ABSTRACT
Ernest Dichter did something else in his work on the psychology of smoking and the effective marketing of cigarettes that has rarely been commented on. The emphasis in Dichter approach was on understanding the range of roles and functions that cigarettes can play in people's lives. His starting assumption was that cigarette advertising up to that point had got it seriously wrong. Based on depth interviews with 350 smokers, Dichter concluded that things such as taste, mildness or flavour were 'minor considerations' when it comes to smoking; the main appeal of cigarettes was the range of psychological pleasures that people get from them. Dichter also highlighted the power of lighting a cigarette. It was the power of fire that helped define and shape homo sapiens in evolutionary terms. The economist Thorstein Veblen first coined the term 'conspicuous consumption.' The basic premise behind this theory is that certain animals use conspicuous display as a form of communication that signals inclusiveness fitness.
