Coffin Nails and Corporate Strategies

January 1, 1982

By: Kim S. Cameron, Robert H. Miles

Coffin Nails and Corporate Strategies provides a qualitatively rich comparative case description of how the Big Six tobacco companies reacted to the antismoking campaign triggered by the 1953 Sloan-Kettering report linking smoking to cancer. By taking a 25-year historical view of the events involved in the smoking and health controversy, Robert Miles in collaboration with Kim Cameron examines the range of strategic options used by the Big Six tobacco firms for adapting to this externally imposed crisis, and the relative effectiveness of different adaptation strategies used by the six companies: R. J. Reynolds, Liggett and Myers, American Brands, Lorillard, Brown and Williamson, and Philip Morris. The three parts of the book describe the context of the study, discuss the strategies employed by the firms, and provide an assessment and interpretation of the findings.