The globalisation strategies of five Asian tobacco companies: An analytical framework

ABSTRACT

With 30% of the world’s smokers, two million deaths annually from tobacco use, and rising levels of tobacco consumption, the Asian region is recognised as central to the future of global tobacco control. There is less understanding, however, of how Asian tobacco companies with regional and global aspirations are contributing to the global burden of tobacco-related disease and death. This introductory article sets out the background and rationale for this special issue on ‘The Emergence of Asian Tobacco Companies: Implications for Global Health Governance’. The article discusses the core questions to be addressed and presents an analytical framework for assessing the globalisation strategies of Asian tobacco firms. The article also discusses the selection of the five case studies, namely as independent companies in Asia which have demonstrated concerted ambitions to be a major player in the world market.

KEYWORDS:

• Asia
• tobacco control
• globalisation
• tobacco industry
• transnational tobacco companies

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Corrigendum

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Zheng et al. (2014) use data from 21 cohorts spanning countries in East, Southeast and South Asia.

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by the National Cancer Institute, U.S. National Institutes of Health [R01-CA091021]. The authors are solely responsible for the contents of this article.