Consumer Preferences for E-cigarette Flavor, Nicotine Strength, and Type: Evidence from Nielsen Scan
Friday, May 21, 2021
Posted by: Natalia Gromov
Samane
Zare and Yuqing Zheng.
Consumer Preferences for
E-cigarette Flavor, Nicotine Strength, and Type: Evidence from Nielsen Scanner
Data.
Nicotine & Tobacco Research, Volume 23, Issue 5, May 2021, Pages 823–828, https://doi.org/10.1093/ntr/ntaa238.
Many countries regulate e-cigarette attributes such as flavors and nicotine strength.
Despite a large literature on consumer preferences for e-cigarette attributes,
none used consumer-level longitudinal purchase data. We therefore use a unique
large dataset on U.S. adults' e-cigarette purchases as to gain insight into
real-world consumer choices and purchasing patterns.
Methods. A
total of 7098 purchase transactions, made by 1239 households on e-cigarette
from various retail outlets for 2013 through 2017, were collected from Nielsen
scanner data. We then apply an innovative multinomial logit model to examine
which factors affected adult choices over 23 e-cigarettes products broken down
by eight brands, three flavors, three nicotine strength levels, and two types.
Results.
We found that tobacco flavor, medium nicotine strength (12< mg/ml ≤18), or
disposables lead to higher adult purchases and such preference can vary over
cigarette smoking status, purchase frequency, gender, race, and age.
Specifically, smokers tend to purchase tobacco flavor, non-smokers or female
vapers tend to purchase medium strength, and infrequent vapers tend to purchase
disposables. Vapers are quite responsive to e-cigarette prices and also display
loyalty (inertia) to e-cigarette brands, flavor, and nicotine strength.
Conclusions.
When modeled together, e-cigarette flavors, strength, type, price, and previous
choice were all found to influence vapers' current purchase decision in the
actual retail environment.
Implications.
The evidence presented here indicates that the impacts of certain restrictions
on e-cigarette attributes, such as a flavor ban or maximum level of nicotine
content, might have heterogeneous impacts on adults.
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