Reporter | Wei Xianghui
Edit | Ya Han Xiang
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Following the popularity of Sam Lime on social media last year, beverage brands launched lime flavor products at the beginning of this year. For example, not long ago, the national beverage brand Huiyuan launched a small lime compound juice drink. The small lime juice launched by the new consumer brand Lemon Republic, which is concerned by young people, has also attracted the attention of young consumers. Yonghui's snack self-owned brand Xiao Lime Beverage sold more than 100,000 bottles in one week.
In fact, lime is not new in the beverage industry. Danone's beverage brand Pulse launched the Lime Flavor in 2017. This time, Danone's new first sparkling water brand on China Beverage also has lemon lime flavor. Today's lime is once again popular in the beverage industry, and a new round of iteration is carried out on the basis of the previous taste.
First of all, this is inseparable from the popularity of lemon tea drinking in the past few years.
In 2020, Chinese consumers drank about 280 million cups of lemon tea, and the lemon tea market size is expected to reach 10 billion. Last year, lemon tea became a dark horse in the field of new tea drinking. Xi tea and other head tea brands have launched lemon tea series products, Uncle Qiu, Lemon Season, LINLEE, etc. have successively obtained financing, and the scale of tarts and others has continued to expand. Shortly after the start of this year, harmay, a new beauty retail brand that has just completed $200 million in new financing, has also launched the hand-play lemon tea brand "introlemons", which has opened its first flagship store in Shanghai.
For the beverage category, being able to find the right subdivision track has become the key to getting out of the circle. Kantar's Consumer Insights survey shows that "tastes that consumers like" are ranked second in the core decision factors for buying new products.
Lemon flavor is popular with consumers on the one hand because lemon itself is rich in vitamin C, and health is an important factor that consumers will take into account when making purchase decisions now.
This impression can easily be extended by the brand to promote the taste of small lime, and then reinvent it in combination with the current trend. Slogans such as "juice production, 0 additions" that combine the healthy attributes of lime are very common. Of course, this in itself is a very common marketing phrase for juice drinks, and NFC juice, which came out around 2007, also quickly occupied the high-end market in a similar way.
Secondly, lemon flavor makes people feel fresh and greasy, is an excellent combination in the hot pot, barbecue scene, the white paper shows that up to 63% of lemon tea consumers believe that it can be despicious, suitable for other cuisines. Lime is similar in taste, especially as summer approaches, and a Hunan beverage manufacturer predicted to Interface News, "Lime will be one of the most popular drinks at barbecue stalls this summer." The plant began producing lime juice in January this year and currently sells more than 8,000 bottles.
Of course, a single "good taste" can not meet the full needs of consumers for taste, but also need to have taste iterations. The above-mentioned beverage factory indicates that if the popularity of a taste can last for about two years, it represents the potential to form a larger market size. Counting from last year, this year is the second year of the lime epidemic. For brands of different sizes, they will develop corresponding market strategies according to their respective characteristics.
Small and medium-sized brands, emerging brands and regional brands will create influencer products to occupy new markets in the short term, taking advantage of price, packaging and channels.
For example, the price of small lime drinks in general is often about 6-8 yuan per bottle, and the small lime beverage brands launched by the above beverage factories themselves set the price at 4 yuan per bottle, focusing on their mature third- and fourth-tier cities. Sam's Little Lime initially relied on the recommendation of Douyin, Little Red Book, and the unique mosaic-style outer packaging of the Republic of Lemon, as well as the low-sugar effect, which can allow the market and consumers to recognize the product in a short period of time.
Lemon Republic lime juice
Another type of mature brand expands the brand's market position and influence by creating internet celebrity products.
A typical example of this is Huiyuan, which has just ended up. However, the advantage of such brands is that they rely on mature research and development capabilities to continuously update and iterate tastes to meet the new needs of this year's consumers and continue to seize the customer base. For example, as a niche fruit, since The launch of the domineering jade orange in March, the oil citrus drink has been continuously exploding for more than 4 months, and since then, according to consumer feedback, a low-sugar version of the domineering jade orange has been launched.
However, a popular taste, a large number of brands will inevitably intervene to follow the trend, and the homogenization problem brought about by it is difficult to escape. At present, the small lime flavored drink is also gradually falling into this embarrassing situation. The production and processing cost of small lime is not high, there are a large number of mature OEM factories in China, and OEM production makes it easier for brands to enter the game. When they disseminate their new products through new media, most of them want to increase sales with the help of categories and products, and they will not deliberately promote the brand. So although the little lime is on fire, whether it can kill a truly representative brand has yet to be tested.