This summer Philip Morris, which supplies about half of America''s cigarettes with its Marlboro, Benson & Hedges, Merit, Virginia Slims, Parliament and Basic brands, introduced the Accord battery-powered cigarette, a pricey gadget that reduces sidestream smoke, ashes and most lingering odor. For $40, consumers get a carton of specially made cigarettes, a battery charger, an instructional video and a "puff-activated" electronic lighter that holds the cigarette and allows smokers to wait hours between puffs. Since Accord burns at a lower temperature than normal cigarettes, it could introduce fewer harmful chemicals to the body, but the packaging currently does not make health claims. The high-tech smoke is not blowing their socks off, spokespeople say, but they plan to keep working on it and expanding awareness through direct-mail of the product, which has been five years and over $200 million in the making.A reduced-smoke cigarette is also in the works for B&W, a company representative said, but additional details were not available at press time.

Driving his and other retailers'' decisions are incentives given for top brands like Marlboro, with its dominant 38% market share in the first quarter, per company figures. Those who don''t receive some of the lucrative buydowns and promotions risk seeing consumers flock to participating stores where the brand is cheaper.A similar phenomenon is occurring with RJR''s Everyday Low Pricing program. EDLP stipulates that retailers stock a Reynolds deep discount brand, like Best Value or Monarch, and ensure that no other cigarette in the store will undercut its price. Doing so earns participants an extra dollar buydown on Doral, the branded savings smoke whose market share fell 0.5% to 6.2% last year thanks to cheaper, deep-discount brands, also dubbed "fourth-tier" cigarettes because they rank below private-label, branded savings and full-priced premium smokes.Fourth-tier cigarette producers, particularly foreign manufacturers not subject to huge MSA outlays, are discounted as low as $16 a carton, versus $21 a carton for branded savings cigarettes. While premium brands were able to boost market share slightly to 74.2% last year, branded savings cigarettes--including B&W''s GPC, RJR''s Doral and Philip Morris'' Basic--slid as consumers traded down to the cheaper alternatives.

Cigarette makers also invested in the desires of current smokers. According to the Attitudes and Behaviors Related to Smoking Cessation survey, conducted by SmithKline Beecham Consumer Healthcare, 53 percent of smokers are puffing non-regular cigarettes, hoping these light, low-tar and ultra-light varieties will satisfy their desire to smoke while doing less physical damage.Last year, R.J. Reynolds, which controls about one-quarter of the U.S. cigarette market, with its Winston, Camel, Salem, Doral, Monarch and Best brands, released the Eclipse reduced-smoke cigarette to select markets in Georgia, Nebraska and Tennessee, hoping to generate excitement for an as-yet untapped niche. The product, which took 10 years and about a billion dollars to develop, has not lived up to expectations, though, representatives said. Eclipse features a carbon tip, which produces less-lingering, lower-tar smoke, but consumers have found it difficult to light and puff despite instructions printed on the packaging. In addition, marketers have faced the difficulty of pitching the product without badmouthing its core commodity-regular cigarettes.

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