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Several years ago, while I was setting up and building out sales and distribution offices for a satellite company in China, Indonesia and India, I was given a briefing on marketing to these emerging giants of the Asian market by several senior executives from a local (Mumbai-based) ad agency.

Now, you would assume that boiling down the buying habits of three billion people is a difficult task - but these guys managed it with aplomb. Their secret? The cigaratte.

Don't like cigarettes? Think they smell toxic and are generally negative contributors to society when it comes to interpersonal gatherings and world health? So do I. But please read on - because what I learned from this presentation is that not only are cigarettes personally addictive, they have created a retail distribution system that is equalling compelling at every level of the value chain.

Consider the beginnings: when a cigaratte manufacturer ships its cigarattes, a non-perishable good, from America or Europe to Asia, it typically uses containers.

• A container can fit an average of 55,511 cartons of cigarettes
• A case typically fits 60 cartons of cigarettes
• A carton of cigarettes contains 10 packets of cigarettes
• A pack of cigarettes contains on average 20 cigarettes

So at one end, you have multiple containers packed with roughly a million bucks worth of cigarettes (55,511 x $20 (avg retail) = $1,110,220) each. They arrive, and the individual cases are then shipped off to subdistributors, who then split the cases into the first retail expression of the cigarette: the carton. The cartons are then further split into packs of cigarettes by the retailer, vending machine operator, etc.

At this point, however, the story goes an additional step further. While the retail chain typically stops at the point of the packet in the First World, in many countries, the retail chain goes much further - to the level of the single cigarette.

Cigarettes are sold individually at stop lights, small shops, movie theaters, bars, on the beach, to the people who cannot afford a pack, but can afford perhaps one to three cigarettes on an individual basis, and are willing to provide the middleman with a slight mark-up for that convenience.

Herein lies the genius of the cigarette distributors: they have come up with a hugely scalebale model. At the other end of the distribution chain is a massive container ship - at the other is a small retail village store, or teenage vendor weaving in and out of traffic, selling a cigarette.