By Timothy S. Donahue

Top Takeaways:

• Following the journey: Haypp Group says millions of actual transactions can show how nicotine consumers move between products, rather than relying solely on what they remember or report.
• Smoking connection: In Haypp’s UK Path to Pouch study, 70% of established pouch users reported that cigarettes were their first nicotine product after turning 18.
• Messy switching: Marina Murphy said that moving toward lower-risk products is often slow and indirect, with consumers sometimes passing through several products before reaching pouches.

The path from cigarettes to lower-risk nicotine products is rarely a straight one.

Marina Murphy, head of external affairs UK and scientific affairs at Haypp Group, told attendees at the Global Tobacco & Nicotine Forum (GTNF) that millions of real-world purchasing decisions are beginning to paint a clearer picture of how consumers navigate the nicotine market and ultimately arrive at nicotine pouches.

Speaking during the “In Focus: Big Data” session, Murphy said much of traditional research on nicotine use depends on asking consumers what they use, what they previously used, or what they might use in the future.

Transactional data offers something different.

“When you have access to transactional data involving millions of decisions over several years, like we do, this lets us watch the market behave as a system,” Murphy said. “You can see pathways through that market, and you can see how those pathways evolve over real time.”

Haypp is an online retailer specializing largely in noncombustible nicotine products. Because purchases take place online, Murphy said the company can see what consumers actually bought, when they bought it and what they bought next. “We don’t see a recalled transaction,” she said. “We don’t have to ask them what they bought. We can see exactly what they bought.”

Haypp has purchase histories for more than 1.2 million consumers, with roughly 4,000 potential data points per consumer, Murphy said. The company can combine purchase histories with survey data and product characteristics, allowing researchers to examine changes in nicotine strength, flavor, pouch characteristics and purchasing frequency over time.

The data already shows significant changes in mature oral nicotine markets.

Haypp analyzed 19 million anonymized, age-verified purchases of snus and nicotine pouches across seven of its e-commerce sites in Sweden and Norway from 2018 to 2025. In 2018, snus accounted for 95% of purchases by volume on those platforms in Sweden, while nicotine pouches accounted for just 5%. By 2025, pouches had risen to 55%, compared with 45% for snus.

Norway also saw a similar shift. Pouches rose from 22% in 2018 to 56% in 2025, while snus fell from 78% to 44%. In both markets, pouches surpassed snus on Haypp’s platforms in 2024. “We are seeing category transition already happening, at least in these two markets,” Murphy said.

The qualification matters. The results reflect purchases made through Haypp’s e-commerce platforms, not the entire Swedish or Norwegian nicotine markets.

The gender split revealed another notable finding. Women began buying more nicotine pouches than snus on the platforms in 2022, while men continued to purchase more snus than pouches through 2025. “Nicotine pouches appear to be closing a gender gap that snus never seemed to be able to close,” Murphy said.

Haypp is also using its data to address a more important harm-reduction question: Where are pouch users coming from? Its Path to Pouch research combines transactional data with surveys designed to reconstruct consumers’ movement across different nicotine products.

In the UK study, respondents had to be legal-age consumers, use pouches at least weekly, and have pouches account for the highest volume among their three most recent purchases. Researchers then asked about the chronological order in which they had used cigarettes, vaping products, pouches, and other nicotine products.

Murphy was careful about what those results can establish. “They’re not necessarily representative,” she said. “It’s not a population sample, and we’re also talking to people who have already arrived at pouches.”

However, within that group, the cigarette connection was substantial. Seventy percent of the established UK pouch users surveyed reported cigarettes as their first nicotine product since turning 18. Another 19% reported pouches as their first product.

The most common individual pathway was cigarettes to vaping to nicotine pouches, though that route represented only 5% of respondents. The relatively small percentage underscores how varied individual nicotine journeys can be.

“If you take one figure away from this slide today, however, I think it should be the 70%,” Murphy said. “I think it demonstrates that this product, much like what we saw in the U.S., seems to be predominantly used by people who are trying to leave combustibles.”

Preliminary U.S. Path to Pouch data showed a more complex picture. American consumers had more potential starting points, including cigarettes, vaping products, and traditional smokeless tobacco. Murphy said vaping was still the most common product used immediately before pouches, mirroring the UK finding.

Age added another wrinkle.

Among UK pouch consumers ages 19–24, 37% reported cigarettes as their first nicotine product since age 18, and 36% reported vaping. Cigarettes were increasingly likely to be the first nicotine product among older consumers. Murphy cautioned that the study cannot determine what those younger consumers used before adulthood because researchers deliberately asked about behavior starting at age 18.

“It may well be that these people had started on something else prior to this study, prior to them turning 18,” she said.

Youth use also emerged in Haypp’s separate UK nicotine pouch survey. Ninety-two percent of adult respondents reported they had not used nicotine pouches while underage. Murphy cautioned against treating that figure as definitive, noting that adults were being asked retrospectively about behavior they might be reluctant to report. “The 4% may be a floor rather than a ceiling,” she said.

Murphy said the broader data point to nicotine pouches primarily attracting consumers who already have experience with tobacco or nicotine products. But she repeatedly emphasized that more evidence is needed, particularly regarding younger consumers and initiation.

Regarding tobacco harm reduction, she said the emerging picture suggests that switching is occurring, but not necessarily in the simple cigarette-to-alternative progression often imagined. “I think it means that switching is real, but it’s often slow, it’s often indirect, and it often involves many intermediate steps,” Murphy said.

That, she argued, is where understanding the consumer journey is important.

“The big opportunity here for harm reduction is to shorten the path to lower-risk products potentially,” Murphy said. “Shorten the path to pouch and make it easier for smokers to find, try, and switch to those products that better fit their needs.”