Uncovering Philip Morris International's Fundamental Strategies for Product Placement in Thailand: Spotlighting Industry Penetration to Advance the Endgame.

BACKGROUND: Tobacco companies and their associated businesses know that placement - where one can see and purchase their products - is critical to their success. Placement is one of the four fundamental Ps of marketing along with product, price and promotion. Placement includes identifying retail locations in important places such as in shopping districts, within neighborhoods, near schools, at beaches, and in parks. In Southeast Asia, counteracting tobacco company placement strategies that result in market penetration is essential to advancing the endgame, namely ending tobacco use. However, in Southeast Asia research on the placement of tobacco products has been limited. OBJECTIVES: We undertook to analyze how Philip Morris International (PMI) through its subsidiary Philip Morris Asia Inc. (PMAI), from the time the company entered Thailand's market once it was forced open in 1990, developed its successful product placement strategies and tactics. METHODS: We examined over 4,000 PMI and PMAI internal documents using an historical, iterative and thematic approach. We analyzed the most relevant and illuminating documents, particularly those in which PMAI discussed retailer supply, retailer acceptance and retailer cooperation. RESULTS: Even before foreign tobacco brands were legally allowed to be sold in Thailand, PMAI was already doing customer research in Thailand. In 1989, PMAI conducted a study of potential Thai customers in which 24% of respondents' lack of availability (i.e., product placement) was one of the main reasons for not smoking PMI's products. Based on these findings, PMAI engaged in intensive internal efforts to address the placement barrier to gain share. PMAI placed considerable emphasis on "stimulating retail trade acceptance" by making payments to retailers who met agreed upon and contracted product sales targets. PMAI's initial successes incentivizing Thai retailers by essentially buying prime retail space for placement of their brands, to crowd out local and other foreign brands, became the foundation of what evolved into a sophisticated program to make placement highly lucrative for retailers. CONCLUSION: PMAI viewed aggressive product placement as essential to success as a new entrant in Thailand, and their product placement strategies contributed substantially to capturing a large share of the market. Therefore, endgame strategies must focus on restricting product placement through surveillance of tobacco industry legal, investment and retailer actions and through stricter tobacco retailer licensing requirements and penalties.

Transferring Racial/Ethnic Marketing Strategies From Tobacco to Food Corporations: Philip Morris and Kraft General Foods.

Objectives. To investigate the transfer of marketing knowledge and infrastructure for targeting racial/ethnic minorities from the tobacco to the food and beverage industry in the United States.Methods. We analyzed internal industry documents between April 2018 and April 2019 from the University of California San Francisco Truth Tobacco Industry Documents Library, triangulated with other sources.Results. In the 1980s, Philip Morris Companies purchased General Foods and Kraft Foods and created Kraft General Foods. Through centralized marketing initiatives, Philip Morris Companies directly transferred expertise, personnel, and resources from its tobacco to its food subsidiaries, creating a racial/ethnic minority-targeted food and beverage marketing program modeled on its successful cigarette program. When Philip Morris Companies sold Kraft General Foods in 2007, Kraft General Foods had a "fully integrated" minority marketing program that combined target marketing with racial/ethnic events promotion, racial/ethnic media outreach, and corporate donations to racial/ethnic leadership groups, making it a food industry leader.Conclusions. The tobacco industry directly transferred racial/ethnic minority marketing knowledge and infrastructure to food and beverage companies. Given the substantial growth of food and beverage corporations, their targeting of vulnerable populations, and obesity-related disparities, public policy and community action is needed to address corporate target marketing.

How Menthol Is Key to the Tobacco Industry's Strategy of Recruiting and Retaining Young Smokers in Singapore.

INTRODUCTION: Singapore has a strong and well-established tobacco control policy, but smoking rates among young Singaporeans remain relatively high. In other countries, tobacco companies have used menthol to encourage smoking among young people. Singapore still permits the sale of menthol tobacco products and little is known about the tobacco industry's internal strategy and motivation for marketing menthol tobacco in Singapore. METHODS: Tobacco industry documents analysis using the Truth Tobacco Industry Documents Library. Findings were triangulated with Euromonitor market data on menthol tobacco in Singapore, and trend data on smoking prevalence in Singapore from the First National Morbidity Survey, Labour Force Survey, National Health Survey, and National Health Surveillance Survey. RESULTS: Menthol tobacco products became popular among young Singaporeans in the early 1980s, largely due to a health-consciousness trend among young people and the misperception that menthol tobacco products were "safer." Philip Morris, in an attempt to compete with R.J. Reynolds for starter smokers, developed and launched several menthol brands designed to appeal to youth. While many brands initially failed, as of February 2018, menthol tobacco products comprise 48% of Singapore's total tobacco market. CONCLUSIONS: Menthol is key to the tobacco industry's strategy of recruiting and retaining young smokers in Singapore. Banning the sale of menthol tobacco products will be an important part of preventing smoking in Singapore's younger generation.

A conflict of interest is strongly associated with tobacco industry-favourable results, indicating no harm of e-cigarettes.

Researchers reach contradictory results when trying to assess the potential harm of e-cigarettes. This study investigated whether the findings and conclusions in papers published on e-cigarettes and health differ depending on whether the authors had a financial conflict of interest (COI) or not. A total of 94 studies (identified in a previous systematic review) that investigated the content of fluid/vapor of e-cigarettes or in vitro experiments were included. The type, level and direction of the financial COI were coded. Abstracts were blinded and evaluated by two assessors. Fischer's Test and Logistic regression analyses were used to investigate the associations between findings of harm/conclusions and COI. All three dimensions of COI showed the same tendency: studies with industry-related COI found potential harm significantly less often than studies without a COI. 95.1% of papers without and 39.4% of papers with a COI found potential harmful effects/substances. Only 7.7% of tobacco industry-related studies found potential harm. The odds of finding of no harm were significantly higher in studies with an industry-related COI (OR 66.92 (95% CI 8.1-552.9)) than in studies without a COI. A strong/moderate COI was associated with very high odds (OR 91.50 (95% CI 10.9-771.4)) of finding of no harm compared with studies with no/weak COI. This blinded assessment showed that almost all papers without a COI found potentially harmful effects of e-cigarettes. There was a strong association between industry-related COI and tobacco- and e-cigarette industry-favourable results, indicating that e-cigarettes are harmless.

From transit hub to major supplier of illicit cigarettes to Argentina and Brazil: the changing role of domestic production and transnational tobacco companies in Paraguay between 1960 and 2003.

BACKGROUND: Paraguay has reportedly been a major transit hub for illicit tobacco products since the 1960s, initially to supply markets in Argentina and Brazil and, more recently, other regional markets and beyond. However, to date there has been no systematic analysis, notably independent of the tobacco industry, of this trade including the roles of domestic production and transnational tobacco companies (TTCs). This article fills that gap by detailing the history of Paraguay's illicit cigarette trade to Brazil and Argentina of TTC products and Paraguayan production between 1960 and 2003. The effective control of illicit cigarette flows, under Article 15 of the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and the Protocol to Eliminate the Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products, requires fuller understanding of the changing nature of the illicit trade. METHODS: We systematically searched internal industry documents to understand the activities and strategies of leading TTCs in Paraguay and subregion over time. We also mapped illicit trade volume and patterns using US government and UN data on the cigarette trade involving Paraguay. We then estimated Paraguay's cigarette production from 1989 to 2003 using tobacco leaf flows from the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database (UN Comtrade). RESULTS: We identify four phases in the illicit tobacco trade involving Paraguay: 1) Paraguay as a transit hub to smuggle BAT and PMI cigarettes from the U.S. into Argentina and Brazil (from the 1960s to the mid-1970s); 2) BAT and PMI competing in north-east Argentina (1989-1994); 3) BAT and PMI competing in southern and southern-east Brazil (mid to late 1990s); and 4) the growth in the illicit trade of Paraguayan manufactured cigarettes (from the mid- 1990s onwards). These phases suggest the illicit trade was seeded by TTCs, and that the system of supply and demand on lower priced brands they developed in the 1990s created a business opportunity for manufacturing in Paraguay. Brazil's efforts to fight this trade, with a 150% tax on exports to Latin American countries in 1999, further prompted supply of the illicit trade to shift from TTCs to Paraguayan manufacturers. CONCLUSION: This paper extends evidence of the longstanding complicity of TTCs in the illicit trade to this region and the consequent growth of Paraguayan production in the 1990s. Our findings confirm the need to better understand the factors influencing how the illicit tobacco trade has changed over time, in specific regional contexts, and amid tobacco industry globalization. In Paraguay, the changing roles of TTC and domestic production have been central to shifting patterns of illicit supply and distribution since the 1960s. Important questions are raised, in turn, about TTCs efforts to participate as legitimate partners in global efforts to combat the problem, including a leading role in data gathering and analysis.

"We think globally": the rise of Paraguay's Tabacalera del Este as a threat to global tobacco control.

BACKGROUND: Leading transnational tobacco companies (TTCs) began to expand their operations in Latin America in the 1960s. This included legally exporting their cigarettes to Paraguay during the 1960s which, in turn, were illegally re-exported to Argentina and Brazil. By the 1990s, competition between BAT and PMI for this lucrative illicit market, focusing on low-priced brands, prompted manufacturing in Paraguay. Paraguayan manufacturing rapidly grew after the introduction of a new cigarette export tax in Brazil in 1999. METHODS: We systematically searched Truth Tobacco Industry Documents (TTID) to understand the activities and strategies of leading TTCs in Paraguay and subregion over time. We applied the analytical framework of Lee and Eckhardt (2017) to understand Tabesa's global business strategy. We searched the websites of TTCs and Tabesa for activities since the mid 2000s to understand how the companies publicly describe these strategies. We used the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database (UN Comtrade) as an independent source to crosscheck statements by Tabesa executives about export markets. We contextualized and triangulated our findings with 42 key informant interviews. RESULTS: Tabesa became the largest cigarette manufacturer in Paraguay, and one of the largest companies in the country, through complicity in the illicit trade. Enabled by market conditions created by leading TTCs, and a permissive regulatory environment in Paraguay, evidence suggests Tabesa had become a major source of illicit cigarettes across Latin America and beyond by the late 2000s. Although Brazil continues to account for the bulk of Tabesa's revenues, findings suggest that the company is aspiring to compete with TTCs in markets worldwide through legal and illegal sales. CONCLUSION: There is a need for fuller understanding of the risks to global tobacco control from local companies aspiring to compete with TTCs. The rise of Tabesa is part of the changing nature of the illicit trade in tobacco products which must be taken into account in implementing the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and its Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products. Potential conflicts of interest concerning Tabesa illustrate the importance of FCTC Article 5.3 on industry interference. There is also an urgent need to address the lack of independent and rigorous data on the illicit tobacco trade in the region.

The tobacco industry's challenges to standardised packaging: A comparative analysis of issue framing in public relations campaigns in four countries.

Tobacco industry public relations campaigns have played a key role in challenges to standardised cigarette packaging. This paper presents a comparative analysis of industry campaigns in Australia and the United Kingdom, which have implemented standardised packaging legislation; Canada, where policy has been adopted but not yet implemented; and the Netherlands, which has considered, but not enacted regulation. Campaigns were identified via Google searches, tobacco industry websites, media coverage, government submissions and previous research; analysis focused on issue framing and supporting evidence. Public relations campaigns in all case study countries drew on similar frames - the illicit trade in tobacco products, the encroaching 'nanny state', lack of evidence for the effectiveness of standardised packaging, a slippery slope of regulation, and inherent threats to intellectual property rights. These claims were supported by industry research, front groups and commissioned reports by accountancy firms, but were not with verifiable research. Independent evidence that contradicted industry positions was overlooked. Similarities in structure and content of public relations campaigns in countries that have enacted or considered regulation points to a strategic co-ordinated approach by cigarette manufacturers. Countries considering standardised packaging policy can expect powerful opposition from the tobacco industry. Tobacco control communities and policy makers can learn from previous experience, and share best practise in countering industry arguments.

Can internal tobacco industry documents be useful for studying the UK alcohol industry?

BACKGROUND: The release of internal documents now available in the Truth Tobacco Documents Library has offered important insights into the machinations of tobacco companies. These documents potentially offer additional insights into the nature of the alcohol industry, due to co-ownership and collaborative working across industries. This proof of concept study aims to build on the few examples of internal tobacco company documents being used to study alcohol industry activities, to identify the scope of information available on the UK alcohol industry. METHODS: We identified the principal company names of the major national brewers, including predecessor company names, until the late 1990s, contemporaneous to the bulk of the tobacco documents. Using these names as initial search terms, we searched the Library to identify relevant material. Documents returned were then analysed for evidence of alcohol industry connections to the tobacco industry in the UK. RESULTS: We found evidence of significant relationships between the two industries including previously unidentified data on co-ownership and cross industry shareholding; informal help-seeking between sectors; collaboration on issues of common interest; and cross industry ties via third party service providers, membership of common organisations and participation in shared events and platforms. CONCLUSIONS: These findings call for further research to analyse in greater depth the information identified here, and to explore alcohol industry activities and links with tobacco companies in other national contexts. This preliminary investigation suggests there is much valuable data available in the Truth Tobacco Documents Library that can serve to guide research on the alcohol industry.