Vape Shops: The E-cigarette marketplace

Subculture wars: The struggle for the vape industry

Drawing on a 2-year study, I argue that the UK vape industry is engaged in a classificatory struggle between a subcultural industry and its "other", the mainstream industry. I build on Thornton's analysis of club culture to characterize the subcultural vape industry as a community of taste built round a masculine aesthetic and a commitment to authenticity and DIY practice. Its attachment to complex systems and masculine spaces risked excluding customers without specialist knowledge or interest. The mainstream industry included tobacco companies which promoted vaping as a complementary category to smoking, linking their own vaping products to historic meanings of the cigarette as a lifestyle product. This task was hampered by the toxic legacy of combusted tobacco and its increasing reversion to a generic category rather than a branded product. Finally, the success of the price-focused vaping industry has been largely overlooked, but suggests that for most consumers, electronic cigarettes are still a contrasting category to combusted tobacco and are purchased largely on price. I conclude that the exclusion of a feminized, classed "other" is a defining element of subcultural formation, itself an overwhelmingly male mechanism of group identity construction.

What are the reasons that smokers reject ENDS? A national probability survey of U.S. Adult smokers, 2017-2018

BACKGROUND

The objective was to examine the reasons smokers have discontinued or chosen not to use electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS).

METHODS

Data were obtained from a national probability sample of 1843 US adult current smokers who were not current ENDS users pooled from the 2017 and 2018 annual, cross-sectional Tobacco Products and Risk Perceptions Surveys. Participants reported their ENDS use, reasons for discontinuing or not initiating ENDS use, quit smoking intentions, perceptions, and use intentions. Weighted proportions and logistic regression models were estimated.

RESULTS

Twenty-three percent of smokers were former ENDS users who reported prior "regular use", and 7.5% were former ENDS users who reported regular use. Three most cited reasons for discontinuing ENDS were: ENDS "didn't feel like smoking" (23%), "only ever tried them to see what they were like" (20%), and "didn't help me deal with cravings for smoking" (14%). Reasons for discontinuing ENDS were associated with the regularity of former ENDS use and ENDS type. Nearly 40% of current smokers had not tried ENDS with the most commonly cited reasons being not wanting to substitute one addiction for another (60%), concerns about their safety (53%), skepticism that ENDS could help them quit smoking (52%), and cost (43%). Reasons were associated with smoking quit intentions, harm perceptions, and age.

CONCLUSION

Whereas smokers who had formerly used ENDS cited inadequate craving reduction or incomparability to smoking for their discontinuation, the larger segment of smokers who have never used ENDS cited "safety," "effectiveness," and "costs" as reasons for non-use.

A new form of nicotine retailers: a systematic review of the sales and marketing practices of vape shops

OBJECTIVE

Retailers that primarily or exclusively sell electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) or vaping products represent a new category of tobacco retailer. We sought to identify (a) how vape shops can be identified and (b) sales and marketing practices of vape shops.

DATA SOURCES

A medical librarian iteratively developed a search strategy and in February 2017 searched seven academic databases (ABI/INFORM Complete, ECONLit, Embase, Entrepreneurship, PsycINFO, PubMed/MEDLINE and Scopus). We hand searched Tobacco Regulatory Science and Tobacco Prevention & Cessation.

STUDY SELECTION

We used dual, independent screening. Records were eligible if published in 2010 or later, were peer-reviewed journal articles and focused on vape shops.

DATA EXTRACTION

We used dual, independent data abstraction and assessed risk of bias. Of the 3605 records identified, 22 were included.

DATA SYNTHESIS

We conducted a narrative systematic review. Researchers relied heavily on Yelp to identify vape shops. Vape shop owners use innovative marketing strategies that sometimes diverge from those of traditional tobacco retailers. Vape shop staff believe strongly that their products are effective harm-reduction products. Vape shops were more common in areas with more White residents.

CONCLUSIONS

Vape shops represent a new type of retailer for tobacco products. Vape shops have potential to promote e-cigarettes for smoking cessation but also sometimes provide inaccurate information and mislabelled products. Given their spatial patterning, vape shops may perpetuate inequities in tobacco use. The growing literature on vape shops is complicated by researchers using different definitions of vape shops (eg, exclusively selling e-cigarettes vs also selling traditional tobacco products).