Part
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Part
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Competitive Analysis - Montellier, Perrier, Mountain Valley, and San Pellegrino
According to San Pellegrino's Head of International Relations, the red star on its logo gives it "subliminal advantage over the competition" because consumers believe that red stars are a mark of quality. Montellier redesigned its bottles to attractive, deep blue bottles which gave it a leg up over its competitors, doubled its sales, and won the company awards for design and packaging. Below is a competitive analysis of Montellier, Perrier, Mountain Valley, and San Pellegrino.
MONTELLIER
- Montellier is a sparkling mineral drinking water brand sourced in Quebec, Canada.
- The sparkling water brand is bottled in Quebec by the Alex Coulombe ltée family business.
- Montellier's primary way of marketing their products is by publishing posts, such as high-quality photos of their sparkling waters and short videos, on its Instagram and Facebook pages.
- Montellier's sparkling drinking water comes in three flavors: unflavored, natural lime, and lemon essence.
- In terms of competitive advantage, Montellier sparkling water received a prestigious international award, the Monde Grand Gold Selection Medal, for the quality of the sparkling water.
- Montellier also changed the design of its bottles to competitive, sales-boosting, and award-winning deep blue packages.
- The newly redesigned package doubled its sales, gave it a leg up over their competitors, and won the company design and packaging awards.
PERRIER
- In June 2017, Perrier organized a marketing and advertising event dubbed 'Perrier Hot Air Balloons' to show its customers the features of any Perrier Sparkling Mineral water.
- As a marketing strategy, Perrier incentivizes its customers by organizing customer treats and offering the first 120 guests a free bottle of a Perrier beverage.
- Perrier Canada's most preferred marketing channel is Instagram.
- The company posted photos of its products, video ads, events, alongside carefully selected hashtags.
- Given the effectiveness of accompanying Instagram posts with relevant hashtags, Perrier's use of hashtags on its posts gives it a competitive advantage when it comes to brand awareness.
- Perrier products include Perrier Carbonated Natural Spring Water, Perrier With Natural Flavors, and Perrier & Juice.
- One weakness of Perrier, according to Dr. Mark Wolff, a dentistry professor, is that the water is more acidic than other fizzy drinks since it has a pH of 5.8 compared to the average pH of 6.8 of other fizzy drinks.
- According to consumer reviews of Perrier sparkling water on Influenster, most consumers think that Perrier sparkling natural water is more expensive than other brands.
- Other customers said they did not like the taste but these are consumers who have never tasted sparkling carbonated water before and therefore did not know what to expect.
MOUNTAIN VALLEY SPARKLING WATER
- Mountain Valley Sparkling Water is sourced from a spring in the Ouachita Mountains in the US.
- Their sparkling water products include Mountain Valley Sparkling Water, Blackberry Pomegranate Sparkling, and White Peach Sparkling.
- Mountain Valley Sparkling Water has a leg up over its competitors as the company walked away with two gold medals and one bronze medal during the 29th edition of Berkeley Springs International Water Tasting.
- Since Mountain Valley Springs Company is based in the United States, its sparkling water is distributed to the Canadian market by Cedar Springs.
- Mountain Valley Sparkling Water is available in Canada only in glass bottles. This may be a weakness as it limits a customer's options, but the company maintains that glass is "the safest and most durable food-grade material available."
- Mountain Valley Water leverages Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to promote brand awareness and market its products.
SAN PELLEGRINO
- This Nestle Waters brand mostly uses Facebook for its marketing efforts.
- Through its YouTube Channel, SanPellegrino TV, the company markets its sparkling water and encourages its customers to discover their taste experiences.
- San Pellegrino's sparkling water is available in the original San Pellegrino flavor as well as the exciting San Pellegrino Essenza that comes in three flavors: Dark Morello Cherry & Pomegranate, Lemon & Lemon Zest, and Tangerine & Wild Strawberry.
- The original San Pellegrino flavor is bottled in glass, PET, or Magnum bottles and available in 250 ml, 500 ml, 750 ml, and 1,000 ml bottles.
- According to San Pellegrino's Head of International Relations, the red star on its logo gives it "subliminal advantage over the competition" because consumers believe that red stars are a mark of quality.
- This assertion is corroborated with research by psychologists from Oxford University who realized, after ten years of research, that "incorporating a star into a design helps connote the arousing experience of drinking carbonated water."
- On Influenster, most disgruntled customers drank the sparkling drink for the first time, and it never appealed to them as they only wanted to taste it to understand why there was so much hype around it.
- The projected annual revenue from sparkling water in Canada is $309 million by 2019.
RESEARCH STRATEGY
To provide a competitive analysis of Montellier, Perrier, Mountain Valley, and San Pellegrino sparkling water brands based in the Canadian market, we first searched through the official Canadian websites of the companies for their products, their recent marketing efforts, and any unique features that set them apart from the competition. This search yielded a plethora of results on products, recent marketing activities, and provided links to social media channels where the companies engage with customers to boost brand awareness and increase sales. We also found news articles on the sites showing the awards some brands received for being outstanding players in the market. However, we could not find any information on weaknesses as the companies only exposed their positive side. This search also did not yield any information on the Canadian revenue as there was no data breakdown into such specifics.
Next, we searched through news sites such as Forbes and HuffPost for expert opinions on the sparkling water companies and through third-party reviews from sites such as Influenster, Yelp, ChickAdviser, Amazon, among others, for consumer opinions and reviews. We wanted to look through all critical reviews and identify what most consumers were complaining about, which would then be used as a proxy for the weaknesses of the brands being addressed in this request. We found an article from HuffPost that highlighted a few weaknesses of San Pellegrino and Perrier. Through Influenster, we found quite a number of critical reviews and low ratings from consumers of Perrier and San Pellegrino. Since the reviews from Canada were very few, we opted to use all reviews as the product is the same all over. We could not find reviews for the other two brands so we checked ChickAdviser and Yelp, but the number of reviews was less than 10 on each so we could not paint an accurate picture of the critical reviews. On Amazon, the reviews concentrated more on the condition of the delivered package, than on the taste of the contents.
To search for the Canadian revenue of the companies in this request, we first looked for annual reports, quarterly reports, and other financial reports of each company on their respective websites. However, since all the companies are private, or are owned by private companies, there was no publicly available information on their revenues. Next, we searched through market reports and statistics through Markets and Markets, Market Watch, EuroMonitor, Canadian Insider, and Statista. We hoped to find the market size, as well as the key players and their market share for triangulation of the companies' individual revenues. Unfortunately, the only data available was on the global sparkling water market and no segmentation into the Canadian market. We were only able to find the 2019 projected market size of the sparkling water industry in Canada, which we have provided in the key findings.