Price-related promotions for tobacco products on Twitter

Abstract

Objectives This cross-sectional study examined price-related promotions for tobacco products on Twitter. Methods Through the Twitter Firehose, we obtained access to all public tweets posted between December 6, 2012 and June 20, 2013 that contained a keyword suggesting a tobacco-related product or behavior (e.g., cigarette, vaping) in addition to a keyword suggesting a price promotion (e.g., coupon, discount). From this dataset of 155,249 tweets, we constructed a stratified sampling frame based on the price-related keywords and randomly sampled 5,000 tweets (3.2%). Tweets were coded for product type and promotion type. Non-English tweets and tweets unrelated to a tobacco or cessation price promotion were excluded, leaving an analytic sample of 2,847 tweets. Results The majority of tweets (97.0%) mentioned tobacco products while 3% mentioned tobacco cessation products. E-cigarettes were the most frequently mentioned product (90.1%), followed by cigarettes (5.4%). The most common type of price promotion mentioned across all products was a discount. About a third of all e-cigarette-related tweets included a discount code. Banned or restricted price promotions comprised about 3% of cigarette-related tweets. Conclusions This study demonstrates that the vast majority of tweets offering price promotions focus on e-cigarettes. Future studies should examine the extent to which Twitter users, particularly youth, notice or engage with these price promotion tweets.

Mining social media data for opinion polarities about electronic cigarettes

“…Recent studies have investigated e-cigarettes on Twitter with the primary focus on commercial tweets 8 9. Our data collected in late 2015 added two new findings when compared with Twitter data collected in mid-2012 8.…”

“…Existing studies of e-cigarettes on Twitter lacked spatial analysis of tweeters 8 9. Some studies were only able to identify longitude and latitude from less than 1% of tweets in Twitter metadata 14 15.…”

“…The promotion strategies, including pricing, brand and discount, from commercial tweets have been investigated 9. These studies focused on commercial tweets from e-cigarette sellers.…”

Overview of Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems: A Systematic Review

“…732,746 ENDS are promoted heavily online 451,695 through ENDS company–sponsored advertisements 697 and users’ social media profiles, 424 with occurrences on YouTube 690,697,706,707,710,722,731,739 and Twitter. 691,713,715,725–727,733,743 Youth and young adult exposure to TV advertisements for ENDS has increased since 2011. 689,735 Two RCTs 712,720 and four cross-sectional studies 403,629,723,741 have shown that tobacco marketing exposure may promote ENDS uptake.…”

A content analysis of tweets about high-potency marijuana

“…Previous studies have demonstrated that Twitter is a popular venue where substance use behaviors are openly discussed, and researchers have accordingly used Twitter data for substance use epidemiology research (Alvaro et al, 2015; Cavazos-Rehg et al, 2015a; Cole-Lewis et al, 2015; Hanson et al, 2013; Jo et al, 2015; Lamy et al, 2016; Myslin et al, 2013; Thompson et al, 2015; van der Tempel et al, 2016). Additionally, Daniulaityte et al, (2015) identified a greater prevalence of dabbing-related tweets among states that allowed recreational and/or medicinal marijuana use versus states where use is still illegal; this study is informative for potential surveillance of dabbing.…”