Bottled Water

Some things that beverage companies and distributors had to emphasize in order to convince retailers to carry their products were the following. First, beverage companies and distributors had to convince retailers that water would be a high-demand product with a high turnover rate. Beverage companies and distributorshad to show retailers that consumers’ health awareness was growing and that their consumption of soft drinks would start slowly decreasing, which meant that if retailers did not carry a substitute to these products, lost sales would ensue. In order to convince retailers,beverage companies and distributorsshowed retailers the benefits that bottled water offered consumers (convenience, health and a reasonable price) and all the reasons why consumers would gradually start buying less soft drinks and more water.

Second, bottlers needed to sell their product at a price that would allow retailers to get a higher margin for the product than they made with other competing products such as soft drinks. Since soft drinks also occupy a lot of shelf-space, bottlers needed to show retailers why they believed that bottled water would be a growing category and would end up increasing the retailers’ margins compared to soft drinks. Selling their own private label brand, for example, was an attractive option for large retailers since they could get the water at even lower prices, thus obtaining higher margins.

Finally, beverage companies and distributorshad to help retailers come up with ideas of how to make the most of the store’s capacity. For example, displaying bottled water on the floor at the entrance either inside or outside the store or against the walls at the back of the store were ways of not taking up shelf-space but still offering the product.

Another important way to improve sales is to have consumers understand the benefits and advantages that water brings to their diets. As a measure to boost sales, Britain’s biggest water bottlers (Nestlé, DANONE, Highland Spring, Evian and Buxton) created in 2007 the National Hydration Council (NHC), an industry organization dedicated to researching the science and communicating the facts about natural bottled water. Another important measure taken by this council was to promote campaigns (e.g. DANONE’s “six to eight daily glasses of water”) to increase consumer awareness about the importance and health benefits of drinking water.

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