---
title: "How Did Perrier Become Popular?"
description: "Perrier's green tear-shaped glass bottles are now ubiquitous in China, from Starbucks coolers to convenience store shelves. According to Euromonitor, retail sales of carbonated bottled water in China reached 25 million yuan in 2015, a 65% year-on-year increase and 18 times the 2010 figure, driven by health-conscious consumers and the rise of e-commerce."
author: "钱睿荪"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
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published: "2017-06-13"
language: "en"
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# How Did Perrier Become Popular?

> Perrier's green tear-shaped glass bottles are now ubiquitous in China, from Starbucks coolers to convenience store shelves. According to Euromonitor, retail sales of carbonated bottled water in China reached 25 million yuan in 2015, a 65% year-on-year increase and 18 times the 2010 figure, driven by health-conscious consumers and the rise of e-commerce.

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Consumers who often go shopping may have noticed that Perrier's green tear-shaped glass bottles, from Starbucks coolers to convenience store shelves, now seem to be everywhere.
This is not an illusion. According to data from market research firm Euromonitor, retail sales of carbonated bottled water in the Chinese market reached 25 million yuan in 2015, a sharp 65% year-on-year increase, and 18 times the sales in 2010. In comparison, bottled drinking water only grew by 23% from 2011 to 2015.
"For many Chinese consumers, the first sparkling water brand they encountered was Perrier," Phillip Chilton, Nestlé's international brand business director, told Interface News. In 1992, Perrier was acquired by the Swiss international food and beverage giant Nestlé Group.
Netherlands' Sourcy, France's CHATELDON, Germany's Gerolsteiner, plus Perrier and San Pellegrino, are known as the more famous sparkling water brands in the global market. Sourcy can be seen on JD.com's Netherlands pavilion, while France's CHATELDON and Germany's Gerolsteiner are hard to find even on e-commerce channels.
Clearly, Perrier has almost become synonymous with sparkling water.
Since the 1980s, Perrier, already popular in continental Europe and the UK, first entered the Hong Kong market, and some agents began to introduce this expensive new beverage to mainland China, mainly selling it in hotels and high-end restaurants in major cities.
In 2007, Nestlé decided to operate this brand in the Chinese market. Chilton said: "Although Perrier had been sold in China for over a decade, the main consumers were still foreigners traveling or on business in China, with limited channels and very small sales volume."
What prompted Nestlé to make this decision at the time were some interesting trends the multinational company saw in the U.S. market. After 2005, the carbonated soft drink category, represented by Coca-Cola and Pepsi, declined year by year in the U.S. Driven by a pursuit of health and green lifestyles, American consumers began to turn to lower-calorie beverages.
Natural sparkling water was also one of the beneficiaries. For consumers who reject artificial sweeteners but find it hard to give up the fizzy mouthfeel of carbonated drinks, sparkling water is a very suitable choice.
In China, this shift in consumption structure broke out in 2013. According to Euromonitor data, from 2010 to 2012, sparkling water sales volume in the Chinese market remained basically at 100,000 liters, while during the three years from 2013 to 2015, the figures were 200,000, 500,000, and 800,000 liters respectively.
On the other hand, "exoticism" has also become a fascinating label for sparkling water. Phillip Chilton's business card has four international drinking water brand logos printed on the back: Perrier, San Pellegrino, Acqua Panna, and Vittel. Among them, besides Perrier from France, San Pellegrino from Italy is also a sparkling water brand.
Not only in sparkling water, but in the high-end products of the entire bottled water industry, brands emphasize their natural, green water sources. Market research firm Mintel points out that in the U.S. market, over 42% of consumers are more willing to pay for products that indicate the water source on the packaging. A reasonable speculation is that Chinese consumers, plagued by pollution and food safety scandals, also prefer bottled water claimed to come from overseas.
"We are not only selling Perrier or San Pellegrino, but also promoting sparkling water as a new beverage category to Chinese consumers," Chilton said. Getting products on shelves to gain presence is just the first step; the next is to convince consumers to try it.
Nestlé owns both Perrier and San Pellegrino. Considering that San Pellegrino has a softer fizz and is suitable for pairing with meals, it currently has a larger share in the high-end dining channel; while Perrier has a stronger fizz, suitable for more casual consumption scenarios, and its channels focus more on coffee shops, supermarkets, and convenience stores.
Experience from other overseas markets has also been transplanted to the Chinese market. In the 1980s, Perrier launched lemon and lime flavored natural sparkling water to meet the consumption needs of emerging overseas markets like the U.S. "At that time, many American teenagers were curious about Perrier, but after trying it, they didn't like the taste. Sparkling water with natural fruit flavors was more in line with these teenagers' tastes," Chilton revealed. Shortly after entering the Chinese market, Perrier introduced flavored natural sparkling water, and currently sales of flavored natural sparkling water are roughly on par with original flavor.
The development of e-commerce has also become a driver for the popularity of sparkling water. According to Mintel research, in the six months before December 2015, about 20% of Chinese consumers had purchased bottled water online. For Perrier, these online shoppers are not entry-level users buying one or two bottles to try; most of them buy in bulk, by the case or box, becoming deep consumers who have formed drinking habits.
"Based on suggestions from e-commerce platforms, we specially designed safe logistics packaging and also introduced different specifications such as 4-bottle and 6-bottle packs to meet the daily drinking needs of these consumers," Chilton told Interface News. "E-commerce partners suggested that glass bottles have higher logistics costs and are prone to damage during transportation, so Nestlé also introduced PET plastic bottle packaging for sparkling water, which is more suitable for express delivery, into the Chinese market."
Although Perrier and San Pellegrino in PET bottles and cans have been sold in European and American markets for many years, Chilton still had some concerns when introducing them to China. Some consumers think glass bottles are more upscale and may not accept PET bottles. "However, PET bottles have lower packaging costs, so the average price is slightly lower than glass bottles, which is more affordable for consumers. We respect consumer choices; PET bottles will not replace glass bottles. Consumers can buy glass-bottled sparkling water in restaurants or Starbucks, and buy PET bottles online for home consumption, depending on different scenarios and needs."
Although in most first- and second-tier cities in China, San Pellegrino or Perrier can now be found in offline channels, the vast majority of revenue still comes from international metropolises like Shanghai and Beijing. The Chinese market is not an exception; in more mature overseas markets, the main consumers of sparkling water are also mostly concentrated in metropolises like New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Seoul.
Compared to the easy availability of channels, the relatively high price determines the consumer group of sparkling water to a greater extent. Nestlé also understands that compared to Nongfu Spring, Uni-President, or C'estbon, which sell for 3 yuan per bottle, Perrier or San Pellegrino are hard to become "a brand for 1.3 billion people."
Research data also supports this. Euromonitor data shows that in 2015, the average retail price per liter of sparkling water was about 31.25 yuan, while the overall average retail price per liter of bottled water was 3.19 yuan, only one-tenth of sparkling water. Mintel's industry report points out that the penetration rate of sparkling water among people with a monthly household income of over 16,000 yuan reaches 39%, far exceeding the overall penetration rate of 29%.
"The Chinese sparkling water market is still in its early stages, with consumers mainly young, highly educated, relatively affluent urban middle class," Chilton introduced. In terms of marketing, Nestlé also tries to combine sparkling water products with the lifestyle and aesthetic tastes of the middle class. For example, Perrier often cooperates with activities in music, art, fashion, and technology, while San Pellegrino, which focuses more on dining, is the official sponsor of the Shanghai edition of the Michelin Guide.
With strong offline channel resources and e-commerce, Nestlé seems to remain optimistic about the future development of sparkling water. "More and more Chinese consumers are traveling abroad, and they are very curious about the products and lifestyles they encounter in Europe, the U.S., Japan, and South Korea. This is also a good opportunity for us," Chilton said.
The growth of China's middle class and the trend of consumption upgrading have led most market observers to remain bullish on the future development of sparkling water. In 2015, Nongfu Spring launched a high-end glass bottled water series and tentatively introduced a sparkling mineral water product. Hua Bin Group, the operator of Red Bull and Vita Coco, announced the introduction of the Norwegian high-end water brand Voss, including a naturally sparkling mineral water.
On e-commerce platforms, more and more imported sparkling water brands are entering the Chinese market through agents. Euromonitor predicts that by 2020, sparkling water sales volume in China is expected to reach 2.1 million liters, with a compound annual growth rate of over 20%, and the market size is expected to reach 77.1 million yuan.
However, compared with more developed markets, this is still a small number. A comparable figure is that the U.S. sparkling water market totaled $1.045 billion in 2014, 460 times the size of the Chinese market that year.
Phillip Chilton also admitted that this will be a process that requires patience. "The rapid development of the Chinese market is due to the small base before. The growth of this category will also stabilize in the future, but it is hard for me to predict how long it will take."
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