On June 7, a reporter from Beijing Business Daily learned from the relevant person in charge of Coca-Cola that a new series of Prunella vulgaris herbal tea has been added to the official flagship store of Coca-Cola. This is the first time Coca-Cola has deployed the herbal tea market in mainland China in recent years.It is reported that the price of each 500ml bottle of this product is "10 yuan +", which is more than double the price of Wanglaoji herbal tea of the same specification. Years of experience.
From the perspective of the industry, Coca-Cola's move to introduce this herbal tea into the mainland market is an important step in its full-category beverage strategy, and it also releases its ambition to further compete for the herbal tea market.However, in the mainland market, the overall market popularity of the herbal tea market is not high, and herbal tea brands such as Wanglaoji and Heqizheng already occupy most of the market share.
Entering the herbal tea market
"The introduction of Prunella vulgaris herbal tea is the first time that Coca-Cola has deployed the herbal tea category in the Chinese mainland market in recent years." The relevant person in charge of Coca-Cola told the Beijing Business Daily reporter.
"Herbal formula" and "clearing heat and reducing fire" are the selling points of HealthWorks Prunella vulgaris herbal tea drinks.The product introduction page of Coca-Cola Coca-Cola Tmall flagship store shows that the product name of HealthWorks Prunella vulgaris herbal tea not only highlights the ingredients of Prunella vulgaris, but also emphasizes that it is "heat-clearing and fire-reducing tea", and the product bottle is also marked "Luo Han Guo brings out the natural sweetness" "No additional artificial flavors and colors" and so on.
In terms of price, Coca-Cola Health Workshop herbal tea is slightly higher than its peers.A reporter from Beijing Business Daily noticed that the price of 24 bottles/box of Coca-Cola Health Workshop Prunella herbal tea is 297 yuan, the price of a single bottle of 500ml is more than 10 yuan, and the price of 310ml*24 bottles/box of Wanglaoji is 65.9 yuan, which is converted into The price of each 500ml bottle is less than 5 yuan.
According to the relevant person in charge of Coca-Cola, "Coca-Cola China introduced the health workshop Prunella herbal tea herbal tea to the mainland and launched it in the Coca-Cola Tmall flagship store. to explore."
Statistics show that in 2016, Coca-Cola proposed to be a "full-category beverage company".In May 2017, Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey announced the implementation of a "full category strategy", saying that he would lead Coca-Cola out of its comfort zone.In the past two years, in addition to the above herbal tea products, Coca-Cola has also been involved in alcohol, coffee, dairy products and other business sectors in the Chinese mainland market.
Foreign monks like to chant scriptures
"Healthy Workshop has more than 30 years of experience in the plant herbal tea beverage market," said the relevant person in charge of Coca-Cola. "The predecessor of Health Workshop was Tongzhi Tang, which was founded in Hong Kong in 1989 and sold traditional herbal tea. In 2000, Health Workshop was established to replace Tongzhitang has changed from traditional herbal tea to providing botanical herbal tea drinks suitable for urban life. Since November 2005, Health Works has joined the Coca-Cola Company.”
According to the information on the official website of HealthWorks, the brand not only sells bottled teas such as seabed coconut and chuanbei almond tea, fresh kumquat barley water, and golden fruit Luohan tea, but also sells packaged snacks including matsutake mushrooms, yam and wolfberry pork and shaomai.In addition, HealthWorks has a number of offline stores in Hong Kong.
In the opinion of Shen Meng, director of Chanson Capital, Coca-Cola chose to enter the mainland herbal tea market with the HealthWorks brand because HealthWorks itself is a brand in the herbal tea market, and it can directly introduce the value accumulation of its brand in Hong Kong to the mainland market."The reason why HealthWorkshop has joined Coca-Cola for more than 10 years and has not set foot in the mainland market is because in 2005, the mainland herbal tea market was still dominated by Wanglaoji's family, and the overall demand was still small, and the growth pressure of Coca-Cola's core product market was not great. ."
Around 2005, the herbal tea market in mainland China was booming.According to relevant statistics, during 2002-2005, Wanglaoji's sales soared 10 times.Since then, the sales of the red can "Wanglaoji" has even surpassed that of Coca-Cola.At that time, in the mainland market, the carbonated beverage track where Coca-Cola was located was trapped in the “unhealthy” cognitive label.
Still need to improve brand power
At present, herbal tea giants such as Wanglaoji and Heqizheng are still entrenched in the Chinese mainland market. Coca-Cola still needs to expand the influence of mainland brands in order to expand the herbal tea field.
According to the data of the Prospective Research Institute, the market scale of the herbal tea industry continued to expand from 2011 to 2017, but 2015 was a turning point, and the growth of China's herbal tea industry began to slow down. The growth rate of the herbal tea market in 2016 and 2017 was lower than double digits, far below The previous high growth rate of 15%-16%.According to relevant data, in 2020, due to the impact of the epidemic on the Spring Festival season, the market share of ready-to-drink herbal tea in Asia dropped by 27.1%.
Under the slowdown in the growth momentum of the herbal tea industry, various herbal tea brands are also striving to break through the bottleneck.In recent years, Wanglaoji, a leading herbal tea company, has successively launched products such as dark herbal tea, sugar-free herbal tea, sugar-free bubble herbal tea, jasmine herbal tea, etc. Dali Group's herbal tea brand Heqizheng has also launched bubble herbal tea, sugar-free herbal tea, etc.Herbal tea companies all hope to go further under the trend of sparkling drinks and sugar-free drinks.
Data shows that Guangzhou Baiyunshan Pharmaceutical Group Co., Ltd., which Wanglaoji belongs to, is the second largest ready-to-drink tea beverage company in China, and its market share has increased from 15.5% in 2020 to an estimated 17.7% in 2021.Among the top five companies from 2019 to 2021, Guangzhou Baiyunshan is the only player that relies on herbal tea to "make the list" and ranks second.
"Looking at the market structure of Chinese herbal tea, at present the top brand is only Wanglaoji, and the sum of the second, third and fourth companies is less than 60% of that of Wanglaoji. Relying on the entire supply chain of Coca-Cola and its brand tonality , Diversified layout, and its occupation of the mental status of the new generation of consumers, the overall assessment, if Coca-Cola wants to occupy the second place in the herbal tea market, or grab a share of the second, third, or fourth place is still possible.” Chinese food industry analyst Zhu Danpeng said.
However, Shen Meng said, "Although Coca-Cola has a high-quality brand, marketing capabilities, and a sound sales system, the brand of HealthWorks still needs to expand its influence in the mainland."
Beijing Business Daily reporter Guo Xiujuan Wang Xiao
