What Will Philip Morris Do After Cigarettes?

Credit: AP Photo/Gerry Broome

What does the largest cigarette supplier supply besides cigarettes?

Phillip Morris has a long history of being one of the world’s premiere suppliers of cigarettes and other tobacco products. The company is currently trying to wean away from a reliance on global cigarette sales, much to many onlookers disbelief. People may be understandably skeptical of Phillip Morris’s intentions, so what would Phillip Morris look like without cigarettes?

After over a century of spreading the habit of smoking around the world with the help of some of the most iconic brands in marketing history, Phillip Morris claims to be working towards a “smoke-free” future. These stated efforts come at a time when smoking is becoming very unpopular in the west, the home of Phillip Morris. At the same time, Phillip Morris has been marketing much more passionately in other countries, particularly third world countries that are lax on regulations. Phillip Morris’s newest market has become countries like Indonesia, which lack the high “sin taxes” of the west, and where children as young as 12 can be regularly spotted smoking on the street. This is all taking place while Phillip Morris still makes about 90% of its revenue from cigarette sales.

To move on from cigarette sales, Phillip Morris has announced a shift towards smoke-free products. The first thing the company is doing is making the sensible shift towards selling products like their IQOS vaporizer. In the world of tobacco, alternatives to smoked products like cigarettes and cigars are becoming increasingly popular as regulators push for higher taxes on cigarettes throughout the developed world. Whether or not this change will define Phillip Morris’s future is still up to them and up to the market. While the moves towards smoke-free products make sense and possibly seem highly realistic to a western reader, this shift looks like it’ll come much slower when you look at global tobacco statistics.

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5 years ago