Cigarettes promotion

To promote its products, the tobacco industry spent $8.2 billion on marketing in 1999, an increase of $1.5 billion over the previous year (1). Tobacco advertising in various media increases tobacco consumption (2) and adolescents are more susceptible than adults to being influenced by some forms of tobacco advertising (3).

To describe the retail tobacco advertising and marketing environment, researchers from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-sponsored ImpacTeen Project (*) collected and analyzed store observation data in 163 communities throughout the United States. This report summarizes the extent of point-of-purchase (POP) tobacco advertising and marketing found in various types of stores.

The findings in this report indicate that certain retail environments frequented by teenagers heavily promote tobacco use. To reduce demand for tobacco products among adolescents, public health efforts should address POP environment exposure to tobacco advertising and marketing.

During a 4-month period in 1999, ImpacTeen researchers observed POP environments in 3,031 retail outlets in 163 communities with public schools participating in the nationally representative Monitoring the Future (MTF) study of eighth-, 10th-, and 12th-grade students (4). Private and magnet schools (comprising approximately 20% of the original sample) were not included in this study.

Community boundaries were defined by the area from which each school drew at least 80% of its student population. Random samples of up to 30 retailers per community were drawn from lists of stores selling tobacco and/or liquor products as identified by their Standard Industrial Classifications (SIC) Index codes (+). Two additional samples of 10 stores each were drawn as replacements for any stores on the original list that did not meet study criteria (i.e., those that had ceased business, had relocated, were not open during the days observers were on site, or did not sell tobacco products).

If field observers could not reach the desired sample size of 30 using the original and replacement lists of retailers, they added tobacco retailers identified on site.

Of the 3,031 observed stores, 2,309 (76.2%) were from the original sample, 355 (11.7%) were from randomly generated replacement lists, and 367 (12.1%) were added in the field based on study protocol. Overall, 2,999 (98.9%) of all observed stores were tobacco retailers and were eligible for inclusion in the study.