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description= Restricting tobacco marketing is a key element in the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) public health framework for regulating tobacco. Given the dearth of empirical data on direct marketing, the objective of this study was to assess the reach ...;
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appendix, and, website, table, of, permalink, methods, results, to, phd, traffic, sales, other, promotions, snus, articles, figure, the, reach, impact, direct, marketing, via, brand, websites, moist, snuff, abstract, discussion, implications, for, tobacco, regulation, acknowledgments, footnotes, contributor, information, references, actions, resources, cite, add, collections, david, timberlake, tim, bruckner, vyvian, ngo, mph, dmitriy, nikitin, ba, objective, conclusions, selection, content, internet, time, series, analysis, coupons, sweepstakes, skoal, grizzly, copenhagen, red, man, timber, wolf, camel, general, similar, cited, by, links, ncbi, databases,
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internet traffic and snuff sales from january 2011 through december 2014 internet traffic and sales unique visitors to the 9 websites aggregated monthly from 2011 through 2014 were estimated from the proprietary firm compete a kantar media company the estimates were derived from a multisource panel of more than 2 million internet users composing a nationally representative sample of adult internet users in the us 20 the weighted estimate for unique visitors represents the number of adult internet users who made one or more visits to a given snuff website within the month compete utilizes a sophisticated algorithm for integrating the data sources ie panel data clickstream data followed by normalization techniques for weighting and projecting metrics eg website visitation from the panel to the population of adult internet users in the us the sales data for this study were obtained from the nielsen company s convenience track system 17 this data source was chosen because snuff purchases assessed from barcode readings and in store audits were obtained from a nationally representative sample of us convenience stores these stores which account for 93 of smokeless tobacco sales nationwide 1 include independent stores chain and non chain stores the sales data were reported as sale units aggregated every 4 weeks from 2011 through 2014 because the sales data n 52 4 week periods did not exactly correspond to the website traffic n 48 months sales data from one 4 week period late december to mid to late january were excluded from each year this adjustment yielded a total of 48 data points with a slight lag between website traffic and sales data for the earlier part of a given year for example website traffic for january 1 through january 31 2011 preceded sales data for the 4 week period spanning january 22 through february 19 2011 time series analysis we applied autoregressive integrated moving average arima methods recommended in the epidemiologic literature 21 to test the relation among promotions excluding coupons website traffic and sales the 4 types of online promotions included in the time series analysis were games contests sweepstakes and giveaways coupons were excluded from the analysis because of their ever presence on the websites table 1 positive associations with monthly snuff sales or website traffic occur when the volume of sales measured in cans of snuff exceeds the volume expected from periods when promotions were not held snuff sales however may exhibit temporal patterns such as a rising or declining trend in sales seasonality or the tendency for low values to be followed similarly by low values these patterns collectively referred to as autocorrelation complicate correlational tests because the expected value of snuff sales is not the mean of sales from earlier months table 1 characteristics of online coupons for 9 snuff brands tracked weekly from november 2013 through december 2014 brand coupon s on 11 1 13 no coupon changes advertising phrase in coupon total c new d camel snus e 1 off one tin 0 0 coupon me copenhagen f 3 50 off roll a 2 2 weekly coupon to mobile phone general snus g 1 can 2 off any can 1 0 saving has never been so satisfying grizzly e 1 off one can 1 1 bag a buck or two longhorn g 2 50 off roll or tub 14 2 real dip real deal red man g 1 off 1 can 3 off 2 cans 17 2 fresh red man savings red seal f 1 off 1 can 3 75 off roll 3 0 the red seal monthly deal skoal f buy one get one free b 3 3 save some coin on your favorite can timber wolf g none 11 4 claim your timber wolf coupon open in a new tab note a contains 5 cans b applies to skoal classic also 1 off skoal xtra c total number of replacements for either a recycled coupon or a new coupon type or value from 11 1 13 through the period 11 6 13 12 31 14 d number of new coupons with a new coupon value e reynolds american parent company f altria group inc parent company g swedish match time series methods developed by box and jenkins 22 address the issue of autocorrelation by empirically identifying and removing patterns in the dependent variable the time series routines include autocorrelation parameters via an arima error term such that the residual sales exhibit no autocorrelation and have a monthly expected value of 0 the arima approach uses autoregressive ar and moving average ma parameters to model the tendency to remain elevated be depressed or oscillate ar parameters best describe patterns that persist for relatively long periods whereas ma parameters parsimoniously describe less persistent patterns the integrated i parameter serves as a differencing operator if a series exhibits a strong trend ie non stationary mean the 2 panels in figure 1 illustrate the arima process by plotting the sales of grizzly snuff before top panel and after bottom panel removal of autocorrelation the top panel shows strong trend and seasonality in sales by contrast the bottom panel shows no such patterns sales in each month are serially independent we use this residual data as the dependent variable series when examining the relation between promotions or web traffic and sales volume figure 1 open in a new tab plots of grizzly raw sales and residual sales across 48 months following the detection and removal of autocorrelation after applying time series routines to each of the 9 dependent variables ie sales of the 9 brands we inserted the promotions variable into the equation to determine whether it correlated positively with a concurrent rise in sales the variable had a binary response denoting the presence or absence of any promotion which most often was a contest or sweepstake contests and sweepstakes were treated the same in the analysis because there was no reason to believe that they differed regarding website traffic or snuff sales multiple promotions occurred concurrently for some brands but were too infrequent to model on a continuum furthermore unlike the coupons the contests and sweepstakes occurred intermittently throughout the observation period thereby facilitating analysis of the binary variable for most of the brands for example the brands skoal and grizzly held promotions for 13 and 24 months respectively of the 48 total months observed in the study we also examined the relationship between the promotions and website traffic in a separate set of models furthermore we repeated the analysis of snuff sales using website traffic as the independent variable to examine whether website activity more generally corresponded with an increase in snuff sales for all analyses we specified a concurrent relation ie lag of 0 months due to the slight lag already induced by the exclusion of 4 data points see section internet traffic and sales all analyses were conducted with software from scientific computing associates version 6 0 oak brook il results website coupons eight of the 9 websites offered a coupon at the beginning of the observation period table 1 a change in coupon represents the replacement of the coupon for either a recycled or new coupon dollar value or coupon type the change does not represent the removal of a coupon that was not replaced hence a coupon appeared on the majority of snuff websites throughout the observation period premium brands like skoal and copenhagen infrequently changed the type or value of their online coupons in contrast websites for the discount brands like longhorn red man and timber wolf frequently changed their coupons from week to week however swedish match the company of the 3 discount brands often recycled the coupons from prior weeks without having posted coupons with new values some brands offered a straight discount coupon 12 such as a 1 off one can of grizzly another type of coupon was the floor price which specified a certain dollar value for the product eg 1 can of general snus the third type of coupon the buy one get one free coupon was observed less frequently than the other coupon types some brands offered multiple coupons at a given time such as 2 straight discount coupons that varied in value the predominant marketing theme in the coupons was savings exemplified by such phrases as bag a buck or two and save some coin on your favorite can sweepstakes and other promotions te online promotions were a common form of direct marketing as evidenced by 7 of 9 snuff brands that held at least one non coupon promotion from 2011 through 2014 red seal and longhorn were the exceptions emerging snuff brands like camel snus utilized this form of marketing more frequently than established brands like copenhagen the former and latter brands held promotions on 39 and 21 months respectively of the 48 months of observation most promotions lasted several months and sometimes overlapped for a given brand they were often held in the summer but did occur in the other seasons as table 2 illustrates games and giveaways yielded nominal prizes and gifts eg bottle of hot sauce in contrast to the substantial prizes awarded in contests and sweepstakes eg timber wolf s 100 000 grand prize the latter promotions highlighted themes or notable events such as skoal s 80 days of saturdays celebrating the company s 80 th birthday grizzly sponsored creative promotions centered on the theme of masculinity exemplified by writing the man rules challenge contest which required contestants to write their man rules on each week s theme like other promotions this contest ran for multiple weeks with weekly grand prizes and instant win prizes restrictions on online entry into the various promotions varied from one entry per day to one entry per promotion table 2 examples of online promotions in the form of games contests sweepstakes and giveaways type of promotion sponsor name of promotion how to play win prize examples game camel snus family flavor shuffle game shuffle the camel snus tins 15 mastercard gift card contest grizzly writin the man rules challenge write your own man rule on a weekly theme 50 words trip to vegas poker championship contest camel snus ad maker contest create advertisement using graphics colors in website tool 250 and publication of ad sweepstake timber wolf welcome to owensboro ky claim plot of land on virtual map of owensboro ky hunt for 100 000 grand prize sweepstake copenhagen american craftsmanship sweepstakes choose one of 13 drawings to participate in poker table grill flashlight etc giveaway grizzly hot sauce giveaway select type of hot sauce and create your own custom label hot sauce open in a new tab a descriptive analysis of the marketing reach of the promotions revealed that the promotion dates coincided with the number of unique visitors to the snuff websites this was evident for the 3 featured websites in figure 2 particularly redman com which experienced a substantial decline in internet traffic following termination of its 2 promotions in 2011 and 2012 the dates for skoal com and mygrizzly com correspond to peak website traffic during the online promotions figure 2 open in a new tab temporal relationship between number of unique website visitors and promotion dates 1 2011 12 2014 promotions website traffic and sales for most products time series methods revealed seasonality in monthly website traffic as well as other effects appendices a through g after removal of these patterns website traffic increased substantially during months of active sweepstakes contests or other promotions table 3 this finding held for 5 of the 7 snuff brands that sponsored the online promotions for instance promotions for skoal corresponded to an additional 88 695 hits above the level expected from the non promotion periods representing an increase of more than 2 standard deviations by contrast camel snus and general snus exhibited no association between the promotions and website traffic table 3 time series results over the 48 time points examining website traffic and snuff sales as a function of sweepstakes contests and other promotions brand promotions predicting website traffic hits promotions predicting snuff can sales website traffic predicting snuff can sales β se β se β se skoal 88 695 11 176 77 914 70 678 79 43 a grizzly 46 746 11 397 27 680 71 466 1 01 79 copenhagen 52 863 23 368 116 230 103 680 03 46 red man 17 511 1 284 46 301 15 971 73 61 longhorn n a b n a b 4 03 2 55 red seal n a b n a b 3 01 52 c timber wolf 14 536 2 952 44 072 20 308 55 50 camel snus 29 683 19 813 53 569 34 898 13 16 general snus 2185 1 451 928 5 811 36 26 open in a new tab p 05 p 01 p 001 all tests 2 tailed note a p 10 b not applicable because sweepstakes contests were not held during the observation period c 2 positive web traffic outliers at end of series when sales are quite low drive negative result sales of several snuff brands also demonstrated a strong trend eg skoal thereby requiring us to render the trend mean stationary for the majority of snuff products 5 of 7 the association between promotions and sales was not statistically significant as demonstrated by the second column in table 3 the exceptions were red man and timber wolf the regression coefficients for red man β 46 301 and timber wolf β 44 072 indicate a substantial increase in snuff sales corresponding to a promotion period as shown in the last column of table 3 website traffic in general was not associated with snuff sales discussion these findings indicate that the brand websites are successful in attracting tobacco consumers during sweepstakes and other promotions the success in reaching consumers was evident for the popular brands like skoal and grizzly as well as the less popular brands like red man the observation that coupons were a central feature of the websites provided rationale for testing associations among snuff sales website traffic and the promotions the premise was that consumers would visit the brand websites during sweepstakes contests download the coupons and redeem the coupons during promotion periods the null association between promotions and snuff sales for 5 of 7 brands raises the question of whether direct marketing is primarily intended to enhance brand loyalty in the long term or boost sales in the short term the latter is supported by the notion that sales promotions aim to stimulate behavior as opposed to advertising which has a long term effect from conditioning a consumer s perception of a product 23 redmond reported that during the rapid expansion of sales promotions for cigarettes 1983 1992 expenditures for such promotions were highly correlated with the initiation of daily smoking among ninth graders 23 the absence of a short term impact of promotions on sales is not what we had expected tough it is plausible that the substantial increase in website traffic during promotions could increase customer satisfaction and brand loyalty over time 11 without having measured these outcomes it would be unfounded to reach such a conclusion on the other hand it would be premature to conclude that the promotions were a failure based on the null associations observ...
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