E-cigarettes are marketing’s new frontier

White Cloud Electronic Cigarettes has signed a research partnership agreement with the University of South Florida’s (USF) marketing department under which researchers will look at the reasons why some consumers are opting for e-cigarettes rather than tobacco cigarettes.

The research will be conducted by USF’s College of Business and will encompass both qualitative and quantitative consumer studies via focus groups, interviews and surveys of adult smokers.

The project team at USF includes professor Paul Solomon, Carol Osborne and Dr. Anand Kumar, associate professor and chair of the marketing department. The faculty team’s research interests cover areas such as brand strategies, marketing communications’ effectiveness and consumer reactions to new technology products and services.

“From a marketing researcher’s perspective, this is an interesting time in the life of a product,” said Kumar.

“The e-cigarette product category is seeing an explosive growth right now.

“It is not clear whether this growth is the result of rapid adoption by innovators and early adopters that might soon level off or whether there is more widespread adoption by smokers.

“There is a lot of interest in understanding consumer motivations underlying adoption of this product and limited research that has been carried out on this aspect of the e-cigarette marketplace.”