Iced tea: two-digit sales growth in the last two years

Every household buys some kind of cold drink in a one-year period. However, while 8-9 families from 10 purchase carbonated soft drink, bottled water or fruit juice, hardly 5 buy iced tea. What is more, we buy from the three big categories every other week, but only put iced tea in our basket once a month.

Still, in the last two months the iced tea segment managed to grow because it made progress in two drivers: iced tea’s penetration increased from 44.8 to 47 percent and buying frequency grew from 10.3 to 13 occasions in a year. Who are the main buyers of iced tea? We call those ‘intensive buyers’ who spend at least 40 percent of their cold drink budget on iced tea – the rest are called ‘occasional buyers’.

Sales-wise iced tea is a highly concentrated products category: only 7 percent of intensive buyers are responsible for 41 percent of sales. Among these consumers families with children are overrepresented. As for non-buyers, many of them are people older than 60 years. Typical iced tea buyers earn more than the average. //

_{Albert Szőke
senior product consultant
GfK}