Using 20 detailed Case Studies of brands addressing a range of benefits – energy, joint health, sports beverages, protein boosting, digestive health, weight management and heart health – this report looks at what makes some functional and health-enhancing brands succeed and what makes others fail. Each Case Study gives our usual independent and opinionated analysis and addresses packaging, choice of ingredients, nutrition profiles, marketing communications, pricing strategies (and why some brands are able to earn premium prices), which consumers buy them and why, all supported with supermarket sales data.

About this report

Using 20 Case Studies of brands addressing a range of benefits – energy, joint health, sports beverages, protein boosting, digestive health, weight management and heart health – this report looks at what makes some functional and health-enhancing brands succeed and what makes others fail.

Each Case Study gives our usual independent and opinionated analysis, based on interviews with executives at all of the companies concerned, as well as independent beverage industry experts.

Each Case Study addresses packaging – and in particular packaging innovation – choice of ingredients, nutrition profiles, marketing communications strategy, pricing strategies (and why some brands are able to earn premium prices), which consumers buy them and why, all supported with supermarket sales data.

The strategies that successful beverage brands use are summarized in a concise 9-page introduction.

The many strategy issues this report addresses include:

• What ingredients and benefits resonate with consumers in beverages and why
• What the risks and rewards are for innovating in beverage formats and in packaging
• The growing use of beverages as a snack replacements and how this is contributing to a blurring of category boundaries and an increasing hybridization of beverage types, so that the lines between product types and benefits become fuzzy and unclear to consumers.
• The key trend of delivering benefits that are “as natural as possible”, a message now beginning to be used by beverages beyond the superfruit area. One example is coconut water (Case Study 10), a product type that has proved successful in Brazil and the US.

For any company, large or small, aiming to create a successful proposition in functional or health-enhancing beverages and better-manage the risks of new product development and innovation, this report provides practical insights and examples.