---
title: "The Changing Landscape of the Sugar-Free Tea Market: From 'Conceptual Competition' to 'Taste Breakthrough'"
description: "In recent years, sugar-free tea has surged in China's beverage market, with sales growing 110% in 2023 and 60% in the first 11 months of 2024. As the category enters a 'de-bubbling' phase in 2025, competition shifts from concept to repeat purchase. Kangshifu's strategy focuses on taste and experience, using 'light traffic' marketing and high-quality ingredients to build a stable repurchase logic."
author: "田静"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2025-08-15"
categories: "Industry Trends"
language: "en"
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original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/K9nIMkFIi3KEpgYf-LA7tQ"
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citation: "田静. “The Changing Landscape of the Sugar-Free Tea Market: From 'Conceptual Competition' to 'Taste Breakthrough'.” New Distribution, 2025-08-15. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/the-changing-landscape-of-the-sugar-free-tea-market-from-conceptual-comp-43ec6758/"
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---

# The Changing Landscape of the Sugar-Free Tea Market: From 'Conceptual Competition' to 'Taste Breakthrough'

> In recent years, sugar-free tea has surged in China's beverage market, with sales growing 110% in 2023 and 60% in the first 11 months of 2024. As the category enters a 'de-bubbling' phase in 2025, competition shifts from concept to repeat purchase. Kangshifu's strategy focuses on taste and experience, using 'light traffic' marketing and high-quality ingredients to build a stable repurchase logic.

Layout丨Ge Chang
**In** recent years, sugar-free tea has seen its presence in China's beverage market soar.
According to a Nielsen report, in 2023, the ready-to-drink tea category officially surpassed carbonated beverages to become the largest category by sales share in the domestic beverage industry. Among them, sugar-free tea grew at an impressive 110% year-on-year, becoming one of the most promising sub-categories. From January to November 2024, the sales growth of sugar-free tea continued unabated, with a 60% year-on-year increase.
Entering 2025, this category has begun to show a clear trend of 'de-bubbling': the growth rate of new sugar-free tea products has slowed, with SKUs decreasing by about 28% year-on-year; the first-time purchase rate remains considerable, but repeat purchase rates vary significantly, with some brands achieving over 50% and others less than 20%; the competitive focus has shifted from 'who enters first' to 'who can retain consumers'.
This indicates that sugar-free tea is entering the second half of the competition—0 sugar is the standard, and the real competition is shifting from 'who shouts the loudest' to 'who drinks the longest'. In other words, the second half is about repeat purchase power.
New Distribution has observed that Kangshifu Fresh Green Tea and Kangshifu Jasmine Tea have hit the right note in their market strategies this year—they have not fallen into the red ocean of 'sugar-free' promotion, but instead focus on 'making sugar-free tea taste better', using authentic tea flavor and a lasting, enjoyable experience to build a stable repeat purchase logic.
**Light Traffic + Good Taste**
**The Clever Approach of Variety Show Exposure**
This summer, two high-profile variety shows—'Heart Signal 8' and 'Journey to the Mountains and Seas 3'—have become regulars on young people's social topics.
In the ecological journey of 'Journey to the Mountains and Seas 3', several celebrities, during their hike, each held a bottle of Kangshifu Fresh Green Tea, drinking it whenever tired or thirsty, and proactively sharing their taste: 'Kangshifu Fresh Green Tea has a clear, bright green infusion, and it tastes very fresh and delicious,' while also using the catchy slogan: 'Original leaves brewed for good tea, set off for the mountains and seas.' This natural scene intuitively conveyed the feelings of 'sugar-free, thirst-quenching, and relaxing' to the audience.
Similarly, in the shots of 'Heart Signal 8', the guests sat around the dining table with a bottle of Kangshifu Jasmine Tea on the table. The camera did not deliberately focus on it, but when the guests raised their glasses to drink, it seemed like the most natural table beverage.
Unlike previous brand strategies of 'hard advertising exposure', Kangshifu Fresh Green Tea and Jasmine Tea appeared in these two shows not by dominating the screen, but in a more life-like, plot-integrated way, naturally bringing the product closer to the audience. Most importantly, these two sugar-free teas were still actively recommended by the guests outside the shows.
Why?
**Because they are 'really delicious'.** As the guests mentioned in the show, 'The taste is refreshing, healthy and burden-free, and it really has a tea aroma.'
This is the essence of Kangshifu's 'light traffic + good taste' combination: using the immersion of 'light traffic' to make the show scenes a natural endorsement for the product; letting the celebrities' natural drinking become a trust endorsement without words, achieving life-like reach, and making consumers think 'I can drink it this way too' in familiar scenes, lowering the barrier to trying.
When New Distribution visited the market, we also found that most sugar-free teas often sacrifice 'good taste' in pursuit of 'health', with astringent or bland flavors, either 'like water' or 'like medicine'.
Kangshifu's core is not simply attracting consumers with the 'sugar-free' concept, but combining the essence of traditional tea art with modern processes, restoring a 'flavorful' tea aroma on the basis of 'sugar-free'. With the consumer awareness brought by the light traffic of variety shows, it then completes the repeat purchase conversion through the product's taste and experience.
**From 'Try It Once' to 'Drink It for a Long Time'**
**Kangshifu's Repeat Purchase Logic**
The key to repeat purchase is not making consumers willing to try once, but making them continue drinking after the first taste and keep buying. Kangshifu's repeat purchase logic progresses from 'easy to drink' to 'get used to it' and then to 'can't do without it'.
**1. Easy to Drink, Not Rejected at First: Starting with 'Original Leaves' Instead of 'Tea Powder' or 'Flavorings'.**
Kangshifu's Fresh Green Tea uses premium Huangshan Maofeng tender buds, using ice-brewing freshness-locking technology to preserve the activity of green tea, with a fresh and rich tea flavor, and adheres to the high standard of '0 sugar, 0 sugar substitutes, 0 energy, 0 flavorings, 0 preservatives', allowing every sip to return to the original taste of tea leaves; Jasmine Tea uses hand-picked jasmine buds from Hengzhou, processed with 24-hour fresh picking and scenting, with every drop of tea soup carrying a soothing floral aroma; Jasmine Longjing uses jasmine buds from Guangxi Hengxian for scenting, paired with hand-picked Hangzhou Longjing tender buds, using ice-brewing freshness-locking technology to retain the original flavor, refreshing with a sweet aftertaste, delicious and relaxing.
It is worth mentioning that both Jasmine Tea and Jasmine Longjing achieve the pure quality of '0 sugar, 0 sugar substitutes, 0 energy, 0 preservatives, 0 flavorings', allowing consumers to drink with peace of mind.
'One sip makes me feel refreshed all over', 'The moment I open the lid, I can smell the rich floral aroma, and each sip leaves a lingering fragrance in my mouth', 'Elegant on entry, with a delicate fragrance on the palate, it's a pure tea enjoyment'... Positive feedback on e-commerce platforms is enough to prove the pure taste of these three teas.
**2. Get Used to It, a Daily Balance: Breaking Traditional Thinking in Process, Enhancing Tea Aroma Quality in Taste.**
The key to repeat purchase is that the product can be incorporated into daily life and consumed frequently.
Kangshifu Fresh Green Tea uses '24-hour fresh tea extraction' and 0°C ice-brewing freshness-locking technology; Jasmine Tea follows the traditional 'six scentings and one lift' process; Jasmine Longjing is freshly picked and processed within 24 hours. These processes break through and replicate traditional tea-making techniques, maximizing the retention of tea's freshness and richness, solving the industry's old problem of 'can bottled tea taste as good as freshly brewed tea', removing the 'beverage feel' of heavy flavorings and sweetness, and instead emphasizing 'clear, moist, and sweet'.
Clear: no burden on entry, like the 'transparency' of the first sip of good tea; Moist: the tea soup is not thin, not 'bland like water'; Sweet: a natural sweet aftertaste, leaving a taste memory.
**3. Can't Do Without It, Habit Drives High-Frequency Repeat Purchase: Building a 'Healing' Sense of Emotional Value, Bringing 'the Mood of Drinking Tea' Rather Than 'the Impulse to Drink a Beverage'.**
When consumers get used to a product's taste and scene matching, a phenomenon occurs: if they haven't had it for a while, they feel something is missing.
So Kangshifu's 'delicious' is not just a satisfaction of the taste buds, but also a satisfaction of emotional value.
Fresh Green Tea brings a 'refreshing, thirst-quenching, de-greasing' tea-drinking experience; Jasmine Tea provides a 'relaxing, soothing, healing' tea-drinking mood; Jasmine Longjing blends the fragrance of flowers and tea, as if being in a free tea mountain and flower sea, a taste enjoyment for consumers who have high requirements for taste delicacy.
This emotional value distinguishes Kangshifu's three sugar-free teas from mere 'sugar-free beverages', making them a choice with emotional attributes in consumers' daily lives—they not only quench thirst but also regulate mood.
**The Second Half of Sugar-Free Tea Competition**
**Is Its Breadth and Depth**
So, why is Kangshifu's sugar-free tea better tasting?
**Good ingredients:** selected high-quality original leaves and flower buds from core production areas; **Sufficient ingredients:** Kangshifu Jasmine Tea contains the aroma of 30 jasmine flowers per bottle, with tea polyphenol content >350mg/kg, higher than similar products, ensuring the richness of the tea soup and the persistence of aroma; **Good process:** freshness-locking ice brewing preserves the fresh aroma and refreshing taste of green tea; six scentings and one lift, repeated scenting allows the floral aroma to naturally penetrate the tea leaves, without using flavorings to replicate.
This full-chain high standard from raw materials to process maximizes the characteristics of each tea type, with the freshness of Fresh Green Tea, the fragrance of Jasmine Tea, and the layered feel of Jasmine Longjing all stably presented.
On e-commerce platforms' new product lists for tea beverages, Kangshifu Fresh Green Tea has repeatedly topped the charts, and the sales performance of Jasmine Tea and Jasmine Longjing has remained steady. In consumer reviews on social media, the high-frequency keywords are mostly 'refreshing', 'thirst-quenching', 'natural floral aroma', and 'not tiring to drink'.
It can be seen that 'mild taste' is the category structure most likely to become a 'high-frequency drinking habit', making consumers feel 'not that it's amazing once, but that it's comfortable to drink every day'.
Furthermore, Kangshifu Fresh Green Tea, Jasmine Tea, and Jasmine Longjing are not bound by specific drinking occasions, penetrating almost all daily scenarios: a bottle in the office when sleepy in the afternoon, refreshing and awakening; with meals, more flavorful than water and more de-greasing than sweet drinks; for fitness, sugar-free and low burden, hydrating without fear of gaining weight; on the road, commuting, outdoors, and other scenarios can replace plain water.
Clearly, Kangshifu's repeat purchase power in the sugar-free tea field is not a single-point breakthrough, but rather establishing a 'get used to it' mild taste in product design, achieving high scenario adaptability in consumer behavior, and through this 'anchor effect', building a closed loop of breadth and depth in sugar-free tea: mild taste, multi-scenario adaptation, forming daily habits, and repeat purchase becoming a natural behavior.
Most importantly, Kangshifu's sugar-free tea also has a price advantage, with terminal prices in the 3-4 yuan mass price range, and giving sufficient profit margins to channel partners, making them happy to sell and consumers happy to buy. Many distributors have mentioned: 'Most consumers buy for the first time because of the 'sugar-free' aspect, mainly to try something new, but taste is the key to repeat purchase. Kangshifu Fresh Green Tea has relatively high market acceptance, and we are quite optimistic about it.'
Looking at the fiercely competitive sugar-free tea track, the first half was the popularization of 'health education', and the second half is the contest of 'good taste' and 'drinking for a long time'.
Kangshifu's approach in the sugar-free tea track neither relies on a single traffic impact nor is satisfied with a one-time taste sensation. It uses the product experience of 'better tasting, sustainable, and not tiring to drink' to turn sugar-free tea into a consumption choice truly integrated into daily life, winning the long-term favor of young people.
Today's popularity of Kangshifu Fresh Green Tea and Jasmine Tea also heralds the future mainstream answer for the sugar-free tea industry—**beyond health, it must be delicious; after the first taste, you want to drink it every day.**
It also brings new thinking to the industry:
**In an era of rapid product iteration, what is the most enduring power that moves people's hearts?**


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## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: 田静
- Published: 2025-08-15
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/the-changing-landscape-of-the-sugar-free-tea-market-from-conceptual-comp-43ec6758/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/K9nIMkFIi3KEpgYf-LA7tQ

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