Objectives: To explore how advertising affects demand for cigarettes and potential substitutes, including snus, dissolvable tobacco, and medicinal nicotine.
Methods: A Web-based experiment randomized 1062 smokers to see advertisements for alternative nicotine products or soft drinks, then complete a series of purchase tasks, which were used to estimate demand elasticity, peak consumption, and cross-price elasticity (CPE) for tobacco products.
Results: Lower demand elasticity and greater peak consumption were seen for cigarettes compared to all alternative products (p < .05). CPE did not differ across the alternative products (p ≤ .03). Seeing relevant advertisements was not significantly related to demand.
Conclusions: These findings suggest significantly lower demand for alternative nicotine sources among smokers than previously revealed.