Philip Gendall, Janet Hoek, J Robert Branston, Richard Edwards, Nick Wilson*

Pricing is one of the most potent influences on consumers’ behaviour. Governments around the world have used this knowledge to implement tobacco excise taxes, which raise the price of tobacco thus reducing tobacco consumption and smoking prevalence. However, tobacco companies have undermined the intended impact of excise taxes by creating new lower-priced brands or brand variants, and by manipulating excise tax increases in their brand pricing. In this blog, we discuss the findings of our just published paper on pricing and changes in the NZ tobacco market during a period of sustained excise tax increases, and explain how minimum pricing could help prevent tobacco companies from undermining measures designed to encourage smoking cessation and discourage smoking uptake.

Image by Tony Hisgett from Creative Commons Continue reading →