By increasing excise taxes, eliminating tobacco marketing and requiring standardised (plain) packaging of tobacco products, governments internationally have reduced smoking's allure. Yet product innovations, such as flavour capsule variants (FCVs), remain unregulated and may appeal to non-smokers. We examined the growth of FCVs in a country with a progressive policy environment.
Each year, New Zealand tobacco companies must provide details of the number of cigarette sticks released for each brand and variant to the Ministry of Health. We used this information to analyse FCVs' performance for British American Tobacco (BAT) and Philip Morris International (PMI), which account for a large proportion of New Zealand tobacco sales. We report the quantity released of each variant and share of parent brand portfolio, and examine growth patterns within the premium, every-day and value market sub-sections.
BAT introduced FCVs in 2012 and by 2014 offered FCVs in all market sub-sections; PMI introduced a Marlboro FCV in 2014. FCVs grew rapidly relative to unflavoured variants and, by 2017, represented nearly ten percent of BAT's product portfolio and over three percent of PMI's product portfolio. By 2017, FCVs accounted for more than a third of the Dunhill sticks released, 14% of Holiday, and 17% of Pall Mall.
FCVs' rapid growth may have reduced declines in the numbers of sticks released. Policy makers should disallow FCV innovations, which offer no health benefits to smokers and may instead attract non-smokers to smoking. Where timely, these regulations could be incorporated into standardised packaging policies.
FCVs have grown quickly in countries with comprehensive tobacco marketing restrictions, which suggests tobacco companies are now focussing on novel product designs to attract new smokers. Standardised packaging regulations could address both external packaging and stick design innovations, such as FCVs; alternatively, specific regulations prohibiting FCVs may be required.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 14. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 16 May 2021.
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#3,285,886
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#900
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#48,764
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#20
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Altmetric has tracked 34,376,207 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 90th percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 4,132 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 21.0. This one has done well, scoring higher than 77% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 69 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 69% of its contemporaries.
