Liquor advertising and consumption in the United States: 1971-2008

Much of the confrontational efforts in the last four decades regarding the reduction of alcohol consumption have focused on the advertising of alcohol beverages. Critics of alcohol beverage advertising argue that the amount and substance of the alcohol advertising results in increased consumption of those beverages. A good deal of the research that supports this viewpoint utilises either cross-sectional data or controlled experiments, and identifies advertising as one of the possible factors influencing alcohol consumption. Using time-series analyses, this manuscript examines the relationship between distilled spirits advertising expenditures and consumption in the US from 1971 to 2008 on an aggregate and brand level. This four-decade period is especially interesting because it includes a decade in which the spirits industry ended a voluntary ban of advertising on electronic media.