Assessing the Relationship between Retail Store Tobacco Advertising and Local Tobacco Control Policies: A Massachusetts Case Study

Table 1

Descriptive statistics of all study variables across all retail stores, n = 419.

	# (%)/mean (SD)	Minimum	Maximum
Tobacco advertisements
Presence of advertisements	363 (86.7%)
Number of tobacco advertisements^a	6.69 (6.61)	0	32
Number of tobacco advertisement categories (range)	2.89 (1.84)	0	7
Retail store type
Convenience stores	122 (29.1%)
Gas station	118 (28.2%)
Liquor store	73 (17.5%)
Drug store	10 (2.4%)
Chain retail stores	49 (11.7%)
Nonchain retail stores	16 (3.8%)
Other store types^b	31 (7.4%)
Categories of tobacco advertisements
Presence/number of ads (mean/SD)
External ads	204 (48.7%)/2.8 (4.3)	0	26
Backlit ads	0 (0.0%)	0	0
Branded items	14 (3.3%)/0.03 (0.2)	0	1
Smokeless tobacco ads	181 (43.2%)/0.5 (0.8)	0	5
Flavored tobacco ads	26 (6.2%)/0.1 (0.2)	0	1
Power wall	335 (80.0%)/0.8 (0.4)	0	1
Ads of discounts on tobacco products	91 (21.7%)/0.3 (0.5)	0	6
E-cigarette ads	234 (55.8%)/0.8 (1.0)	0	8
Internal posters	125 (29.8%)/1.4 (2.8)	0	15

^aSum of the number of tobacco advertisements across all stores = 2,804. ^bOther store types include tobacco shops, big-box stores, fashion stores, bars, and private clubs.