title: Price-related promotions for tobacco products on Twitter.
abstract: This cross-sectional study examined price-related promotions for tobacco products on Twitter.
  
  
  
  Through the Twitter Firehose, we obtained access to all public tweets posted between 6 December 2012 and 20 June 2013 that contained a keyword suggesting a tobacco-related product or behaviour (eg, cigarette, vaping) in addition to a keyword suggesting a price promotion (eg, coupon, discount). From this data set of 155 249 tweets, we constructed a stratified sampling frame based on the price-related keywords and randomly sampled 5000 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 2847 tweets.
  
  
  
  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.
  
  
  
  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.
authors.affiliation: Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
authors.forename: Catherine L
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-8706-9523
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Jo
authors.affiliation: School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, USA.
authors.forename: Rachel
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Kornfield
authors.affiliation: Institute for Health Research and Policy, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
authors.forename: Yoonsang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.affiliation: Institute for Health Research and Policy, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
authors.forename: Sherry
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Emery
authors.affiliation: Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
authors.forename: Kurt M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Ribisl
mesh_terms: D003132:Commerce / Q000191:economics* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D066300:Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems / Q000191:economics*; D006801:Humans; D061108:Social Media; D062789:Tobacco Products / Q000191:economics*
keywords: Advertising and Promotion; Electronic nicotine delivery devices; Price; Surveillance and monitoring