Vitamin panacea: Is advertising fueling demand for products with uncertain scientific benefit?

Eisenberg, Matthew D.; Avery, Rosemary J.; Cantor, Jonathan

doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2017.06.003

“…From a methodological perspective, our study is most closely related to a set of studies that use the same data and similar approach to assess the causal effects of advertising on the demand for cigarettes (Avery et al 2007;Kenkel, Mathios, and Wang forthcoming); smokeless tobacco (Dave and Saffer 2013); alcohol (Molloy 2016); pharmaceutical products to treat allergies, arthritis, asthma, high cholesterol (Avery et al 2008); antidepressants (Avery, Eisenberg, and Simon 2012); weight-loss products (Avery et al 2013); and vitamins (Eisenberg, Avery, and Cantor 2017). Each of these studies uses detailed information on consumer TV viewing and/or magazine reading patterns in the Simmons National Consumer Survey (NCS, http://www.simmonssurvey.com ) combined with comprehensive measures of advertising in these two media primarily from Kantar Media (https://www.kantarmedia.com/us).…”

Section: Prior Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does e-cigarette advertising encourage adult smokers to quit?

Dave

¹

,

Dench

²

,

Grossman

³

et al. 2019

Journal of Health Economics

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Only recently introduced into the U.S. market, e-cigarettes have been aggressively promoted, and use is increasing rapidly among both adults and youths. At the heart of the regulatory debate are fundamental questions regarding whether e-cigarettes will draw cigarette smokers away from a dangerous habit or lure new initiates into tobacco use. We provide some of the first causal evidence on whether e-cigarette advertising on television and in magazines (which comprise about 90% of total media spending on e-cigarettes) encourage adult smokers to quit. We find that the answer to this question is a yes for TV advertising but no for magazine advertising. Our results indicate that a policy to ban TV advertising of e-cigarettes would have reduced the number of smokers who quit in the recent past by approximately 3%, resulting in roughly 105,000 fewer quitters in that period. On the other hand, if the FDA were not considering regulations and mandates that would likely eliminate many e-cigarette producers during our sample period, e-cigarette ads might have reached the number of nicotine replacement therapy TV ads during that period. That would have increased the number of smokers who quit by around 10%, resulting in an additional 350,000 quitters.

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“…From a methodological perspective, our study is most closely related to a set of studies that use the same data and similar approach to assess the causal effects of advertising on the demand for cigarettes (Avery et al 2007; Kenkel, Mathios, and Wang forthcoming); smokeless tobacco (Dave and Saffer 2013); alcohol (Molloy 2016); pharmaceutical products to treat allergies, arthritis, asthma, high cholesterol (Avery et al 2008); antidepressants (Avery, Eisenberg, and Simon 2012); weight-loss products (Avery et al 2013); and vitamins (Eisenberg, Avery, and Cantor 2017). Each of these studies uses detailed information on consumer TV viewing and/or magazine reading patterns in the Simmons National Consumer Survey (NCS, http://www.simmonssurvey.com ) combined with comprehensive measures of advertising in these two media primarily from Kantar Media (https://www.kantarmedia.com/us).…”

Section: Prior Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does E-Cigarette Advertising Encourage Adult Smokers to Quit?

Dave

¹

,

Dench

²

,

Grossman

³

et al. 2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Only recently introduced into the U.S. market, e-cigarettes have been aggressively promoted, and use is increasing rapidly among both adults and youths. At the heart of the regulatory debate are fundamental questions regarding whether e-cigarettes will draw cigarette smokers away from a dangerous habit or lure new initiates into tobacco use. We provide some of the first causal evidence on whether e-cigarette advertising on television and in magazines (which comprise about 90% of total media spending on e-cigarettes) encourage adult smokers to quit. We find that the answer to this question is a yes for TV advertising but no for magazine advertising. Our results indicate that a policy to ban TV advertising of e-cigarettes would have reduced the number of smokers who quit in the recent past by approximately 3%, resulting in roughly 105,000 fewer quitters in that period. On the other hand, if the FDA were not considering regulations and mandates that would likely eliminate many e-cigarette producers during our sample period, e-cigarette ads might have reached the number of nicotine replacement therapy TV ads during that period. That would have increased the number of smokers who quit by around 10%, resulting in an additional 350,000 quitters.

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“…We further refined the measure by incorporating information about the frequency with which they reported watching these programs (none to four times in a typical month) and the frequency of viewing a network and time‐period (hours per week on this network during this time). This matching technique (using Kantar and NCS data) has been used in previous work [46–50].…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Estimated televised alcohol advertising exposure in the past year and associations with past 30‐day drinking behavior among American adults: results from a secondary analysis of large‐scale advertising and survey data

Niederdeppe

¹

,

Avery

²

,

Tabor

³

et al. 2020

Self Cite

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Aims To estimate the volume of past‐year televised alcohol advertising exposure by product category and demographic group among adults living in the United States and test associations between estimated alcohol advertising exposure and past 30‐day drinking behavior. Design Secondary analysis of data from two national‐level US data sets: Kantar data on appearances of televised alcohol advertisements and data from the Simmons National Consumer Survey (NCS), a large national mail survey on television viewing patterns and consumer behavior. Setting United States. Participants A total of 54 671 adults, aged 21 years and older, who were randomly selected to participate in the Simmons NCS. Measurements Estimated exposure to televised advertisements for beer, wine and spirits, self‐reported alcohol use in the past year and number of drinks consumed in the past 30 days. Findings The average respondent was exposed to an estimated 576 [95% confidence interval (CI) = 570–582] televised alcohol advertisements in the year preceding their survey. Exposure was higher among males versus females and African Americans versus whites. A 1% increase in the estimated volume of advertisement exposure was associated with a 0.11 (95% CI = 0.08–0.13) percentage point increase in the odds of having at least one drink in the last 30 days and, among past 30‐day drinkers, a 0.05 (95% CI = 0.04–0.07) per cent increase in the number of alcoholic drinks consumed. Associations were consistent across product categories and demographics. Conclusions There appears to be a small but consistent positive association between alcohol advertising exposure and drinking behavior among American adults.

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Vitamin panacea: Is advertising fueling demand for products with uncertain scientific benefit?

Cited by 9 publications

References 55 publications

Does e-cigarette advertising encourage adult smokers to quit?

Does e-cigarette advertising encourage adult smokers to quit?

Does E-Cigarette Advertising Encourage Adult Smokers to Quit?

Estimated televised alcohol advertising exposure in the past year and associations with past 30‐day drinking behavior among American adults: results from a secondary analysis of large‐scale advertising and survey data

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