title: The New Product Watch: Successes and Challenges of Crowdsourcing as a Method of Surveillance.
abstract: New smokeless tobacco (eg, snus and dissolvable tobacco products) and nontobacco nicotine products (eg, e-cigarettes) have emerged in recent years amid widespread speculation about locations of test marketing, toxic constituents, and consumer targeting. The New Product Watch was a pilot online monitoring system aimed at filling these information gaps by using a form of crowdsourcing: recruiting volunteers to visit local retailers and report their findings. With very little funding, the New Product Watch gathered county-specific data on new product availability in 19 states as well as trend data on product marketing and demand, and completed 2 rounds of product purchases and subsequent toxic constituent analyses. Data were collected over a 2-year period, between 2009 and 2011. Despite the successes, we found that this small-scale, volunteer effort was not a sustainable method for ensuring continuous, systematic surveillance of new product availability, marketing, and toxicity.
authors: Center for Survey Research, University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, Massachusetts.
authors: Amy L
authors: AL
authors: Nyman
authors: Lois
authors: L
authors: Biener
mesh_terms: D063045:Crowdsourcing; D066300:Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011159:Population Surveillance / Q000379:methods*; D012907:Smoking; D014030:Tobacco, Smokeless / Q000706:statistics & numerical data