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Food purchasing and consumption behaviors have implications for nutrition and obesity. Food retail environments, in particular, shape customer food choices and energy intake. The marketing literature offers insights about how public health practitioners can work within food retail environments to encourage healthy food choices. We reviewed experimental studies in the marketing literature to examine factors influencing customer purchase intentions and choice for food products in retail stores. Database searches were conducted in February 2016 for original, empirical articles published in English from 2000–2015 in marketing journals. Each research article included at least one experimental design study conducted in a real or simulated retail environment with purchase intentions or choice of food products as an outcome variable. Backward and forward reference searches were conducted for articles meeting inclusion criteria. Narrative synthesis methods were used to thematically group and summarize the findings of forty-one articles that met inclusion criteria into three categories: shelf display and product factors, pricing and price promotion factors, and in-store and customer decision-making factors. This research contributes to the literature by providing specific and actionable approaches that can increase/decrease customer purchase intentions and choice for food products in retail environments. Translating marketing strategies into public health applications can provide recommendations for future intervention research and policy related to customer food purchasing behavior.

Tobacco-related content appears on social media in the form of advertising and messages by individuals. However, little is known about associations between posting social media messages and tobacco product use among adolescents and young adults. Self-reports of tobacco product use were obtained from the Children's Health Study of young adults in Southern California. Among the 1486 respondents in the most recent wave of the cohort (2016-2017), 284 provided tobacco product use data and their Twitter user names to access publicly available Twitter account data (mean age = 20.1 yrs. (SD = 0.6), 54% female, 49% Hispanic). We obtained the tweets that those respondents posted on Twitter, searched the tweets for 14 nicotine- and tobacco-related keywords, and coded these statements as positive or negative/neutral. Logistic regression analyses were conducted to determine whether respondents who posted positive tobacco-related tweets were more likely to report tobacco product use, relative to those who did not post any positive tobacco-related tweets. Respondents who posted any positive messages about tobacco had significantly higher odds of reporting past month use of cigarettes (OR = 3.15, 95% CI = 1.36, 7.30) and any tobacco product (OR = 2.41, 95% CI = 1.16, 5.01), relative to respondents who did not post about tobacco. This is the first study to establish an empirical link between adolescents' and young adults' tobacco-related Twitter activity and their tobacco product use. Health communications about the risks of tobacco use could target adolescents who post positive messages about tobacco products on Twitter.

Electric scooter (e-scooter) companies are growing in popularity across the United States looking to take advantage of the rideshare economy by providing an independent alternative to cars and bicycles. While e-scooter transportation could reduce emissions, and automobile congestion in local areas, powered two-wheeler drivers are extremely vulnerable to road risks. News reports of e-scooter crashes and fatalities have started to accumulate. Earlier research has demonstrated that the ways in which companies promote and demonstrate use of their product or service through social media influences consumer behavior. In the U.S. in 2018, this study examined the official Instagram account of Bird, the e-scooter market share leader with over 66,000 followers, to determine how much it emphasized safety in its posts. All posts to Bird's official Instagram account were collected from 22 September 2017 to 9 November 2018 (n = 324) and rules for coding content were developed. Among all posts, 69.14% contained a person visible with a Bird e-scooter, 6.17% contained persons wearing protective gear, 6.79% had protective gear somewhere in the post, and 1.54% of posts mentioned protective gear in the comment box. About 69.44% of the posts were reposts, and among reposts, 7.11% had persons wearing protective gear. Posts to Bird's official Instagram rarely showed e-scooters being used with protective gear. Photos of customers' experiences with Bird, via reposts, rarely featured protective gear potentially normalizing these behaviors among customers. Public health practitioners may need to establish interventions to promote use of protective gear while operating escooters.

IMPORTANCE Exposure to tobacco-related content on social media may foster positive attitudes toward tobacco products and brands, and influence the likelihood of initiating or continuing use of tobacco, especially among adolescents and young adults.OBJECTIVE To perform the first systematic review and meta-analysis, to our knowledge, on studies that examined the association between exposure to tobacco content on social media and lifetime tobacco use, past 30-day tobacco use, and susceptibility to use tobacco among never users.DATA SOURCES Tobacco, social media, and marketing search terms were entered into online databases, including MEDLINE, ISI Web of Science, Scopus, and PsychINFO. Study characteristics, including research design and methods, sampling strategy, and demographics, were assessed for each study.STUDY SELECTION Studies reporting odds ratios (ORs) for self-reported exposure to, or experimentally manipulated, tobacco content on social media and lifetime tobacco use, past 30-day tobacco, and susceptibility to use tobacco among never users. The systematic search produced 897 independent articles, of which 29 studies met inclusion criteria. DATA EXTRACTION AND SYNTHESISA 3-level random-effects meta-analysis was used to estimate ORs, 95% CIs, and heterogeneity (I 2 ) for each tobacco use outcome. Study quality and publication bias were assessed. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURESLifetime tobacco use, past 30-day tobacco use, and susceptibility to use tobacco among never users. Tobacco use included e-cigarettes, cigarettes, and other (cigar, hookah, smokeless tobacco). RESULTSThe total sample size across the 24 included datasets was 139 624, including 100 666 adolescents (72%), 20 710 young adults (15%), and 18 248 adults (13%). Participants who were exposed to tobacco content on social media, compared with those who were not exposed, had greater odds of reporting lifetime tobacco use (OR, 2.18; 95% CI, 1.54-3.08; I 2 = 94%), past 30-day tobacco use (OR, 2.19; 95% CI, 1.79-2.67; I 2 = 84%), and susceptibility to use tobacco among never users (OR, 2.08; 95% CI, 1.65-2.63; I 2 = 73%). Subgroup analyses showed similar associations for tobacco promotions, active engagement, passive engagement, lifetime exposure to tobacco content, exposure to tobacco content on more than 2 platforms, and exposure to tobacco content among adolescents and young adults.CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE Findings suggest that a comprehensive strategy to reduce the amount of tobacco content on social media should be developed by federal regulators. Such actions may have downstream effects on adolescent and young adult exposure to protobacco content, and ultimately tobacco use behaviors.

BackgroundThis study analysed posts to Instagram related to KandyPens, an open-system pod mod e-cigarette company, marketing its products as aromatherapy devices. The objective was to determine themes, corresponding user profiles and references to types of e-liquid solutions used with KandyPens.MethodsData consisted of publicly available posts to Instagram with the hashtag ‘#kandypens’ collected from 8 June to 8 August 2018 (n=1775). Identified themes included: product appearance (eg, highlighting design features including colour of device), user experience (eg, vape tricks), flavours (eg, strawberry) and promotions (eg, $10 off). The type of e-liquid solutions (nicotine, aromatherapy and cannabis) used with KandyPens were also recorded. Instagram profiles were categorised into: vaping enthusiast/advocates, influencers, KandyPens’ official Instagram account, vape vendors and average Instagram users.ResultsUser experience (28.90%) and product appearance (21.80%) were predominant themes followed by promotions (10.08%), and flavours (1.01%). About 32.43 % of posts referenced cannabis-related solutions, 2.98 % of the posts mentioned nicotine-related solutions and 0.11 % of the posts mentioned aromatherapy. Average Instagram users (24.89%) posted the majority of posts followed by vape vendors (20.72%), KandyPens’ official account (17.96%), vaping enthusiasts/advocates (10.75%) and influencers (0.45%).ConclusionKandyPens markets its products as aromatherapy devices; however, Instagram posts related to these products rarely mentioned their purported purpose. Future research should consider product design, user experience and the co-use of nicotine and cannabis with KandyPens to assess implications related to product appeal and abuse liability.

BackgroundTwitter offers a platform for rapid diffusion of information and its users' attitudes and behaviors. Insights about information propagation via retweets (the message forwarding function) offer observable explanations of ways in which modern human interactions get organized in the form of online networks, and contextualized in the form of public health, policy decisions, disaster management, and civic participation. This study conceptualized and validated the Why We Retweet Scale to contextualize retweeting behavior.ObjectiveTwitter users were identified using clustering algorithms that consider a users’ position in their network and invited for an online survey. Participants (N = 1433) responded to 19 questions about why they retweet. Exploratory factor Analysis (EFA) was conducted on a scale development sample (70% of original sample), which informed the Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) on a scale testing sample (30% of the original sample). Varimax rotation was used to obtain a rotated factor solution, which resulted in interpretable factors. Demographic differences among scale factors were analyzed using one-way ANOVA or independent samples t-tests.ResultsThe final model (χ221 = 28, RMSEA = .03 [90% CI, 0.00–0.06], CFA = .99, TLI = 0.99) represented a parsimonious solution with 4 factors, measured by 2–3 items each, creating a final scale consisting of 9 items. Factor labels and definitions were: (1) Show approval, “Show support to the tweeter”; (2) Argue, “To argue against a tweet that I disagree with”; (3) Gain attention, “Add followers or gain attention”; and (4) Entertain, “Create humor/amusement”. Demographic differences were also reported.ConclusionsThe Why We Retweet Scale offers a useful conceptualization and assessment of motivations for retweeting. In the future, communication strategists might consider the factors associated with information propagation when designing campaign messages to maximize message reach and engagement on Twitter.

Tobacco promotion is prolific on social media, with each platform setting their own restrictions on tobacco promotion and sales. We evaluated the policies related to tobacco product promotion and sales on 11 sites that are popular with youth in May 2021: Discord, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Reddit, Snapchat, TikTok, Tumblr, Twitch, Twitter and YouTube. Nine of the 11 sites prohibitedpaid advertisingfor tobacco products. However, only three of them clearly prohibitedsponsored content(ie, social influencers) that promotes tobacco. Six platforms restricted content thatsells tobacco productsand three tried toprohibit underage accessto content that promotes or sells tobacco products. Although most platform policies prohibited paid tobacco advertising, few addressed more novel strategies, such as sponsored/influencer content and few had age-gating to prevent youth access. There is a pressing need to regulate tobacco promotion on social media platforms.