Taste, price drive consumer choice of bottle water

When thirsty, a number of reasons drive consumers’ decision to part with N50-150 for a bottle of “purified” water.

From the name on the pep bottle, to the price tag, and urgency all contributes to consumers decision making process.

Over the last few years, the growing bottle water choice is increasingly gaining momentum representing an interesting shift away from the popular sachet water and sugary beverages.

This growth in the bottled water industry is such that it is now believed to have surpassed carbonated soft drinks as the number one packaged drink in Nigeria, according to Euromonitor, a research company.

Until recently, the leading brands in the local markets were Swan and Eva but the trend has since changed.

Today, the landscape is more crowded than ever before, brands like Cway, Nirvana, Acquarite, Aquapac, Nestle, Cascade and a host of others are all in the market, fiercely competing to capture the attention of the Nigeria consumer.

In the process of capturing the attention of consumers so many of the water companies have had to make some changes from bottle designed to market strategies to either have a larger share of the market or to retain their strong hold in the market against the flurry of new entrants into the space.

Tunde Ajayi, a brand expert told BusinessDay on the phone that arrival of an evolving set of local brands, have blurred the lines for bottled water’s long-time premium legacy brands with regards to maintaining relevance.

“While top, multinational brands in the market have established national customer bases, local brands are strongly gaining traction for consumers,” he said.

Eva one of the leading premium November 2017 introduced 50cl Eva twist bottle to the market, selling at N70 a move driven to give Nigerians quality water at pocket friendly price.

Cway one of Nigeria’s leading brands also introduced its 750ml last year to serve the mass market.

Speaking to BusinessDay Kunle Agbaje who hawks drinks in Apapa said in most cases, he prefers the brands sold for N50 because premium brand prices do not sell well.

Sylvester Omale, who hawks drinks in Maryland area of Lagos, told BusinessDay that Nigerians now buy more of bottled water than sachet water.

“Personally, I stopped selling sachet water for a long-time; a lot more people believe bottled water is safer and better packaged.”

DAVID IBEMERE