Cigarette Purchase Patterns Among Light and Heavy Smokers

Cigarettes constitute a very large product category with very adverse health outcomes for consumers. Knowing more about cigarette purchasing will inform researchers, and help policymakers make better decisions about this product. We examine how heavy cigarette purchasers differ from ‘light’ or infrequent purchasers and how this buying behaviour differs according to season. The study finds heavy cigarette buyers purchase at 45 times the frequency of light buyers, and also buy approximately 5 times as many cigarettes on each occasion. July is the peak summer month for cigarette purchasing and we find this is driven by a slightly larger proportion of heavy buyers buying in that month than normal, and buying slightly more frequently in July as well