Yesterday a user in CAK Facebook group argued that the pod systems have ruined the vape market. You read things like that more often. This is a perversion of cause and effect.
First, let’s look at what the cigarette industry is doing.
The manufacturers bring very similar products to the market. Which are hardly changed over the years and decades.
Depending on the survey, over 80% of cigarette smokers change cigarette brands at most once in their lifetime. In marketing and advertising, it’s all about getting customers from the competition.
With e-cigarettes, things are completely different.
First of all, the e-cigarette is a product that is still being developed. How many gimmicks have we seen: temperature vaping, battery mods that can be operated via cell phone, touchscreens. Few companies bring a product onto the market that stays the same over a long period of time.
Short-lived and fast
Not only the first order is important for such a market. So when the retailers order and put new products on the shelves. It is not this filling of the shelves that is important. Because even if 2000 vape shops only buy a product ten times, that’s 20,000 units sold.
The second order is important. Only it shows whether the product is really in demand by the consumer.
Medium-sized manufacturers cannot afford to invest in image advertising for their product. On the contrary, many retailers tend to do without advertising. Because only advertising with a clear, product-related content – i.e. actually online offers that are now banned – seems to make sense for them. A mistake.
Similar to how a supermarket advertises itself (leaflets), supermarket chains and manufacturers advertise others (television advertising).
The e-cigarette market is short-lived and fast-moving. The products have a high turnover.
Because a manufacturer can only sell a limited number of products with these funds. So he creates new products. This keeps the demand high. So far we have seen this with evaporators, battery carriers and especially with shake & vape liquids.
This is a variant of what it means to artificially create demand.
Related Read:Current Long-Term Study On E-Cigarettes Consumption
Growth non-existent
Supported by the sales figures, this has evidently led to many people considering the market to be growing indefinitely. But no market does that.
Two factors are crucial for this.
Firstly, fewer and fewer smokers have switched to e-cigarettes. You can’t prove that directly. But you can conclude it from the numbers of the industry and, for example, the ongoing DEBRA study.
Secondly, old-established consumers eventually become tired. You no longer have what vapers self-deprecatingly call the want-to-have virus. Many vapers have found their device and their “Allday” liquid at some point and use it for a long time without buying anything new.
And it is precisely this development that many retailers were able to confirm even before the slump caused by Corona. Since this was also over, the numbers seem to have solidified since last year. Increases are presumably only due to the currently hyped disposables.
Manufacturers who have opted for long-lasting products from the outset can deal with this stagnation. But not those who made a living from launching new products at high frequency.
create sales markets
Many smokers are used to buying their cigarettes, opening the pack and smoking. Dealing with ohms, coils and watts is too much for them. And those with a soft spot for technology and fiddling have long since made the switch.
Anyone who doubts this should think about the fact that the main turnover is still made with cigarettes. Although cigarette stuffing is far cheaper, most still prefer the increasingly expensive cigarettes.
From the point of view of the manufacturers, it was therefore obvious to go further and further in the direction of convenience. Only in this way could new buyers be reached. This was the only way to convince new smokers to switch. And only there can the business model of artificial demand through new products continue to promise success, at least in the medium term.
Exchange of cause and effect
The pod systems didn’t destroy the market. Not even the disposables.
The market is not even “broken”. He has shifted.
And the market for self-winders, sub-ohmers and battery mods for two is not broken either. He’s stagnant. The supply will therefore shrink in the medium term because retailers and manufacturers are reorienting themselves.
In addition, more and more pod systems are being sold and disposables are largely not being sold in specialist shops. That’s just the keyhole that vapers and specialty retailers look through. It takes place at petrol stations, kiosks and supermarkets.
Those who prefer such systems will continue to find them.
What “breaks” is only the demand. Which is kept up by constantly new devices. the bubble
It remains to be seen how this market will react to this. Whether the mainly Chinese manufacturers switch to more durable products that remain unchanged over a long period of time. And whether the dealers will accept it that way. After all, they also lived off this artificially created demand. Although it is certainly more of a pressure than an advantage for retailers.
What number Caliburn and what number Crown are out now?
What certainly suffers at least is the sense of community among a small group of vapers who feel they belong to a social group and have turned vaping into a hobby. And for self-identification. Like independent music suddenly going mainstream.
In any case, the perspective that convenience products have destroyed the market causes and effects are distorted.
The pod systems and disposables didn’t destroy the market. Rather, the short-lived market created them.