Tobacco Asia

tobaccoasia 37 Last October, the 4th China International Electronic Cigarette Expo was held in Beijing, where the visitors were mostly young people. The more novel a product was, the greater the interest. An exhibitor named Mod Fuel said that the buyers of its prod- ucts were almost 100% young people. For a handsome person always trying to make himself stand out, it is quite normal to hold a traditional cigarette playing it cool at a night entertainment venue, but it would be unusual to use e-cigarettes there that no one had heard of. Although e-cigarette shops are emerging in China in a low-profile manner, the po- sitioning of their products is not limited to "abstention of smoking", but more reflects tastes, fashion, and luxury. Operators of these shops are mostly young people and many of them incorporate Vaping as a lifestyle choice. A leader of Kingsong – a Chinese electronic cigarette manufacturer – said, "Some manufacturers are only eager for quick success and instant benefits, and would blindly transplant approaches from overseas markets and duplicate them onto the domestic markets instead of seriously considering the actual demand of local consumers, and would not consider such factors as the purchasing power, the demand for use, the environment for use, the psychological appeal, etc. They have actually led the domestic electronic cigarette markets into a consumption blind zone in the style of entertain- ment markets." Holding a similar point of view, board of directors chairman Liu Qiuming of Huizhou Kimree Technology – which became involved in e-cigarettes in 2006 – told TobaccoChina Online: "In reality, a considerable number of people should not have been our leading customers. If consumers of electronic cigarettes are merely a group of game players or 'new human beings' playing cool, such a situation, I think, would be disadvantageous to the long-term development of the tobacco industry of China." In other countries, a large number of people believe that electronic cigarettes are a substitute for traditional tobacco products. But in China, the people's understanding of e-cigarettes seems to be quite different. E-liquids with all sorts of flavors

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