New products have been critical in driving up spend levels and overall dollar growth for the wider beverage sector in Australia, according to a new report from Nielsen.
Nielsen’s 2013 Wider Beverage Report shows that new products have added $3.77 billion to the wider beverage market over the past four years.
According to the market researcher, in a market where volume consumption per capita has steadily trended downwards since 2008, innovation is crucial.
“The Wider Beverage Report highlights the continuous investment in beverage innovation over the past few years; and this activity has been instrumental in off-setting consumption declines," Liz Watkinson, Director of Consulting, Nielsen, said.
Cider has had the biggest success in terms of new product development in the past year, according to Nielsen. The category attributed a 62 percent of its values sales in 2012 to products that did not exist in the previous year.
Nielsen also found that while retailers have also placed a huge amount of focus on new product development in the private label arena, their efforts have not always been successful.
“We found a third of private label beverage turnover in 2012 was generated by new products – but then one in eight of these were delisted. The corresponding numbers for branded products was 15 per cent through new products and just one in 20 were removed from the shelves,” Watkinson said.
She said beverage market success in the future would hinge on introducing new products that "blur the lines between beverage categories – effectively developing new tastes based on familiar flavours".
