Bottled water ... marketing companies 2
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Europeans are traditionally keener on natural mineral water than on other types of bottled water. However, spring waters are very successful there. They are considered as safe as natural mineral water while being much cheaper: water from different springs is sold under the same brand, reducing transportation costs.
Multi-spring water is a new and promising strategy for companies in Europe, although this practice is long-established in North America.
In May 2000, Nestl launched its Aquarel spring water; Danone counterattacked with Danonn Water, to be launched by the end of 2000 in two or three European countries.
The same evolution can be noticed for purified water: according to Coca-Cola, there is an existing demand for this type of water in Europe, because of an increasing demand for water safety. Coca-Cola bets on the fact that some springs, now producing mineral or spring water, will have security problems in the long run. Coca-Cola is already selling its BonAquA purified water in 11 Eastern European countries and in Germany.
Companies tend to invest abroad and create local bottling facilities so as to reduce transportation costs, rather than directly exporting the water. With so positive market trends, they can expect to recover their investment and generate profits in a rather short period.
The packaging is an important part of the bottled water marketing success.
All types of bottles coexist and are regularly reshaped in order to better catch consumers' attention. The most recent trends in the small bottles category goes for supposedly handier bottles, e.g. 50cl bottles with a sport-type cap or 1 litre bottles for desk use. Advertising investments and a new PET bottle enabled sales of Badoit to grow by 6% in France (Danone, 2000).
Danone developed in this country a new 1 litre bottle for Volvic and Evian, its two major still natural mineral water brands. Bigger-sized containers also sell very well, in particular 2-litre bottles (e.g.: Danone's Ferrarelle in Italy) and water carboys over 5 litres, for home and office consumption.
In Japan, over 2 million bottles of water are sold through automatic dispensers, which led Danone to design a special bottle for Volvic water to fit to these machines.
Companies, e.g. Perrier, often design special glass bottles for particular events. Evian did so for the winter Olympic games in Albertville (France) in 1992, and has since gone on with a special glass Christmas bottle.
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Bottled water spring and natural mineral water