The Last Straw? Cigarette Advertising and Realized Market Shares among Youths and Adults, 1979–1993

The authors test the hypotheses that parameters of advertising sensitivity for adolescents are significant and perhaps larger than those for adults. Cigarette brand shares of advertising voice are found to be significantly related to realized market shares, with advertising sensitivity being about three times larger among teenagers than among adults. This result is robust to various analytic assumptions and converges with strategic analysis, consumer behavior theory and research, econometric metanalyses, historical research, and corporate documents. The authors argue that cigarette competition between firms is predominated by the battle of brands for market share among the young, and assertions to the contrary, without supporting evidence, should be treated with scholarly skepticism.