When a product offers consumers convenience, value, variety, and accessibility, it’s likely to become increasingly popular. In the modern era of cannabis, these products are disposable vapes. The vaporizing category is quickly evolving, with nearly every 510 cartridge brand, offering or exploring the possibility of offering a disposable vaporizer SKU.
So, just why are single-use vape pens taking over the market and how can your brand pivot to meet demand? Keep reading to learn all the latest on disposable THC vapes, including the most recent sale statistics, the factors driving consumers to buy, tech advancements, and more.
Current Popularity Of Disposable Vapes
In legalized markets, it’s hard to go into public without seeing someone using their disposable vape. With most Americans living in a state with legal weed – and at least one dispensary in their counties – cannabis use continues to rise. As does the popularity of disposable vapes.
From the most recent sale statistics, BDSA shows 32% of vape consumers reported using disposable vapes in the last six months, a 25% increase from spring 2020. Beyond that, 17% of the vape consumer group stated that they prefer disposable vapes, a 9% increase from spring 2020.
So, what’s driving the popularity and sales of disposable vapes? Let’s get into the minds of consumers, and review the reasons behind their purchases.
Why Are Disposable Vaporizers Popular?
If you’re not a regular vape consumer yourself, you might wonder – why are disposable vaporizers so popular? Luckily, the same recent research on vape consumers also explored the reasoning behind their purchases. The responses for the top factors were as follows –
- Ease of use – 57%
- Portability/convenience – 41%
- Discreetness – 36%
- Taste/flavor options” – 28%
To understand each desire more in-depth, we’ll break them down next.
Convenience
Disposable vaporizers are an all-in-one device. With just a push of a button or a draw of the breath, consumers are just a moment away from the puffs they crave. Even more, disposable vaporizers are often compact, making them easier to carry and transport compared to 510 thread cartridges connected to a battery.
Another convenient factor of single-use vape pens is that they require little to no maintenance. Some consumers may be done with the product before the device even needs charging. If not, charging is typically done with universal chargers, making it that much more convenient. Lastly, unlike vape batteries, disposable vaporizers won’t need periodic cleaning to ensure a good connection between the device and the cart.
Variety & Choice
Single-use vape pens also offer consumers variety and choice. Not just in strains, effects, or flavors, but extract types, too. Today, disposable vapes are compatible with a variety of extracts, such as distillate, live resin, and live rosin. This offers consumers a wide variety of quality, potencies, and prices.
In addition to shopping for a variety of extract types, consumers can also choose from indica, sativa, or hybrid varieties, flavored or specialty terpene-infused varieties, and strain-specific varieties. These types of options offer consumers a wide variety of flavors and effects to choose from.
Accessibility
Disposable vapes are accessible in two different ways. For one, they’re widely produced, meaning you can find them across the US at adult-use or medical-use retail storefronts, or online, too. Secondly, their low odor and convenience make them highly accessible for consumers to use on the go. Since disposable THC vapes are compact and discrete, they’re easy for consumers to access and take a quick puff when they need it.
Disposable Vaporizer Tech Advancements
Like any product, over the years, disposable vapes have undergone technological advancements. For consumers, that means some single-use vape pens have improved their heating elements, temperature controls, or other mechanics for improved experiences. Now, many disposable vaporizers feature automatic draws, offer longer battery life, universal charging capabilities, etc.
For operators, how disposable vaporizers are filled has advanced greatly since their emergence on the scene. That includes the implementation of fully automatic (or semi-automatic) vape cartridges and disposable vape filling machines. These advanced machines, like the Vape-Jet, take the manual labor out of filing individual carts, highly optimizing their operations.
These advancements allow operators to –
- Save time without a loading jig – Vape-Jet’s machine vision alignment system can automatically fill carts as shipped in vertically packaged foam trays. Simply unbox the cartridges, place the foam tray into the Vape-Jet, and start filling.
- Fill precisely – Operators can reduce product loss and protect customer satisfaction, by preventing overfilling, and underfilling with Vape-Jet’s pharmaceutical pump and software-based guided calibration procedures.
- Preserve product – As you may or may not know, cannabis plant compounds are delicate and can be volatile. Technological advancements like the 3 individual heat zones and a nitrogen-pressurized fluid path found in Vape-Jet can help preserve the precious parts of the extract, consumers desire and demand.
- Adapt to product types – Remember when we mentioned how many varying types of extract products are found in disposable vapes? Advancing equipment like Vape-Jet, allows operations to adapt to these ever-evolving extracts with built-in configuration profiles and flexible automation.
- Automatically and quickly clean – The Vape-Jet’s advanced cleaning wizard will get the machine clean, and dry for a new batch with a few clicks. The full cleanup process takes less than 10 minutes and is almost entirely automated.
Altogether, disposable vape-filling machines like Vape-Jet provide the industry with an advancement for efficient manufacturing while helping to provide a quality experience for the consumer.
Who Uses Single-Use Vape Pens?
To answer the question, “Who uses single-use vape pens?” number-wise, an exponentially growing group. A recent analysis of 17 national studies showed that past-month use of cannabis vaping increased 5-fold from 1.6% in 2013–2016 to 8.4% in 2019–2020.
When it comes to which consumer audiences use single-use vape pens, a clear trend is becoming evident. According to recent data from Headset, the younger cannabis community prefers disposable vaporizers to those of other ages. The data reports that Gen Z and Millennials make up 62.8% of all US cannabis sales and 70.8% of all vape pen sales.
Disposable vaporizers are also popular among beginner consumers. This is due to their straightforward design, simplicity of use, and the fact that they require no additional equipment to operate.
On the flip side, because disposable vapes cause high amounts of waste, consumers who don’t prioritize sustainability are big users of the products. More sustainable-conscious consumers will opt for a pod system to reduce their overall amount of waste.
Final Thoughts On Why Disposable Vapes Are Taking Over The Market
With advancements across all industries, it’s easy to see – consumers desire technologically advanced, convenient, and accessible products. Hence the popularity of disposable THC vapes. However, when it comes to their disposable vape products – they also desire a quality and flavor-forward experience.
To succeed in the highly competitive market of cannabis, brands should take their vape-filling game seriously. Especially considering the type of equipment they use, or the quality of it, can affect their vape’s end-result in flavor and potency.
Explore Vape-Jet’s fully automatic or semi-automatic disposable vape-filling machine or our entire collection of automated equipment for advanced extractors. Learn more about the Vape-Jet team or dive even deeper into disposable vaporizer education with more blogs now.