The Boundaries of Vape Offline and Online
After November 2019, domestic e-commerce platforms began to remove vape and e-liquid products. After that, if you want to buy vape and e-liquid, you can only buy them through offline brick-and-mortar stores. The online platform prohibits the sale of vape and e-liquid, and the boundaries between online and offline sales are still very controversial.
Now our life is inseparable from the Internet, especially shopping, which has accounted for more than half of our usual shopping. The Internet brings us convenience. It is obviously a tool that can improve various efficiencies in our lives, so even if you buy vape offline Or e-liquid products, we will still use the Internet. Don’t use the Internet as soon as you hear it is like an online platform. In fact, many times it is completely irrelevant. vape products, but this has nothing to do with online sales, so we need to grasp the core problem, which is to sell through the Internet.
Vape and e-liquid are about to be brought under tobacco control, so why is there a problem of blurring the line between offline sales of vape and e-liquid? I think there are two reasons for this. One is that the main sales market for vape and e-liquid is online platforms. It is difficult for both merchants and customers to adapt to offline sales and purchases instantly. The second is vape and e-liquid. Liquid is very different from cigarettes. After cigarettes are sold, there is no after-sales problem (except for counterfeit cigarettes of course), while vape and e-liquid have after-sales. Many merchants provide customers with better after-sales and improve customer stickiness. , may establish a network connection with the customer.
The first reason is relatively easy to solve. Through the improvement of laws and the gradual adaptation of offline purchases, this factor will naturally disappear slowly. The first factor is not so easy to solve. Unless more detailed management details are introduced in the future, this blurred line between online and offline will always exist.
The Internet is an inseparable tool in our lives, and it is also an important tool for businesses to establish contact with customers. Whether it is to promote their own products or to collect customer feedback, relevant network platforms are very important. For example, if we have a new product on the shelves, as a merchant, it is natural that we want to push this information to our customers, and then the merchant will publish relevant information on the platform that establishes a relationship between them.
For another example, when customers complain about improvements and defects when using vape, merchants can collect this information on the online platform and feed them back to manufacturers so that manufacturers can improve their products, which is what other merchants are usually doing.
From the above, it seems that it is not illegal to promote or collect information through online platforms. However, at present, neither merchants nor brands seem to be able to confirm whether this practice is illegal, and its boundaries are blurred.
In terms of sales, it is normal for customers to inquire about the availability of products through the online platform. If the customer is afraid of insufficient inventory, then the customer will place an order first through the online platform, and let the merchant reserve the product, and then go to the entity when they are free. If the store picks up the goods, or if you live far away now and let the merchant mail it, is such an operation illegal? How can this be defined?
Therefore, the boundaries between online and offline vape are currently blurred. Neither merchants nor brand owners are aware of whether their current practices meet the so-called offline requirements. They can only wait for the further implementation of the policy.