Click to read the original article for details. In the 2019 China Brand Footprint Report just released by Kantar Worldpanel, Coca-Cola unexpectedly became the brand with the largest increase in consumer reach points, breaking the dominance of Chinese brands in the fastest-growing brand rankings that had been held for several consecutive years. (In both 2018 and 2017, Nongfu Spring ranked first in growth, and among the top ten, there was only one foreign brand each year: Yakult ranked 6th in 2018, and Lay's ranked 10th in 2017.) Once, people believed that as consumers became more health-conscious, carbonated drinks like cola would decline. So who gave Coca-Cola such strong growth? Is it because there are more happy fat guys? Brand Footprint Growth Kantar Worldpanel's Brand Footprint report is an annual report covering 49 countries and regions across five continents, encompassing 21,400 brands, representing 72% of the global population and 85% of global GDP. The ranking is based on real consumer behavior—Consumer Reach Points (CRPs). This metric measures how many households purchased a brand (penetration) and how frequently they purchased it (purchase frequency), truly representing consumer choice. In this year's report, the top ten brands by consumer choice are still dominated by Chinese brands: Yili and Mengniu remain brands with over 1 billion consumer choices; Master Kong ranks third. However, surprisingly, Coca-Cola (referring only to Coca-Cola soda), jokingly called "happy fat guy water" by Chinese consumers, jumped to become the brand with the fastest growth in consumer reach points. By analyzing the data, we can see that more consumers chose Coca-Cola mainly for two reasons:

  • More consumers purchased sugar-free Coca-Cola and the newly launched Coca-Cola Fiber+ products;
  • The growth of smaller-pack traditional Coca-Cola products (below 500ml) exceeded the decline of traditional large-pack Coca-Cola (800ml and above). "Overall, the carbonated beverage category has been recovering since last year. The main reason is that major brands have adopted a small-bottle strategy, better catering to the 'fragmentation' trend of consumption scenarios, " said Wang Yucheng, Senior Account Director at Kantar Worldpanel. "The 'fragmentation' of beverage consumption scenarios means that consumers no longer need to drink large quantities of the same beverage in one scenario, but rather need to drink small amounts frequently across multiple scenarios." "In addition, small-pack Coca-Cola helped attract more new consumers, because these consumers believe that small-pack cola can control intake and won't add too much burden to the body, " he said. "Furthermore, although many new brands emerged in the carbonated beverage category last year, such as Watson's, Arctic Ocean, Ice Bee, Genki Forest, and Hankou No.2 Factory, they are quite different from the cola subcategory, and did not divert consumption from cola-type beverages, " he added. Implications for Brands There are no sunset categories, only sunset brands. Coca-Cola's success is not impossible to replicate. If there are lessons for other brands, we can summarize them into the following four points:
  • 1. Understand changes in consumer lifestyle habits and make targeted adjustments to existing product strategies. The most severe decline in cola products is in large plastic bottles (2L and above), because the main consumption scenario for large-pack cola is family or restaurant gatherings. However, with the miniaturization of families, the rise of work meals and eating alone, and consumers' increasing demand for personalized beverages with meals, the scenario of sharing a large bottle of cola at a table is becoming rarer. Therefore, instead of futilely trying to reverse the decline of large-pack beverages, it is better to go with the flow and launch small-format products that are more suitable for personalized and fragmented consumption scenarios;
  • 2. Pay attention to consumers' potential emerging needs and launch new products that suit them. Sugar-free Coca-Cola and Fiber+ cola both cater to consumers' demand for reducing calorie intake;
  • 3. Premiumization remains one of the most important trends in China's FMCG industry. Consumers care a lot about whether new products can provide benefits relevant to them, and relatively speaking, they don't mind the extra price paid for these benefits. From this perspective, the per-liter price of small-format Coca-Cola is much higher than that of large bottles, but consumers don't care about the higher unit price; they care more about the convenience of carrying, quick cooling, ensuring consumption at low temperature, and easy calorie control;
  • 4. Deeply study the "micro-scenarios" of consumption. Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey also said in response to questions during the second-quarter analyst conference call at the end of July: "Driven by strong performance in emerging markets such as China and Southeast Asia, Coca-Cola's single-serve volume growth rate in the Asia-Pacific region reached 7% in the second quarter, thanks to our focus on (developing) those underserved consumption occasions." Kantar Worldpanel found that for beverages, more than 300 micro-scenarios with actual commercial significance can be derived from the intersection of four dimensions: consumer attributes, consumption time, consumption space, and consumption events. By amplifying certain "micro-scenarios," brands can break through inertial thinking about certain categories, channels, and drinking needs, and find new growth points. Source: Kantar (ID: KantarGroup)