An Analysis of Electronic Cigarette and Cigarette Advertising in US Women’s Magazines

Authors

Corey Hannah Basch, William Patterson University
Jennifer Mongiovi, Columbia University
Grace Clarke Hillyer, CUNY Lehman College
Danna Ethan, CUNY Lehman CollegeFollow
Rodney Hammond, Montclair State University

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-6-2016

Abstract

Background: Traditional cigarette advertising has existed in the US for over 200 years. Studies suggest that advertising has an impact on the initiation and maintenance of smoking behaviors. In recent years, electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) emerged on the market as an alternative to the traditional tobacco cigarette. The purpose of this study was to describe advertisements in popular US magazines marketed to women for cigarettes and e-cigarettes.

Methods: This study involved analyzing 99 issues of 14 popular US magazines marketed to women.

Results: Compared to advertisements for traditional cigarettes, advertisements for e-cigarettes were more often found in magazines geared toward the 31–40-year-old audience (76.5% vs. 53.1%, P = 0.011) whereas traditional cigarette advertisements were nearly equally distributed among women 31–40 and ≥40 years. More than three-quarters of the e-cigarette advertisements presented in magazines aimed at the higher median income households compared to a balanced distribution by income for traditional cigarettes (P = 0.033).

Conclusions: Future studies should focus on specific marketing tactics used to promote e-cigarette use as this product increases in popularity, especially among young women smokers

Comments

This article was originally published in the International Journal of Preventive Medicine, available at DOI: 10.4103/2008-7802.190089.

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution‑NonCommercial‑ShareAlike 3.0 License.