An Investigation of Influential Users in the Promotion and Marketing of Heated Tobacco Products on Instagram: A Social Network Analysis

Abstract

While an increasing body of the literature has documented the exposure to emerging tobacco products including heated tobacco products (HTPs) on social media, few studies have investigated the various stakeholders involved in the generation of promotional tobacco content. This study constructed a social network of Instagram users who posted IQOS content, a leading HTP brand, between 1 January and 5 April 2021 and identified users who positioned near the center of the network. We identified 4526 unique Instagram users who had created 19,951 IQOS-related posts during the study period. Nearly half of the users (42.1%) were business accounts authorized by Instagram, among which 59.0% belonged to Personal Goods and General Merchandise Stores and 18.1% belonged to Creators and Celebrities. For users with higher in-degree, out-degree, betweenness, and closeness centrality in the network, the majority of them were accounts directly associated with IQOS (e.g., containing “iqos” in username) or related to tobacco business as self-identified in the bio. Our findings further refine the social media marketing presence of tobacco products and suggest that the current self-regulatory efforts led by social media platforms are far from enough.

Industry marketing of tobacco products on social media: case study of Philip Morris International’s IQOS

“…Prior social media studies have looked at influencer marketing of HTPs and user-generated content of HTPs. For example, one prior study of IQOS on Instagram found that there were over 4000 accounts that used #IQOS in their account description and that 27 of these accounts had over 50 000 followers 4. As the current study identified three PMI IQOS Instagram accounts with over 50 000 followers, the current study expands prior work by identifying PMI-sponsored official accounts and by showing that at least for Instagram, PMI accounts are a small but significant part of the total Instagram IQOS ecosystem.…”

“…A growing body of the literature has documented that social media marketing of novel tobacco products including e-cigarettes, hookah and cigars exists and is effective 3–7. Many e-cigarettes, hookah and cigar products have official social media product pages and accounts 3 7.…”

“…To gain a full understanding of the marketing of a novel product, such as of HTPs, a cross-platform and global perspective is needed of official social media marketing. While a prior study investigated user-generated content about HTPs on one platform4 and influencer marketing of HTPs,12 no studies to date have investigated official social media marketing of HTPs. Furthermore, while previous studies have examined social media marketing of tobacco products, these have used a national or regional perspective rather than a global perspective that reflects the global marketing of these products 3 7…”

Characterizing Heated Tobacco Products Marketing on Instagram: Observational Study

“…Social media platforms such as Instagram are now a common platform for the public to share their opinions and are widely used for studying HTPs like IQOS [13,14]. About 71% of the young adults aged between 18 and 29 claimed that they have been Instagram users, which overlaps with the demographic group that IQOS potentially attracts and actual IQOS users [15][16][17][18].…”

“…About 71% of the young adults aged between 18 and 29 claimed that they have been Instagram users, which overlaps with the demographic group that IQOS potentially attracts and actual IQOS users [15][16][17][18]. A recent investigation on IQOS marketing showed that IQOS has been widely promoted and marketed on Instagram through influential users [14]. One previous study focusing on characterizing the vaping-related content on Instagram through descriptive analyses has yielded informative outcomes, and the success of this vaping-related study indicates that the descriptive analysis on Instagram is a practical method to gain insights into how tobacco products are discussed or even marketed on social media [19].…”