As of May 20, 2020, menthol cigarettes are banned from sale, leaving the tobacco industry and retailers in a period of uncertainty. However, manufacturer PMI is trying to capitalize on this by striving to position its new products, particularly heated tobacco.<\/p>\n
Philip Morris has launched a tool to promote its heated tobacco products to retailers. It assesses the impact that the ban on menthol cigarettes, scheduled for May 20, could have on their sales.<\/p>\n
The calculator-like tool, launched at menthol-ban-retail.co.uk, uses electronic point-of-sale data from a study of 2,600 stores across the UK that analyzes the local spending habits of menthol cigarette smokers. This includes menthol cigarette purchases and additional store items purchased during the same transaction. The site states that, on average, menthol consumers represent \u00a3263 (\u20ac300) per week for each retailer in the UK. Retailers are invited to enter their postcode into the calculator to see the potential impact the ban could have on their business over a week, month, or year.<\/p>\n
On the home page of the site, the first message displayed is:<\/strong><\/p>\n Are you ready for the menthol cigarette ban?<\/p>\n The ban on menthol cigarettes only affects menthol cigarettes<\/p>\n IQOS and menthol HEETS will still be available for sale.<\/strong><\/p>\n This assumes, and the information is not mentioned, that consumers of menthol cigarettes completely stop their purchases in the bar, which is not established, especially if they simultaneously consume other non-menthol brands.<\/p>\n But this rhetoric and the announced financial threat are intended to exert significant pressure on retailers to increase sales of their new products. In doing so, they circumvent the ban on menthol, which only applies to traditional manufactured cigarettes and rolling tobacco. The manufacturer's goal, of course, remains the same: to expand its particularly lucrative profit margins with these new products. To achieve this, it offers various entry points to all its nicotine products, facilitating co-consumption or transfers according to the differentiated regulations that apply to them.<\/p>\n What PMI wants is to make the retailer a true prescriber who, when the ban on cigarettes and menthol rolling tobacco comes into effect, immediately offers their new product that they want to impose: the IQOS Menthol Kit. This is also a striking example that PMI does not want a world free of tobacco, as the company constantly reminds us. PMI specifies on this site that IQOS is not similar to vaping or traditional cigarettes, but that the device is designed to imitate the act of smoking as much as possible.<\/p>\n