring smokers' interest levels in counseling in the medical care setting in order to understand how public health communications can be designed to increase consumer demand for cessation services within this population. A subsample of 431 smokers from a large, nationally representative mail survey was analyzed and categorized into three cessation-demand groups: Low demand (LD), medium demand (MD), and high demand (HD). HD smokers were most likely to be heavy smokers, to make quitting a high priority, and to have self-efficacy in quitting. MD and LD smokers were less likely than HD smokers to have been told to quit smoking by a health care provider in the past or to believe that counseling is effective. The first step in the regression analysis revealed that age, cigarettes smoked per month, whether smokers were currently trying to quit, and whether they were ever told to quit smoking by their health care provider accounted for 21% of the variance in smokers' interest in smoking cessation counseling, F(4, 234) = 16.49, p<.001. When additional variables on attitudes toward smoking and quitting and perceived effectiveness of receiving counseling in the medical care setting were added to the model, an additional 11% of the variance in smokers' interest in cessation counseling was explained, F(12, 234) = 10.07, p<.001. Results suggest that by categorizing smokers by interest level in cessation counseling, we emerge with three distinct portraits of smokers who might be activated in different ways to increase consumer demand for cessation counseling.