On February 27th in Seoul, South Korea, BAT (British American Tobacco) launched a user experience event at its Glostudio pop-up shop to promote its new heat-not-burn product called "Glo Hyper X2". This comes after three months of local Korean brand KT&G and global tobacco giant Philip Morris International (PMI) releasing their own heat-not-burn products in the Korean market, all competing to gain market share.
According to recent data released by consulting firm Euromonitor, the heated non-burning market in South Korea has been dominated by PMI, BAT, and KT&G since 2018.
Between 2018 and 2022, PMI's market share has declined year by year, dropping from 73% to 44%.
As a local brand, KT&G's market share has gradually shown its advantage, increasing from 19% to 44% annually and being on par with PMI's market share.
After slowly increasing market share from 7% to 13% in 2021, BAT declined by 11% in 2022.
BAT has launched the "Glo Hyper X2" at a price of 40,000 Korean won (approximately CNY 218) in an effort to expand its market share by undercutting competitors such as IQOS ILUMMA ONE at 69,000 Korean won (approximately CNY 363.63) and KT&G's lil AIBLE on sale for 99,000 Korean won (approximately CNY 531). The move shows BAT's aggressive intent to increase its market presence through a low-cost competition strategy.
The market share of three major companies in the electronic cigarette industry/Image source: Bizwatch.
According to data from Euromonitor, in 2017, the tobacco-based electronic cigarette market in South Korea was only 359.7 billion Korean won (approximately 1.9 billion yuan). However, it rapidly grew to 1.815 trillion Korean won (approximately 9.6 billion yuan) last year. It is expected to further expand to 2.5 trillion Korean won (approximately 13.25 billion yuan) by 2025.
South Korean electronic cigarette market forecast | Image: Bizwatch
References:
Is the e-cigarette a new Three Kingdoms? ... Reasons for its 'alliance' upon closer inspection.
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