• Friday, March 29, 2024
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Soft drinks makers compete for market share with new flavours  

Carbonated beverage
Carbonated beverage (soft drinks) makers are aggressively competing for market share in the flavoured drinks segment by pushing out more flavours to entice consumers around the country.
The competition used to be about quantity and price but as many products converge around 60cl which sells for N100 on the average, the soft drinks makers are now turning to new flavours to get ahead of a saturated market, experts say.
“I think the Lipton ice tea flavoured drinks released last year sort of changed the game because consumers responded quite positively to the launch of those products,” Ayorinde Akinloye, consumer analyst at CSL Stockbrokers, said. “Consumers are now tilting towards taste and companies have to respond to that by pushing out more flavours.”
Over the past four years, Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCGs) including soft drink makers have been competing for sales by increasing the quantity of their products without increasing prices due to weak consumer purchasing power.
“All of them have been competing at the price and quantity levels and they are almost at par. So the next thing is taste for them. The three things that FMCGs or drinks companies compete against are price, quantity and taste,” Akinloye said.
The carbonated soft drink market commands a unique hold on the food and beverage sector in the Nigerian economy. In 2019, innovation centred on flavours as companies like Pepsico and Unilever introduced new ready-to-drink Lip tea drinks and Pepsico’s new flavours such as Pepsi Berry, Pepsi Lime and Pepsi Mango.
Earlier this month, La Casera Apple introduced four new flavours called Bold Orange, Tropical, Bitter Lemon Extra and Ginger.
Ibrahim Ahmed, an inventory manager at Coca-Cola Nigeria, said the new trend made Coca-Cola reintroduce its flavoured Fanta Apple and Pineapple drink back into the market late last month.
“This is the new niche for the carbonated drinks market because consumers are willing to try anything. And since the Mirinda Apple drink is doing well, why don’t we push out similar products like that? And based on the survey from stores, we noticed that there was a high demand for flavoured drinks,” Ahmed said.
Nigeria’s fast-growing population brings with it a continuing demand for soft drinks, especially as the climate is quite hot. The country ranked fourth globally in the volume of soft drink sales recorded in 2016, according to Euromonitor International, a global market intelligence publisher.
Despite the huge popularity of the juice and drink market, the unique tasting appeals of carbonated soft drinks and their array of flavours have always been a strength other drinks cannot match.
“The soft drinks companies are in the phase of ‘let us spoil the consumers by giving them various alternatives’. At every point in time, companies try to ensure that consumers get what suits them at that point in time,” Abiola Gbemisola, a consumer analyst at Lagos-based investment firm, Chapel Hill Denham, said.
Gbemisola noted that the new development is not the case that consumption or purchasing power has improved but a way to ensure that consumers don’t move to their other competitors because of those flavours.
BUNMI BAILEY