Text: Win the intelligence station immediately
Last week, we conducted an inventory of new beverage products (2023 TOP 100 new beverage products: COSTA coffee family, fruit ripe, Yuanqi Forest, who else is the new product "top student"?), this week, we will take stock of the ranking of hot categories in the beverage market from December 2022 to November 2023, as well as the outstanding "highlights" of each hot category in the past year.
It should be noted that:
- Based on the dimensions of category commodity sales, category order size, category market share pattern change, and category new product activity in the offline retail monitoring network, we have selected several categories in this year's inventory: soft drink (with sugar), soft drink (sugar), ready-to-drink tea (with sugar), ready-to-drink tea (sugar-free), ready-to-drink tea (sugar-free), ready-to-drink milk tea, sports drinks, and Asian traditional beverages for inventory. Due to limited research capacity, we will conduct observational studies on the categories that were not covered this time in the future;
- In order to more easily see the changes in the share of each beverage business entity (group, company) in various categories in the past year and the highlights of the group's operation, we choose to aggregate by group in the aggregation dimension, and the same group's multi-product brands, multi-SPUs and more SKUs in multiple categories will also be grouped under the single group dimension.
All the data of this year-end inventory are from the offline retail monitoring network, which currently covers hypermarkets, supermarkets, small supermarkets, convenience stores, grocery stores, and in-depth coverage of core urban agglomerations across the country, with a total coverage of more than 60,000 points. At present, the retail database contains more than 300,000 brands on sale, more than 14 million product barcodes, and more than 5 billion orders per year.
Inventory of various categories of TOP groups: soda
The soda category includes carbonated drinks, sparkling water, sparkling water and other forms of products, and "gassing" is their common theme. Consumers' concern about health has led to the overall category of soda being divided into two major factions: sugar soda and diet soda, and we have also divided the overall soda into two categories: sugar and diet soda.
Sugar soda:
Sugar soda has always had a great influence in the Chinese beverage market, among which Coca-Cola and Pepsi are still in the top two with their "fat house happy water" that consumers talk about. But at the same time, the old local sugar soda brands also showed their new and upgraded results with market data performance. Especially under the pressure of the two giants of Coca-Cola and Pepsi, Dayao Soda, which started with the catering channel, has risen to the third place in this year's inventory, and its performance in the retail channel is also remarkable.
Based on the relevant data in the offline retail monitoring network, we found that Dayao Soda, which has been soaring in the catering channel, has placed its strategic focus on the retail channel this year. Specifically, it can be found that Dayao Soda has launched several products suitable for retail circulation channels this year, and the packaging form of its products has also expanded from the original glass bottle that was the main product of the catering channel to a variety of packaging forms of glass bottle + PET + can, which has paved the way for its products to enter the traditional offline retail circulation channels.
In order to present the sales composition of Dayao products in more detail, we have pulled the sales proportion of all products in the Dayao brand in the past six months. The data shows that the top 10 products in the sales proportion of Dayao Group are basically different combinations of Dayao's guest flavor, orange flavor, and lychee flavor, and PET, glass bottle, and canned three packaging forms. In terms of the contrast between tastes, the orange flavor and Dayao's own unique flavor guest flavor have a slight upper hand, while the sales of lychee flavor are relatively less impressive. As a special flavor that is on par with the traditional strong flavor orange flavor, the guest flavor has a bit of mystery in its name. According to the introduction of guest flavor on the official website of Dayao, the unique taste of this Dayao soda realizes the perfect combination of honey, rich fruity aroma and carbonated drinks, which can make bubbles and fruity aroma burst out in the mouth at the same time, bringing consumers a unique taste bud experience.
In addition to the sales composition of Dayao products, the market performance of Dayao soda in various city levels and formats is also another focus of everyone's attention. In order to respond to this concern, based on the relevant data in the offline retail monitoring network, we pulled the market share and changes of Dayao Group in each city level and each channel in the past year from December 2022 to November 2023.
From the perspective of city level, although the performance of Dayao Soda in the fourth-tier cities has fluctuated in the past year, it still far exceeds the market share of other grade cities. Although during the Spring Festival in 2023, Dayao soda's share of carbonated beverages in second-tier cities rose rapidly due to festival consumption, once surpassing its market share in fourth-tier cities, it has since quickly fallen back to a level that is indistinguishable from that of new first-tier cities. In the remaining first-, third- and fifth-tier cities, Dayao soda's share in the carbonated beverage market is basically in the range of 1-2%, with a mediocre performance.
From the perspective of business formats, the main positions of Dayao Soda are currently distributed in hypermarkets, grocery stores and small supermarkets. In addition, it can also be seen that the results of Dayao Soda's efforts in the large supermarket channel are reflected in the changes in market share, unlike the significant fluctuations in the rest of the formats, the market share of its products in the large supermarkets has maintained a relatively sustained rise after experiencing fluctuations in early 2023, and then fell slightly in September 2023. At present, the sales of Dayao soda in convenience stores are quite different from other business formats, which may be related to the characteristics of the overall price band of convenience store products and the high level of gross profit. And judging from its trend in the past year.
Diet soda:
In the diet soda category, the market situation is completely different. It can be seen that the market share of Yuanqi Forest in the category of diet soda has surpassed Pepsi and Coca-Cola, second only to Coca-Cola, and ranks second overall. Combined with the data that the top three have a combined market share of about 64%, Yuanqi Forest currently occupies a relatively stable place in the diet soda category. As a brand that has single-handedly set off a domestic sugar-free sparkling water boom, after experiencing rapid development from 2019 to 2023, Yuanqi Forest sparkling water products have now begun to take shape in terms of market performance and product innovation and richness. Based on the data in the offline retail monitoring network, we simultaneously pulled the market share of the sparkling water sub-category belonging to the soda category, and found that Yuanqi Forest has ranked first in this sub-category with a high concentration.
In further research on the diet soda category, we found that the reason why Yuanqi Forest was able to shake Pepsi's industry position and squeeze into the current two places in the category in just a few years is because its product strength and sales power still have strong competitiveness in sugar-free products, and it continues to grasp the foothold of sugar-free in the soda track for continuous innovation. From the lemon-flavored sparkling water that turned from sweet to sour to the cola-flavored sparkling water that has been made for four years, Yuanqi Forest has never stopped the pace of product development and innovation.
For new products, the performance in the first few months of the market is particularly important to predict the overall performance of the product, and also to see whether the product is worth investing in the long term in the future, and at what magnitude. Based on the core indicators of offline retail such as market share, market rate, and product sales power, the "New Product Horse Race" service compares the new products launched in the same time period, and aligns the data of each new product according to the time from the first to the 12th month of listing (it is no longer regarded as a new product after 1 year of listing), so as to judge the efficiency and growth potential of new products, and find products with strong growth momentum.
As can be seen from the chart of the new product race, among the six new products launched this year by Pepsi, Coca-Cola and Yuanqi Forest, Yuanqi Forest Cola-flavored sparkling water 2.0 suddenly broke out in the third month of its launch, and the overall market performance was better than several other new products studied in the soda category. Although Pepsi Cola's sugar-free raw cola has gained momentum, its subsequent development has been sluggish, and its market share has not increased significantly after the second month of listing. Another noteworthy thing is that although the performance of Genki Forest Lemon Sparkling Water in the early stage of listing was not eye-catching, it was quite accumulating, especially in the sixth month of listing, surpassing Pepsi Sugar-free Raw Coke market share in one fell swoop. Although its market share has declined in the seventh month of listing, its rapid growth trend is still relatively bright in the new products of the entire category research.
In order to better observe the performance of Genki Forest Cola Flavored Sparkling Water 2.0, which is in the leading position among the new products, we selected the monthly market share changes of Genki Forest Cola Flavored Sparkling Water 2.0, which was launched around April this year, and Pepsi Sugar-Free Raw Cola.
Judging from the market share of the two products in the above figure, the advantages of Yuanqi Forest Cola Flavored Sparkling Water 2.0 are more obvious in comparison. Since Yuanqi Forest Cola Flavored Sparkling Water had previously been launched in July last year, the Cola-flavored Sparkling Water 2.0 launched this time is a new and upgraded market, so the product has a certain share base when the product was launched in April; However, according to the market share trend of products covering the whole summer, compared with Pepsi Cola, Yuanqi Forest Cola Flavored Sparkling Water 2.0 can still maintain a relatively stable advantage. It can be seen that although this advantage has shrunk after the weather cooled down in September and the sales of soda products entered the off-season, it still cannot be ignored on the whole.
Inventory of various TOP groups: ready-to-drink tea
Similar to the situation in the soda market, driven by the tide of healthy consumption, the hottest track in 2023 is the sugar-free ready-to-drink tea category represented by Oriental Leaves, Suntory Oolong Tea, Genki Forest Burning Tea, etc. But at the same time, iced black tea, green tea, fruity tea and other traditional sugary teas are still in a very large share of the ready-to-drink tea market, although they are affected by the prevalence of low-sugar consumption concepts. In order to facilitate observation, we also divide the ready-to-drink tea category into sugar-based ready-to-drink tea and sugar-free ready-to-drink tea, and take inventory separately.
Sugar-free ready-to-drink tea:
As the hottest track this year, the fierce competition within the sugar-free ready-to-drink tea market cannot be underestimated. In the top three competition, Nongfu Spring and Suntory unsurprisingly carved up the top two positions, while Yuanqi Forest, which started with burning tea, successfully squeezed into the top three with its influence in the beverage market and its diversification attempts in sugar-free ready-to-drink tea. In the past year, Yuanqi Forest has not only reorganized its own tea product line and upgraded some product lines, but also launched a variety of tea products such as hair tea and barley tea, and tried a variety of product forms in the sugar-free ready-to-drink tea track. Master Kong and Nai Xue's tea ranked fourth and fifth respectively.
After we observed and analyzed the first three brands in this track at a finer granularity, we found that Nongfu Spring and Suntory both launched large-package versions of Oriental Leaf and Suntory Oolong Tea this year. After more and more consumers are Xi using sugar-free ready-to-drink tea as a "water substitute", the top brands in the sugar-free ready-to-drink tea track have launched large-package versions of their large products, and combined with the data on the sales proportion of Suntory Oolong Tea (sugar-free) and Oriental Leaf sugar-free series, it is not difficult to find that this action is quite strategic.
It can be seen that whether it is for Suntory oolong tea or for Oriental leaf sugar-free products, the market trend of large-size products has gradually improved in the past year. This development is particularly evident in the performance of Oriental Leaf's large-format products, which climbed from 0% to about 25% of sales from January to November 2023, and has largely taken the market away from conventional specifications. Although the market trend of Suntory's large-scale oolong tea products is not as smooth as that of Oriental Leaf large-size products, it can also be seen that it has made a sharp increase since October this year, and its market share has increased significantly, and the future trend is worth looking forward to.
Different from Nongfu Spring Oriental Leaf and Suntory Oolong Tea in the sugar-free ready-to-drink tea category, Yuanqi Forest, as the third in the sugar-free ready-to-drink tea category, has adopted a market strategy of diversification with tea base raw materials as the core. According to the data of the offline retail monitoring network, Yuanqi Forest Youfa Tea and Barley Tea are two new sugar-free ready-to-drink teas launched this year, and Burning Tea will also be renovated in 2023, from the original sugar-free sugar-free tea to sugar-free original tea, as well as the herbal sugar-free ready-to-drink tea fiber tea launched last year, with a total of 4 series and about 10 SKUs currently sold in the market.
As can be seen from the chart, in the track of sugar-free ready-to-drink tea, Yuanqi Forest is currently "betting" in four directions, namely sugar-free tea, sugar-free herbal tea, baked grain tea and sugar-free Pu'er tea. We believe that the reason why Yuanqi Forest chose to bet in these four directions is closely related to the needs and preferences of the current sugar-free ready-to-drink tea consumer groups. According to the "2023 White Paper on China's Sugar-free Tea Industry" released by Yiou Think Tank, keywords such as "refreshing and not bitter", "Pu'er" and "water replacement" are very obvious in the current demand of sugar-free tea consumers. From the consumer's point of view, the four sugar-free ready-to-drink tea directions that Yuanqi Forest focuses on seem to fit its urgent needs.
Sugary ready-to-drink tea:
Compared with the popularity of sugar-free ready-to-drink tea, the sugar-based ready-to-drink tea market is greatly affected by the consumption concept of "healthy and low sugar", and is exploring a way to turn under this trend. According to the current market situation, the traditional strong brands in this track, Master Kong and Tongyi still maintain a clear leading position with the support of their iced black tea products, while Nongfu Spring ranks third in the sugary ready-to-drink tea market by virtue of its tea π. In addition, there are not a few groups on the list that rely on large single products to maintain a dominant position in the category, such as Vita International ranked fourth with the blessing of Vita lemon tea, and Xiangpiaopiao also ranked fifth in the market performance of various fruit teas in its new product line of ready-to-drink tea.
In further research on the sugared ready-to-drink tea category, we pulled the top 20 SKUs in the sugared ready-to-drink tea category from December 2022 to November 2023. It should be noted that because there are multiple barcodes in the top 20 SKUs, a total of 15 SKUs entered the list after the merger.
In order to understand the specific composition of the top 20 SKUs, we selected three different dimensions of sweetness, tea and specifications to analyze their composition. From the figure, except for the lemon flavor that has been widely recognized in the market, the other sweetness concepts are currently relatively evenly matched, and we can expect the emergence of the next dominant sweetness concept. The distribution of tea flavor concepts is relatively more concentrated, although black tea occupies the majority with 4 SKUs on the list, but the gap between it and green tea, jasmine, and oolong is not large. In terms of specifications, the 500mL conventional model is still the main specification of the Top SKUs, but the frequency of 1L and 900mL in the Top SKUs is also higher, which shows that the catch-up trend of large-package products is worth paying attention to.
Inventory of various categories of TOP groups: sports drinks
In the sports drink track, the top three groups accounted for 71.89% of the total market share, reflecting the moderate market concentration, among which Yuanqi Forest, Nongfu Spring, and Jianlibao ranked among the top three respectively. As a "dark horse" in the sports drink track in the past two years, Yuanqi Forest's Alien Electrolyte Water has completed a rapid jump in the two years from 2022 to 2023, closely following the selling points such as "susceptibility" and "hydration" of consumers, and is currently at the top of the list. It is worth noting that among the top three brands in the sports drink track in terms of market share, only the electrolyte drink under Yuanqi Forest has electrolytes as the core selling point, while products such as Jianlibao and Nongfu Spring's Scream have electrolytes in terms of ingredients, but they have not adopted the publicity strategy of "focusing on electrolytes". Referring to the reports of relevant media, it is not difficult to find that although they are both sports drinks, there are obvious differences in the performance of different products in the key indicators of electrolyte water such as electrolyte composition and isotonic water in this broadly defined track.
When we expand our focus from the top three to the top 10, we can see that there are more sports drinks with electrolytes as their core selling point. Otsuka Pharmaceutical's Pocari Water, Pepsi-Cola's Gatorade, Dongpeng's Hydration, and Suntory's Water Power have single-handedly opened up a certain territory in the sports drink market for their group, enabling the group to be on the top 10 in the sports drink market share this time. In this sports drink category inventory, we focused on products with electrolytes as the main selling point, and selected three products with strong market performance, Alien Electrolyte Water, Pocari Water and Dongpeng Hydration, to observe whether electrolyte water products can still maintain their position in consumers' shopping decisions after last year's peak.
As shown in the chart, Alien Electrolyte Water and Pocari Water have experienced a brief shock after their high share in December last year, but they still have good market performance in this summer's beverage sales season. It can be seen that although the overall market share of the two has declined significantly compared with the high period, the overall trend has stabilized after a slight recovery. Among them, compared with Pocari Water and Dongpeng Hydration, although the market performance of Alien Electrolyte Water is relatively volatile, its absolute dominant position in the sports drink category is still unshakable. At the same time, as a new face in the sports drink track, although Dongpeng Hydration is a new electrolyte water product launched at the beginning of this year, it is not difficult to find its rapid growth trend in terms of data, and it has even closely followed Pocari Water in terms of market share.
In the comparison of the share of the three products, we can also see the obvious gap between the three. As of November 2023, based on the observation and analysis of Dongpeng Hydration, which has the smallest market share1, Dongpeng Hydration's pursuit of Pocari Water is even more obvious, and there is only a gap of about 20% between the two. However, in terms of comparison with alien electrolyte water, whether it is the rising star Dongpeng Hydration or the standstill Pocari Water, it is difficult to cross such a huge gap in the short term, causing a substantial threat to alien electrolyte water.
Inventory of various TOP groups: ready-to-drink milk tea
At the end of the year, holding a cup of milk tea seems to have become the standard for pedestrians in the streets and alleys, and people at home often open a bottle of ready-to-drink milk tea to accompany the winter. In terms of data, the unification of ready-to-drink milk tea, which once relied on the signature Assam milk tea, is still in a stable position, ranking first in market share, and Master Kong Holdings, which has always competed fiercely with Uni-President, is not to be outdone, and with the help of its unified mirror ready-to-drink milk tea, it has successfully surpassed many brands to rank second. In addition to the competition for the top position of the two "big brothers", there are not a few brands in the ready-to-drink milk tea market that want to sit in the third place. Judging from this year's market situation, Yuanqi Forest Milk Tea has regained its strength after precipitation in recent years, and has won the third place in this year's ready-to-drink milk tea track.
From the perspective of Yuanqi Forest's consistent product focus, its growth in various categories is inseparable from the label of "health", and the same is true in the ready-to-drink milk tea track. As the seed player of Yuanqi Forest in the layout of the ready-to-drink milk tea track, the price of the new 360ml milk tea bottle on the market this year has been reduced from 10 yuan to 6 yuan, and at the same time, it will take "infinitely close to handmade" and "low sugar of the whole series of products" as the core selling point, it is not difficult to see that it is trying to separate the ready-to-drink milk tea from the traditional high-sugar and high-fat impression, and carry out a new round of ready-to-drink milk tea product education for consumers.
For a new product such as Yuanqi Forest New Milk Tea, the new product horse racing products are also used to compare the new products listed in the same time period based on offline retail core indicators such as market share, market coverage rate, and product sales power, and align the data of each new product according to the time from the first to the 12th month of listing (it is no longer regarded as a new product after 1 year of listing) to judge the efficiency and growth potential of new products, and find products with strong growth momentum.
Observing the development of new products in the ready-to-drink milk tea category through market share indicators, we found that Master Kong's Dahongpao milk tea has rapidly increased its market share by relying on the group's strong distribution capabilities. Yuanqi Forest's two new products also developed rapidly in just three months after their launch, and their market share far exceeded that of competing products in the same period in the third month of listing.
Inventory of various categories of TOP groups: Asian traditional beverages
As the concept of health and nature gradually penetrates into the hearts of consumers, some changes have also taken place in the category of traditional Asian beverages that focus on tradition and feelings this year, with herbal tea, sour plum soup and other herbal drinks with cultural characteristics accounting for the majority, and the distribution of this product category is also reflected in the market share ranking. It is not difficult to find that Baiyunshan (Wanglaoji) and Jia Duobao both take herbal tea products as the core, occupying the first and second places, while Dali Food, Master Kong, Xinyuanzhai, Tongyi and other brands on the list in this category rely on their sour plum soup series products.
In such a category ecology, it seems out of place for Yuanqi Forest to appear in this list. In order to find out the reason why Yuanqi Forest can be on the list this time, we conducted a study on the product composition of Yuanqi Forest in the traditional beverage category in Asia, and found that the increase in the market share of Yuanqi Forest in this category mainly depends on its newly released red bean barley, red date and wolfberry series of concept drinks Yuanqi Free Water.
As mentioned above, the products under the category of traditional Asian beverages are basically herbal tea and sour plum soup, while the market share of the rest of the products is relatively small. The red bean barley, red dates and wolfberry beverages of Yuanqi Forest can open up the situation for them in the traditional beverage category in Asia, which also reflects the changing trend of the product composition pattern under this category to a certain extent. Taking red bean barley water as an example, from the perspective of historical origin, red bean barley water has long had a wide edible base among the people. According to the relevant introduction, red bean barley water is a drink made of red beans and barley as raw materials, rich in vitamin E and potassium, magnesium, phosphorus, zinc, selenium and other active ingredients, in the low calorie at the same time, there is also the effect of swelling and dampness, whitening, heat clearing and detoxification. From the perspective of the practice of beverage companies in this product, with the increasing demand of consumers for "natural food supplements" in fast-paced work and life, red bean barley products are also emerging, and the red bean barley product Yuanqi Free Water launched by Yuanqi Forest in early 2023 has also received good market feedback after its launch.
For the traditional beverage category in Asia, the new product race is used to compare the new products launched in the same time period in the category, and each new product is aligned according to the time from the first to the 12th month of the market (it is no longer regarded as a new product after one year of launch), so as to judge the new product launch efficiency and growth potential, and find products with strong growth momentum.
It can be seen that the market share of Tongyi Sour Plum Soup has grown steadily, and the market share of Yuanqi Free Water has increased rapidly after 5 months on the market, opening a significant gap with other new products. On the one hand, the sudden increase may be related to the cooler weather, as well as the high adaptability of red bean barley, red dates and wolfberry drinks to hot drinks; on the other hand, the rapid increase of the product is also a major test for the product strength of the product itself, and the ability to maintain and internalize the share in the rapid increase is the embodiment of its excellent product strength.
Series Conclusion
As the first year of returning to normalcy, all groups and brands in the beverage category have experienced various changes in the market in 2023. Macroscopically speaking, under the trend of economic stability, market competition is shifting from the incremental market to the stock market, and the competitive pressure is increasing invisibly. In the context of several years of mobility restrictions, although consumers have rekindled their enthusiasm for offline physical shopping, this fire has not equally boosted the development of each format, but has opened a gap between various formats, and large and small formats have their own development and trends.
While everything is changing, the original intention of creating better products that consumers want, recognise and do not change for the group and the brand. With the arrival of the end of the year, the annual CNY double festival marketing season will also kick off the marketing activities in 2024, and Win Now will also continue to pay attention to the beverage consumption market in the new year of 2024 based on the relevant data in the offline retail monitoring network.