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Stakeholder Dialogue 2006
Dialogue Outcome
Stakeholders views, opinions and expectations
Between October 2006 and January 2007 the stakeholders' feedback was provided in dialogue sessions and one-to-one interviews, which
included representatives from the political community in Brussels and science/research stakeholders, with company representatives also
in attendance.
The report from all the meetings and sessions formulating the dialogue phase of the social reporting process has been prepared by independent researchers from Ipsos MORI, a market and opinion research company.
To make the access to relevant parts of the report faster and more convenient for different groups of stakeholders we have split the main report into three parts reflecting the leading topics of the dialogue with stakeholders.
These documents outline the views of British American Tobacco's stakeholders at the European Union level on three key issues:
- harm reduction (including the development of tobacco products with potentially reduced risk to health and future tobacco regulatory framework),
- illicit trade (including contraband and counterfeit tobacco products), and
- public place smoking (including bans on smoking in public places).
The role of British American Tobacco will be to consider and respond to the expectations covered in the attached report. the summary of stakeholders' expectations, company responses and commitments will be included in the final Social Report. It will be communicated to stakeholders and publicly available in the third quarter of 2007.
Downloads
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Dialogue on harm reduction |
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Dialogue on smoke in public places |
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Dialogue on Combating Illicit Trade |
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Stakeholders' expectations |
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Full Report for download |
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Description of reporting methodology - interpreting qualitative research
Considering the complexity and wide scope of the issues of responsibility facing a tobacco company, a qualitative approach is essential to fully explore stakeholder perspectives. Qualitative research provides a depth of understanding which cannot be achieved from a structured questionnaire. the free-flowing format of the discussions provides an insight into participants' views and concerns, while seeking to identify not only what they know and think, but also why they do so. It is a flexible and interactive process and, therefore, it is possible to respond to the individual circumstances of each participant and to bring their experiences to light. It allows participants to be reflexive and examine their own thoughts and behaviour - it gives them the freedom to express the issues that are salient to them as they are not restricted in their thoughts by a structured questionnaire. It is important to note that opinion research deals in perceptions and not facts. However, perceptions are facts to those that hold them and, as such, are important to bear in mind even if the information is, technically, incorrect. Furthermore, qualitative research does not allow for the production of statistics from the data it produces, since it is not based on a representative sample of the audience in question. As such, throughout this report researchers from Ipsos MORI used terms such as 'majority' or 'most' to infer a commonly held viewpoint across all stakeholders and 'minority' or 'few' to mean an opinion that was only expressed by a small number. Verbatim comments provide evidence for the qualitative findings. |