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Original research
Monitoring website marketing among leading e-cigarette brands and vendors in California: content analysis
  1. Scott I Donaldson1,
  2. Trista Beard1,
  3. Allison Dormanesh1,
  4. Cindy Pérez1,
  5. Patricia Escobedo2,
  6. Jennifer B Unger1,
  7. Heather Lynn Wipfli1,
  8. Artur Galimov1,
  9. Jon-Patrick Allem1
  1. 1Department of Population and Public Health Sciences, USC Keck School of Medicine, Los Angeles, California, USA
  2. 2Department of Psychology, California State University Northridge, Northridge, California, USA
  1. Correspondence to Dr Jon-Patrick Allem, Department of Population and Public Health Sciences, USC Keck School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA, USA; jonpatrickallem{at}gmail.com

Abstract

Background Electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) brands and vendors use websites to promote pro-tobacco messages that may increase susceptibility to use e-cigarettes among never users or help sustain continued e-cigarette use among current users. E-cigarette website marketing is lightly regulated, and little is known about promotional strategies used on e-cigarette companies’ websites. This study conducted a content analysis of website marketing from leading e-cigarette companies selling products in California.

Methods This study identified 20 e-cigarette vendors and 6 e-cigarette brands that had products available for purchase online in California. Two coders visited 26 websites between 06 February 2022 and 17 April 2022. Websites were coded for marketing themes, promotional and interactive content, availability of flavoured e-cigarette products, presence of health warnings, and reference to tobacco control policies.

Results Marketing themes related to physical health benefits of e-cigarette use were found on 50.0% of the websites. 57.7% of the websites had sales/discounts/coupons. 65.4% of the websites had fruit-flavoured disposable e-cigarettes, while 73.1% of the websites had fruit-flavoured e-liquids available for purchase. 69.2% of the websites allowed users to sign up for email newsletters, and 88.9% of such websites did not require users to create an age-verified account to receive email newsletters.

Conclusions Findings from this study can be used to inform statewide regulations of promotional communications found on e-cigarette companies’ websites and encourage enforcement of age-verification procedures. This may help reduce susceptibility to use, or continued use of, e-cigarette products among price-sensitive populations, such as adolescents and young adults.

  • tobacco industry
  • surveillance and monitoring
  • electronic nicotine delivery devices
  • advertising and promotion

Data availability statement

Data are available upon reasonable request.

https://doi.org/10.1136/tc-2023-058000

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    Data availability statement

    Data are available upon reasonable request.

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    Footnotes

    • Twitter @hwipfli

    • Contributors SID: conceptualisation, methodology, formal analysis, data curation, writing of the original draft. TB: writing of the review and editing, project administration. AD: conceptualisation, investigation, data curation, writing of the review and editing, project administration. CP: data curation. PE: writing of the review and editing. JBU: writing of the review and editing. HLW: writing of the review and editing. AG: writing of the review and editing. J-PA: conceptualisation, writing of the review and editing, supervision, funding acquisition. J-PA: the guarantor, accepts full responsibility for the work and/or the conduct of the study, had access to the data, and controlled the decision to publish.

    • Funding This publication was funded by the California Tobacco Control Branch, Center for Healthy Communities of the California Department of Public Health through contract #21-10032 Tobacco Industry Monitoring Evaluation (TIME).

    • Competing interests J-PA has received fees for consulting services in court cases pertaining to the content on social media platforms.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Supplemental material This content has been supplied by the author(s). It has not been vetted by BMJ Publishing Group Limited (BMJ) and may not have been peer-reviewed. Any opinions or recommendations discussed are solely those of the author(s) and are not endorsed by BMJ. BMJ disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on the content. Where the content includes any translated material, BMJ does not warrant the accuracy and reliability of the translations (including but not limited to local regulations, clinical guidelines, terminology, drug names and drug dosages), and is not responsible for any error and/or omissions arising from translation and adaptation or otherwise.