The author systematically examines one of the important issues of information — establishing the market price. He introduces the concept of «search» — where a buyer wanting to get a better price, is forced to question sellers. The article deals with various aspects of finding the necessary information.

Economics of Information

The Theory of Monopolistic Competition.

OBJECTIVES
This study examines how the American Legacy Foundation's "truth" campaign and Philip Morris's "Think. Don't Smoke" campaign have influenced youths' attitudes, beliefs, and intentions toward tobacco.


METHODS
We analyzed 2 telephone surveys of 12- to 17-year-olds with multivariate logistic regressions: a baseline survey conducted before the launch of "truth" and a second survey 10 months into the "truth" campaign.


RESULTS
Exposure to "truth" countermarketing advertisements was consistently associated with an increase in anti-tobacco attitudes and beliefs, whereas exposure to Philip Morris advertisements generally was not. In addition, those exposed to Philip Morris advertisements were more likely to be open to the idea of smoking.


CONCLUSIONS
Whereas exposure to the "truth" campaign positively changed youths' attitudes toward tobacco, the Philip Morris campaign had a counterproductive influence.

Getting to the truth: evaluating national tobacco countermarketing campaigns (vol 92, pg 901, 2002)

Context Authorship in biomedical publication provides recognition and establishes accountability and responsibility. Recent litigation related to rofecoxib provided a unique opportunity to examine guest authorship and ghostwriting, practices that have been suspected in biomedical publication but for which there is little documentation. Objective To characterize different types and the extent of guest authorship and ghostwriting in 1 case study. Data Sources Court documents originally obtained during litigation related to rofecoxib against Merck & Co Inc. Documents were created predominantly between 1996 and 2004. In addition, publicly available articles related to rofecoxib identified via MEDLINE. Data Extraction All documents were reviewed by one author, with selected review by coauthors, using an iterative process of review, discussion, and rereview of documents to identify information related to guest authorship or ghostwriting. Data Synthesis Approximately 250 documents were relevant to our review. For the publication of clinical trials, documents were found describing Merck employees working either independently or in collaboration with medical publishing companies to prepare manuscripts and subsequently recruiting external, academically affiliated investigators to be authors. Recruited authors were frequently placed in the first and second positions of the authorship list. For the publication of scientific review papers, documents were found describing Merck marketing employees developing plans for manuscripts, contracting with medical publishing companies to ghostwrite manuscripts, and recruiting external, academically affiliated investigators to be authors. Recruited authors were commonly the sole author on the manuscript and offered honoraria for their participation. Among 96 relevant published articles, we found that 92% (22 of 24) of clinical trial articles published a disclosure of Merck's financial support, but only 50% (36 of 72) of review articles published either a disclosure of Merck sponsorship or a disclosure of whether the author had received any financial compensation from the company. Conclusions This case-study review of industry documents demonstrates that clinical trial manuscripts related to rofecoxib were authored by sponsor employees but often attributed first authorship to academically affiliated investigators who did not always disclose industry financial support. Review manuscripts were often prepared by unacknowledged authors and subsequently attributed authorship to academically affiliated investigators who often did not disclose industry financial support.

/pdf/guest-authorship-and-ghostwriting-in-publications-related-to-19u4lmr4bd.pdf

Guest authorship and ghostwriting in publications related to rofecoxib: a case study of industry documents from rofecoxib litigation.

Background 
E-cigarettes have generated controversy in the tobacco control field similar to that of Swedish snus, which came to the U.S. market six years earlier. Some argue that e-cigarettes have great potential to help smokers quit regular cigarettes while others contend they should be banned for lack of safety and efficacy data. This study examined population data from the U.S.


Methods 
A U.S. population survey with a national probability sample (N=10,041) was conducted (February 24 to March 8, 2012, before any major paid advertisement of e-cigarettes appeared on television). Survey respondents were asked if they had heard about e-cigarettes, where they had heard about them, whether they had used e-cigarettes or snus, how often they used them, and why they used them. Responses were weighted to represent the entire U.S. population.


Findings 
A high proportion, 75.4%, reported having heard about e-cigarettes. Television ranked as the number one source of information, followed by “in-person conversation” and “Internet.” About 8.1% had tried e-cigarettes, and 1.4% were current users. These rates were twice those of snus (4.3% and 0.8%, respectively). Among current smokers, 32.2% had tried e-cigarettes, and 6.3% were current users. Over 80% of current e-cigarette users were non-daily users. Women were significantly more likely to have tried e-cigarettes than men. Those who had tried e-cigarettes were more likely than those who tried snus to report their products being safer than regular cigarettes (49.9% vs. 10.8%). Almost half (49.5%) of current smokers were susceptible to using e-cigarettes in the future.


Conclusions 
That e-cigarettes have surpassed snus in adoption rate, even before any promotion by major tobacco companies, suggests that the former have tapped into smokers’ intuitive preference for potentially harm-reducing products, probably due to the product design. E-cigarette use is likely to increase in the next few years.

/pdf/the-use-and-perception-of-electronic-cigarettes-and-snus-4abm6x4z71.pdf

The Use and Perception of Electronic Cigarettes and Snus among the U.S. Population

Objective To examine tobacco industry marketing of menthol cigarettes and to determine what the tobacco industry knew about consumer perceptions of menthol. Methods A snowball sampling design was used to systematically search the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library (LTDL) (http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu) between 28 February and 27 April 2010. Of the approximately 11 million documents available in the LTDL, the iterative searches returned tens of thousands of results from the major US tobacco companies and affiliated organisations. A collection of 953 documents from the 1930s to the first decade of the 21st century relevant to 1 or more of the research questions were qualitatively analysed, as follows: (1) are/were menthol cigarettes marketed with health reassurance messages? (2) What other messages come from menthol cigarette advertising? (3) How do smokers view menthol cigarettes? (4) Were menthol cigarettes marketed to specific populations? Results Menthol cigarettes were marketed as, and are perceived by consumers to be, healthier than non-menthol cigarettes. Menthol cigarettes are also marketed to specific social and demographic groups, including African–Americans, young people and women, and are perceived by consumers to signal social group belonging. Conclusions The tobacco industry knew consumers perceived menthol as healthier than non-menthol cigarettes, and this was the intent behind marketing. Marketing emphasising menthol attracts consumers who may not otherwise progress to regular smoking, including young, inexperienced users and those who find ‘regular’ cigarettes undesirable. Such marketing may also appeal to health-concerned smokers who might otherwise quit.

https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/tobaccocontrol/20/Suppl_2/ii20.full.pdf

Marketing of menthol cigarettes and consumer perceptions: a review of tobacco industry documents

Objective: To explore messages of psychosocial needs satisfaction in cigarette advertising targeting women and implications for tobacco control policy. 

Methods: Analysis of internal tobacco industry documents and public advertising collections. 

Results: Tobacco industry market research attempted to identify the psychosocial needs of different groups of women, and cigarette advertising campaigns for brands that women smoke explicitly aimed to position cigarettes as capable of satisfying these needs. Such positioning can be accomplished with advertising that downplays or excludes smoking imagery. As women's needs change with age and over time, advertisements were developed to reflect the needs encountered at different stages in women's lives. Cigarette brands for younger women stressed female camaraderie, self confidence, freedom, and independence; cigarette brands for older women addressed needs for pleasure, relaxation, social acceptability, and escape from daily stresses. 

Conclusions: Psychosocial needs satisfaction can be communicated without reference to cigarettes or smoking. This may explain why partial advertising bans are ineffective and comprehensive bans on all forms of tobacco marketing are effective. Counter-advertising should attempt to expose and undermine the needs satisfaction messages of cigarette advertising campaigns directed at women.

https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/tobaccocontrol/14/2/127.full.pdf

Emotions for sale: cigarette advertising and women's psychosocial needs.

In this article we present communication theory as a conceptual framework for conducting documents research on tobacco advertising strategies, and we discuss two methods for analysing advertisements: semiotics and content analysis. We provide concrete examples of how we have used tobacco industry documents archives and tobacco advertisement collections iteratively in our research to yield a synergistic analysis of these two complementary data sources. Tobacco promotion researchers should consider adopting these theoretical and methodological approaches.

/pdf/every-document-and-picture-tells-a-story-using-internal-4ihnyts9sg.pdf

Every document and picture tells a story: using internal corporate document reviews, semiotics, and content analysis to assess tobacco advertising

Tobacco documents research has developed into a thriving academic enterprise since its inception in 1995. The technology supporting tobacco documents archiving, searching and retrieval has improved greatly since that time, and consequently tobacco documents researchers have considerably more access to resources than was the case when researchers had to travel to physical archives and/or electronically search poorly and incompletely indexed documents. The authors of the papers presented in this supplement all followed the same basic research methodology. Rather than leave the reader of the supplement to read the same discussion of methods in each individual paper, presented here is an overview of the methods all authors followed. In the individual articles that follow in this supplement, the authors present the additional methodological information specific to their topics. This brief discussion also highlights technological capabilities in the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library and updates methods for organising internal tobacco documents data and findings.

https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/tobaccocontrol/20/Suppl_2/ii8.full.pdf

Tobacco documents research methodology

Objective The aim of the present work was to understand why and how RJ Reynolds and other tobacco companies have marketed tobacco products to young adult social trendsetting consumers (termed ‘hipsters’) to recruit trendsetters and average consumers to smoke. Methods Analysis of tobacco industry documents and industry marketing materials. Results Since 1995, RJ Reynolds developed its marketing campaigns to better suit the lifestyle, image identity and attitudes of hip trendsetters (so-called ‘hipsters’), and Camel9s brand identity actively shifted to more closely convey the hipster persona. Camel emphasised in-venue events such as promotional music tours to link the brand and smoking to activities and symbols appealing to hipsters and their emulating masses. Conclusions To reach this targeted and socially valuable trend-setting population, public health advocates must tap into hipster psychology and expose to the targeted community the tobacco company9s efforts to infiltrate the hipster community to turn hipsters into tobacco-using role models.

/pdf/acceptable-rebellion-marketing-hipster-aesthetics-to-sell-3tn4gzbnbi.pdf

Stacey J Anderson

Papers

Marketing of menthol cigarettes and consumer perceptions: a review of tobacco industry documents

Emotions for sale: cigarette advertising and women's psychosocial needs.

Every document and picture tells a story: using internal corporate document reviews, semiotics, and content analysis to assess tobacco advertising

Tobacco documents research methodology

‘Acceptable rebellion’: marketing hipster aesthetics to sell Camel cigarettes in the US