I suspect the fact that many people use the internet to view pornography makes contemporaneous v!agra spam fairly effective. If consumer decisions are susceptible to situational cues and entrepreneurs exploit this feature of preferences, aroused people will purchase large quantities of v!agra. You might complain that porn is a substitute, and not a complement, to sexual activity, but I don't think this is the case. Survey microdata collected by Edward Laumann reveals that Americans do not use pornography to compensate for lack of sexual contact. In fact, autoerotic behavior (which lumps together everything from attending strip clubs to phone sex to masturbation) is associated with higher levels of partnered sexual activity. Both men and women who are highly autoerotic are more likely to have multiple sexual partners in a short period of time. Moreover, use of pornography is highly correlated with diversity of sexual practices. All this suggests that such consumers might actually require v!agra given their heightened sexual behavior.
Dimitriy V. Masterov
