07.16.2008

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For more Hartman Group articles on SUSTAINABILITY and WELLNESS, click here...

06.04.2008 The Sustainability Gap

04.22.2008 The Consumer Side of Sustainability

09.12.2007 Making Sustainability Matter

05.24.2007 Sustainability: Pathways to a Brand Halo

05.23.2007 Sustainability: The Corporate Tie-Breaker

05.22.2007 Sustainability: What's Green Now?

09.26.2007 Wellness Trend Update: The Good Life

10.03.2007 HartBeat Videocast: 4 Trends In Wellness

08.22.2007 Trends Update: Energy...Not Just a Drink

01.17.2007 A Nano Trend to Start 2007

08.02.2006 4 Hot Food Trends

07.26.2006 Trend Watch: Nutrigenomics

03.08.2006 Satiety: The Next Food Trend?

12.01.2005 Trend Alert: Value-Add or Value-Less?

09.01.2005 Evolving Trends in Fresh

07.21.2005 Growth Potential of Wellness Product Categories

01.31.2003 11 Trends; Tinderbox Launches

09.13.2002 Conversations with Wellness Consumers

05.10.2002 Will the New Wellness Consumer Please Stand Up?

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The Rise (and Fall) of Bottled Water

The consumer pursuit of portable hydration combined with an ever-increasing equation between “good” water, fashion and wellness has driven consumption of bottled water to dizzying levels: According to Beverage World’s “2008 State of the Industry” report, Americans drank 8.8 billion gallons of bottled water in 2007, with total wholesale revenues of $11.1 billion dollars.

Beyond water, when considering other essential components of life (air, sunlight, soil), it’s hard to imagine what special properties have elevated something that, in many parts of the globe, can be found running free in streams, rivers and lakes or at the very least, is found pouring at negligible costs from faucets and drinking fountains. There are several reasons that bottled water has generated a near perfect storm of cultural thirst and flourishing sales to date: Some are historic, rooted in beliefs about taking “special waters” that dates back to the Romans, and a belief that certain mineral waters, imbibed both internally and in spa-settings, had curative and healthful properties. Another is decades of marketing by companies like Perrier, which positioned bottled water as part of a modern lifestyle which in turn transformed individual servings of branded water into fashionable and healthy alternative to cocktails or soda.

While ongoing for decades, such positioning caught the attention of millions of Americans fighting obesity and has helped fuel the death of soda. Currently, we now find bottled water (and derivatives like flavored and enhanced waters) in a race with CSDs as being the most consumed beverages in our society. In addition to the straightforward perception (by most consumers) that water is simply the healthiest beverage alternative, we also note that an increasingly active consumer base (exercise, fitness, walking, on-the-go, etc.) much prefers the thirst-quenching properties of water, especially when compared to traditional CSDs. Findings from our 2007 Wellness Lifestyle report show two-thirds (64%) of consumers purchase water regularly, making water among the top 5 beverages consumers purchase monthly. As consumers frequently lament, "If you're truly thirsty, the last thing you want to drink is soda..."

Water, Wellness and Sustainability

Related to its use as a tool to thwart obesity and provide basic hydration, as we’ve seen over years of wellness studies, water is viewed by consumers as a central building block of wellness lifestyles: Among categories like vitamins and minerals, fresh fruits and vegetables, grains, milk and juice, water itself is nearly always ranked among the very top tier of products viewed as central to wellness. From a wellness perspective, bottled water is thus linked symbolically to key notions of hydration and satiation. Moving toward the Core of wellness, consumers today also look to water as a source of detoxification and as a way to keep skin looking young and youthful. Women in particular recognize that cellular hydration keeps their skin cells “plump” and wrinkles at bay. Also many Core consumers drink water to keep toxins in transit, ensuring optimal bowel functioning.

Beyond physical health, of interest in our most recent wellness research, Wellness Lifestyle Insights 2007, is a newly emerging link between personal wellness and notions of sustainability, a part in which water plays a role: Whereas wellness in the past was defined most intensely by Core wellness consumers who integrated wellness into their lives at spiritual, emotional and physical levels, now these same consumers extend wellness beliefs yet one step further to include the environment. Core wellness consumers express a highly integrated understanding of wellness such that their personal well-being in inextricably tied to the well-being of the earth. The air they breathe, the soil in which food is grown, the water they drink, and the health of animals associated with their food supply must be high quality in order for these consumers to realize their goal of quality life experiences. A Core wellness consumer, Marsha, explains:

“It’s a quality of life thing. I can’t be well if the cows that produce the milk I drink are ill and on antibiotics. I can’t be well if I am polluting my water with toxic laundry soap. For me quality of life for the earth and animals means quality of life for me.”

Shortly after our 2007 wellness research, we examined consumer perceptions of sustainability and found that while the public doesn’t really have a grasp on meanings of “sustainability,” water plays a central role in aspects of daily life that consumers view as elements of living sustainably. Such elements of daily life are now firmly established habits and include adaptations made to ward off perceived environmental threats on personal and family health including:

Avoiding unfiltered tap water whenever possible
Wearing sunglasses and sunscreens to “block out harmful UV rays”
Fastening vehicle safety belts “in case” an accident happens

Other adaptations to risk have only recently emerging include:

Using sanitary wipes to wipe down grocery carts
Routinely using air filters in our living rooms
Questioning the purity of water in plastic bottles

While Mid-level sustainability consumers are apt to embrace the use of portable “Brita-style” water filters at home, Core sustainability consumers are likely to use a wider range of water filters, purchase large bottles of ionized water, and carry their water in glass or stainless steel containers (some of which are recycled from other packaging).

Bottled Water Throw Down: Plastic vs. Ritual Thirst

While we have identified a multiplicity of causes behind the consumer thirst for bottled water (including health interests, exercise/hydration and elements of fashion), such interests are increasingly clashing head on with news about the environmental toll of plastic water bottles and perceived health threats from phthalate chemicals and BPA. Add to this a rising cultural recognition that there is little regulation over bottled water sources and you have seemingly gale force storm waters brewing, the likes of which have influenced companies to label the water source and companies like Fiji Water vowing to become “carbon free.” Are such activities on behalf of bottled water brands merited? Most likely they are, since we have seen over and over again that the beliefs and activities of a minority of Core wellness and sustainability consumers have a habit of influencing what happens in the majority of public opinion. Thus the source of bottled water (e.g. spring water vs. municipal) and causes supported (e.g. Athena) will become increasingly important, along with offering alternatives to plastic packaging.

Most importantly, while environmental, ethical and public health worries may cast a shadow over the bottled water category, such concerns as drivers that might influence a decline in consumer interest in bottled water face a more powerful and intriguing factor of bottled water consumption that emanates from structural inconsistencies and stresses of living in the modern world. Specifically, we find that the main reason consumers are drinking so much water is that it seems to alleviate stresses and tensions caused by a lack of ritual in the workplace and in home life. For the contemporary employee resigned to spending hours in front of a spreadsheet, the act of sipping, draining, filling, sipping — in addition to the requisite bathroom break — provides a way of keeping the body moving, of marking time and, generally speaking, maintaining one's "grip," in an otherwise frictionless world. In essence the ubiquitous bottles of water kept at hand by countless millions have begun to resemble the security blankets of childhood. In this, the rise of habituated water consumption parallels another form of habituated consumption which has been severely curtailed over the past decade. Namely, smoking.

Bottled Water Forecast: Partly Sunny with Occasional Clouds

Clean, pure water is an elemental component of consumer visions of wellness and sustainability — these visions are both personal (at the cellular level) and can extend out to a global, environmental perspective. When examining whether or not bottled water sales might decline in light of suspected environmental, ethical or public health hazards, we need to remember that as a category, bottled water has been integrated into basic rituals that seem to preclude finding “healthier” replacements: One thing we’ve noticed in wellness research is that once consumers integrate wellness practices and beliefs into their lives, they rarely go backwards. Thus it’s hard to imagine consumers solving hydration, satiation, fashion and ritualistic dilemmas with carbonated soft drinks or corn syrup-laden juice drinks in the future. As such, while environmental and health vectors will continue to make inroads on guiltless bottled water consumption, at the same time, we think consumers will continue to seek out this elemental source of wellness in their lives, albeit with an increasingly inquisitive, and even suspicious eye turned toward issues of packaging, source, purity and ethics.