Sparkling Water Market In France

The market of sparkling water in France is a concentrated market. Even if we can easily find a lot of brands at the supermarket, we can see that the main players are Danone, Nestle, Roxane and the own labels.

As we can see on the chart below, the percentage of the market share in volume in hyper and supermarkets are leading by Salvetat and private labels with 17% each, Perrier with 16%, followed by Badoit with 14%, and San Pellegrino with 9%.

In 2011, after that Danone invested 6 million euros in Salvetat bottling plant, not only Salvetat became the first brand in volume on the sparkling mineral water market, sales in the mass-market retails had reached 190 million of liters, Salvetat has seen an increase in volume of 30% to reach 15,5% of market share in September 2011, but also became the leader on the sparkling water market. In second position, Perrier (but first in value) remains in growth (+1,7%) with 13,8% of market share while Badoit lost 1,8% with 12,5 of market share. However, in value, Perrier remains first thanks to the many formats proposed (cans, bottles etc.), whereas Salvetat only propose a 1,25 liter plastic bottle.

Source: www.rayons-boissons.com - retailers panel according to the manufacturers

According to a survey made by the magazine Journal des Femmes: “what brand of sparkling water is your favorite? ”, most of people drink Badoit and Perrier (19 % against 17 %), followed very closely by San Pellegrino with 13%. Badoit and Perrier grab about one third of customers.

Global Trends Of Bottled Water Market

If we take a look at the global market of bottled water (which includes still and sparkling water, flavored and unflavored) we can point out two main current market tendencies:

1) Growth of the market (in volume and value)

2) Concentration of the market (big companies consolidate small companies with local and niche advantages in order to boost capacities and diversify product portfolio)

According to MarketLine market research agency market growth for the bottled water industry looks the following way[1]:

Global bottled water market growth

	2010	2015 (estimation)
Value	Growth in 2010 by 3,9% $99,335.1 million	Growth since 2010 by 27.1% $126,284.8 million
Volume	Growth in 2010 by 2.7% 152,462.2 million liters	Growth since 2010 by 19.9% 182,782 million liters

European Union holds just over a 50% share of the global bottled water market.

Same tendencies could be seen in France in terms of sparkling water market. During the last year (August 2011 to August 2012), we see that sales went up 5% in both volume and value[2]:

546 million euros ( + 5,1%)

990 million liters (+ 5,0%)

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[1] Sources:http://www.reportlinker.com/ci02019/Bottled-Water.html[2]Sources:http://www.rayon-boissons.com/Chiffres-du-marche/Ventes-annuelles-de-boissons-sans-alcool-en-GMS-21914

Hi Everyone!

Welcome to our blog dedicated to...yes, as you can see from the blog’s title already:-)… to Sparkling Water Brands!

Here we are going to take a precise look at the sparkling water market in France and make a competitive audit of 3 well-known brands. As our targets we chose Badoit, San Pellegrino and Perrier brands.

Initially we wanted to follow 2 brands but the point is - 3 (and not 2!) brands immediately came to mind during our first discussion. It was a sign which we could not ignore! That meant that 3 (and not 2!) brands on the French market are strong enough to compete for the loyalty of the customers. And that also meant for us that in this case they are definitely worth of studying, all three of them.

Who are we? We are a multinational team of 5 people, coming from different countries, lucky enough to spend several months together in Paris, France, studying marketing in a business school. So, please meet:

Suzanne VORASAK

Johanna LUBANZADIO

Elena ODINTCOVA

Gangrui HUANG

 

 

 Natalia ZAVALKO

 

Why actually are we going to talk about sparkling water? Well, simply because water is water and in order to sell it to people (and moreover - to do it successfully) you really have to be a guru in branding and use all kinds of techniques to achieve your goal!  We were curious to go deeper in the topic: study the market, the top brands, compare them, analyze their approaches and learn some interesting and useful tricks.

We hope it’s going to be fun and interesting for you to read the blog. We tried our best not to be too boring and not to overwhelm you with figures. However if you come across a couple of tables – forgive us, those are useful sometimes. We posted a lot of cool pictures and videos too - so it’s going to be ok!:-)

And the last but not least. We’d be happy if you read the blog actively. This means we do welcome your comments. Please let us know what you think, challenge us, ask questions.

So, enjoy the reading!

Sincerely yours,

The Sparkling Water Blog team