It's the hot summer, and the peak season for drinks has arrived.
China is one of the world's largest soft drink markets. However, due to the decline in the total number of beverage consumers, and the gap between per capita beverage production and Japan has been significantly narrowed compared with more than a decade ago, the growth rate of beverage sales in China has slowed down.
According to the Frost & Sullivan report, the size of China's soft drink market in 2019 was 991.4 billion yuan in terms of retail sales, and the compound annual growth rate is expected to remain at 5.9% in 2019-2024.
In the beverage category, China's beverage market pattern has changed from carbonic acid to diversified parallelism. Carbonated beverages have become a pioneer category in the development of the soft drink industry around the world because of their unique taste and convenient industrial production, and with the progress of production technology and the improvement of consumer health demands, the market growth rate is amazing with the sparkling water with the same refreshing taste as carbonated beverages.
Kantar Consumer Index Household Consumption Sample Data shows that in 2019, the consumption of sparkling water in the Chinese market increased by 43.9% year-on-year. Forward-looking data also shows that the overall domestic sparkling water market size in 2019 is about 15 billion yuan, and it is expected to reach 40 billion yuan in 2025.
In fact, in 2021, "bubble +" has ushered in a big outbreak in the beverage market.
The beverage industry is also facing an innovation around the "bubble +" concept. Since 2020, not only emerging brands such as Yuanqi Forest have grown rapidly, but well-known brand enterprises such as Coca-Cola, Nongfu Spring, Pepsi Cola, Tsingtao Beer, Pulse, Vita Lemon Tea, and New Hope have all approached the consumer needs of young people with their "bubble +" beverage products.
With the improvement of people's health awareness, beverage consumption has gradually moved in the direction of both functional and tasteful, especially the current young consumer group, in the pursuit of health and also need sensory pleasure.
In this context, the popularity of highly compatible sparkling water is obviously deserved, and with juices, wine, and even coffee, more possibilities have emerged in the beverage industry.
Sparkling water is highly compatible and can be paired with other beverages, such as juice, wine, coffee and even coconut water, and there are many more possibilities. In the future, sparkling water may be innovatively increased from a functional point of view to improve product differentiation.
The herbal tea industry obviously can't sit still and takes the lead in the concept of "bubble +". Recently, the herbal tea brand and its new products are launching - and its positive bubble herbal tea, with the "herbal tea + bubble" differentiated selling point into the beverage market.
It is not difficult to see from the positive action that the herbal tea industry is trying to change the market's perception of traditional herbal tea through product innovation, and try to better communicate with young consumer groups such as post-90s and post-00s through innovation in herbal tea development.
The detonation of the concept of "bubble +" shows the underlying logic of the current transformation of the beverage consumer market.
A few years ago, Yuanqi Forest broke into the beverage industry with the attitude of "crossover", and the marketing method with Internet thinking heated up the concept of "bubble +", driving the market trend in the new era. Big factories have followed up, stirring up the "boiling" "bubble +" market.
Chinese food industry analyst Zhu Danpeng has previously said that after the epidemic, "pleasure" and "health" are undoubtedly the most important keywords in the competition in the beverage market this year.
If you can combine the taste experience and health needs, and cut into the new scenes and new habits of young people drinking drinks, you will have the opportunity to become the first "white horse" in the beverage market this year.
Not willing to be mediocre and not satisfied with the status quo, the younger generation of consumers after 90 and 00 even pursue sensory stimulation and pleasure more than the previous generation of consumers.
Carbonated beverage products are beverages filled with gas under certain conditions, which are added with carbon dioxide or phosphoric acid that can produce foam and stimulate taste, and after drinking, they produce a pleasant taste, which was popular around the world in the 20th century.
But now, with the rise of mass consumption upgrades and health waves, the attractiveness of traditional carbonated beverages for a new generation of consumer groups is declining.
Indeed, from a scientific point of view, many carbonated drinks once contained high sucrose components, which could easily lead to obesity and cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, and also caused problems such as caries. And some carbonated drinks add gas for phosphoric acid, long-term drinking will cause the loss of body calcium, resulting in osteoporosis and other health problems.
However, the sensory stimulation brought by bubbles is irreplaceable by other beverages, so that the main zero sugar, zero fat, good taste of sparkling water gradually entered the consumer's field of vision.
Nielsen data shows that the existing sparkling water market in China has exceeded 20 billion yuan, and the growth has far exceeded expectations. In particular, 0 sugar sparkling water meets the health needs of young people, and the choice of differentiated tastes has also attracted the love of different consumers. Obviously, in the choice of young people, although they will not give up the taste demand, at the same time, young people also have a higher demand for health.
In the case of fresh consumer pain points, the beverage industry is completing a business transformation.
Specifically, products with health attributes will be favored by the consumer market on the basis of satisfying the sensory taste.
Many beverage companies have seen this feature and injected the "bubble +" concept to seek a new track breakthrough.
In this context and it is the first to test the water, the launch and its positive bubble herbal tea, in the innovative form of "herbal tea + bubbles" to give herbal tea a more youthful consumption experience, and the main herbal tea plus steam will be a Coke concept with Chinese characteristics, the bubble herbal tea will become a new product category in the herbal tea industry.
In fact, the industry believes that as an original functional beverage category, the herbal tea industry has a first-mover advantage in the competition for new consumer markets.
The health significance of herbal tea has long been recognized at the consumer end.
It is understood that and its herbal tea is derived from the traditional formula, selected plant raw materials, three flowers, three grasses and one leaf, with a good anti-fire effect.
In order to ensure the health effect of herbal tea, and its positive bubble herbal tea using traditional formula, selected plant raw materials, three flowers and three grasses and one leaf, the unique Chinese herbal medicine is now boiling and extracting patented technology, using Chinese herbal raw material production line on-site boiling, extraction and filling process, to the greatest extent to ensure the nutritional composition of raw materials, drinking effect is better.
It is worth pointing out that its positive bubble herbal tea uses Chinese herbal material boiling extraction technology to complete product processing, from raw material cleaning to canning only 2 hours, is the only herbal tea enterprise in the industry that can complete the can in a short period of time.
Imagine that in the hot summer, a cup of heat-quenching herbal tea is already very refreshing, coupled with the refreshing bubbles of physical and mental pleasure, consumers get a physical health experience at the same time, but also get the senses of coolness.
It is understood that the bubble herbal tea that it is launching this time adds carbon dioxide, which changes the taste of traditional herbal tea, but also retains the effect of its positive herbal tea.
At the same time, the choice of non-phosphoric acid bubbles with its positive bubble herbal tea eliminates the loss of calcium in the body due to the addition of phosphoric acid to traditional carbonated beverages and long-term consumption by consumers, resulting in harmful health problems such as osteoporosis. The addition of phosphoric acid-free bubbles can not only avoid calcium loss, but also satisfy the consumer's stimulating taste when drinking.
On the one hand, in the taste of the young people's favor, on the other hand, to maintain the traditional herbal tea should be healthy, and it is finding a good sense of balance between the two, and truly with a new format model to successfully card the young market.
This time and its launch of bubble herbal tea, while expanding the growth space of herbal tea category, it has also opened up a new track in the industry. Bubble herbal tea can not only benchmark cola in terms of taste, meet the young consumer group's love for the refreshing taste of carbonated beverages, but also as a bubble drink, it also fits the new trend of the market demand for sparkling water.
The industry believes that the new bubble herbal tea products have changed the taste of traditional herbal tea by adding bubbles, improved the drinking experience of consumers, given them the fashion elements of the current trend of drinks, and brought freshness to old products while invisibly broadening the consumption scene of products.
More diversified, everyday, and leisure multiple scenarios provide invisible advantages for the popularity and growth of products. It can be said that the new category of bubble herbal tea has opened up a new track.
With the post-90s and post-00s gradually becoming the main consumer groups in the beverage market, how to seize the needs of young people in the "Z era" with innovation has been a topic that cannot be avoided by the current beverage companies.
The emergence of new demand has brought huge market dividends to the beverage market, but also brought many challenges. In the face of the increasingly complex and changeable consumer demand of a new generation of consumer groups, enterprises must constantly think about new development paths and seek differentiated development.
In this regard, and its positive thinking is to drive the transformation of the industry with innovation.
All along, he has been positioned as an "herbal tea innovation expert". Taking the development of hezheng herbal tea as an example, from the early pioneering PET bottled herbal tea to the current exclusive patented technology of boiling extraction, it is inseparable from its strong ability to develop and innovate.
The research and development of Chinese herbal materials with independent intellectual property rights is the best proof of the extraction process, which greatly retains the active ingredients of plant herbs.
Behind its positive innovation and development, it is inseparable from the strong support of its parent company, Dali Food Group. As a national-level leisure food and beverage brand, Dali Food Group is known as the "Chinese version of Nestlé", its industrial layout of leisure food and ready-to-drink beverages, including Dali Garden, Kebik, Doubendou, Lehu, and Qizheng, including a number of well-known domestic brands.
In recent years, Dali Food Group has focused on the strategy of high-end promotion, health and rejuvenation, and "innovation" is the key word throughout.
The innovation of product categories has promoted the development of the industry, and the spirit of enterprise innovation can truly lead the industry evergreen, in this sense, Dali Food and its positive innovation road provide a reference for the industry.
In the view of Dali Food, in recent years, with the continuous upgrading of consumer demand, there have been more and more diversified, subdivided and personalized consumer demands, and product categories have gradually subdivided, and the consumer industry has begun to appear "fast fashion" trend.
In order to meet the market demand faster and open up new market areas with innovative products, research and development technology has gradually become the core competitiveness of enterprise development.
In fact, the current Chinese beverage industry is ushering in a new round of awakening, from the former products to follow, homogenization is serious, brands have to fall into the Red Sea competition. To the innovation of product categories and business models, Chinese beverages are constantly abandoning the inherent model and walking out of a different development path.
Innovation is the original driving force of this round of industry transformation, at this stage, enterprises should be truly user-oriented, with a more thorough industrial revolution, to solve consumer pain points.