A topical examination of Cigar Aficionado magazine content, 2023

Prior research has found that premium cigar marketing highlights favorable themes (e.g. glamour), and reinforces the idea that premium cigars are part of a successful, luxurious lifestyle. Yet, all but one of these studies are more than 20 years old and more recent data on premium cigar marketing is needed. This study adds to the literature by a providing a comprehensive, topical examination of all content promoted in all 2023 issues of Cigar Aficionado, a prominent cigar lifestyle magazine.

Codes were identified through a literature review and scan of issues of Cigar Aficionado from 2022. Codes included but were not limited to cigars, alcohol, travel, cigar festivals, celebrities, and cigar storage products. All coding was done in excel and then exported to Stata/MP 17 for analysis. Analysis of articles and ads were done separately.

Among ads, the most common topics were cigars (64.5%), alcohol (31.1%), and cigar stores/retailers (14.5%). For articles, the most common topics were cigars (49.6%), cigar reviews/spotlights (23.3%), and celebrities (19.5%). Among ads for cigar products where country of origin could be identified (44.6%), most cigars featured were from Nicaragua (65.0%) and the Dominican Republic (25.2%), followed by Honduras (7.3%), Costa Rica (1.6%), and Cuba (0.8%).

Overall, marketing in the 2023 Cigar Aficionado issues is similar to marketing strategies from the 1990s. Future research should explore health claims and other marketing strategies used in Cigar Aficionado, and other lifestyle magazines, as well as observe marketing trends over time.