Tap water has replaced the large blue buckets, and the era of China's "big family" has come to an end.
The "large water" trend has gone viral, with young consumers embracing this meme, which means ditching milk tea and soft drinks, and only drinking large buckets of plain water of 1.5L, 2L or even larger sizes.
The call for better health is the most serious part of this trend. Beyond that, it also reflects consumers' anti-pretentious sentiment, as down-to-earth and practical lifestyles have become the new fashion now.
However, unlike the "extra-long egg tart" that became a hit around the same period, the "large water" trend is not about "being big for the sake of being big", nor is it a simple trend-chasing or meme-making behavior. It is a microcosm of changes in mass consumption and social structure.
It can be said that the era of large-capacity water is an inevitable trend.
01 The "large water" trend was long in the making
Around 2017, almost at the same time, Nongfu Spring, C'estbon and Wahaha, the leading players in the bottled water sector, all set their sights on the large-capacity water business.
At that time, the 4L large water product became Nongfu Spring's key promotion project, with the slogan "Good water makes good rice", trying to convert part of the tap water demand in households into demand for packaged water.
In the same period, C'estbon launched its own 4.5L large water product, also aiming to enter household scenarios, with a rather abstract advertising slogan: "A royal life starts with C'estbon 4.5L". Wahaha also rolled out 4.5L purified water, which similarly highlighted selling points rooted in daily life scenarios such as cooking, making soup and brewing tea.
The penetration of these 4L large water products into household scenarios planted a seed for large-capacity water consumption. While water brands were launching large-specification packaged water products, the water bottle track was also rolling out extra-large containers in parallel.
In 2016, the Stanley 1.18L straw cup Stanley Quencher was launched, but its initial sales were very poor. Since the brand originally made insulated containers for outdoor enthusiasts and blue-collar workers, it failed to target the right audience, and the product was almost discontinued. It was not until 2019 to 2020 that this large-capacity cup became popular among female groups, and gradually entered scenarios such as commuting, office work, fitness and childcare.
At that time, while advocating "drinking more water", people took this water cup as a fashion item, which represented a certain "lifestyle". In 2023, Stanley sold as many as 1.168 million cups on Amazon US in just one month.
The domestic market also saw a local trend of extra-large containers. The most typical example is BOTTLED JOY. Cao Guangyang, Chief Brand Marketing Officer of BOTTLED JOY, once said in an interview: "This BOTTLED JOY bucket is large enough to grab people's attention as soon as you hold it." He also admitted that BOTTLED JOY did not follow the conventional logic of water bottle manufacturing, but adopted cross-fashion thinking for product development.
In the same period, there were also designer brands such as Hexu, which did not take the top-traffic route, but used color, special materials and lightweight portable kettle designs to create medium-capacity accessory-style water bottles targeting white-collar office workers.
During this period, brands and social networks jointly guided consumers to complete mindset cultivation and visual desensitization: drinking water with a large cup is no longer a weird behavior, but even a way of showing personal dressing style and aesthetic expression.
All these extra-large containers come with aesthetic premium and trend premium, and people unconsciously entered the stage of "drinking fancy large-capacity water".
Nowadays, with the economic growth slowing down and people tightening their budgets, the whole country has entered the so-called "era of focusing on daily life". Aesthetic premium and trend premium are no longer mainstream demands. As a result, the word "fancy" in the lifestyle of "drinking fancy large-capacity water" has naturally been gradually removed, leaving only "drinking large-capacity water".
Drinking large-capacity water is really cost-effective. Take the online price of Nongfu Spring as an example (data from Nongfu Spring's official flagship store): the 380ml bottle is priced at 1.32 yuan, which is about 3.47 yuan per liter; the 550ml bottle is priced at 1.4 yuan, which is about 2.55 yuan per liter; the 1.5L bottle is priced at 2.9 yuan, which is about 1.93 yuan per liter. That is to say, the portable and decent experience of small bottles requires extra payment, which is a hidden "pretentious tax".
Faced with such a tangible price difference, young people naturally vote with their wallets. If 1.5L and 2L were not the upper limit of arm strength for most people, 4L and 5L large water products would probably be the mainstream now.
02 Manufacturers' careful calculations
Speaking of which, you may have a question: if everyone buys cheap large-capacity water, won't manufacturers lose money?
In fact, the situation is just the opposite. An employee from a leading water brand revealed to Zhiwei: "Large brands operate products of multiple specifications, mainly 500-568ml products and large-capacity water (mostly 1.5L-2L). Given the persistently high cost of PET plastic at present, large-capacity water products have better profit margins."
In the cost system of bottled water, for a general 550ml bottled water, the cost of the water itself is only about 3 cents, but the cost of the bottle body and outer package can reach 30 cents. Although the bottle of large-capacity water is larger and consumes more plastic, the material cost per bottle is higher, but when water enterprises make larger bottles, they essentially spread the high cost of bottle caps, labels and single filling process over several times the volume of water, which brings a better gross profit margin per liter.
At the same time, the large-capacity water business is more worry-free than the small-bottle water business. Because 300-500ml small bottles are more of a shelf-based business: consumers may buy Nongfu Spring today and pick up a bottle of C'estbon tomorrow. The competition for consumers' attention on shelves is extremely resource-consuming.
In the past, there were various concepts such as glacier water and oxygen-rich water in the market, and the industry was once caught in a chaotic war of marketing concepts, all for the purpose of making consumers choose their own products when buying water. It was not until the new national standard GB19298-2014 was implemented in 2015, which set mandatory specifications for the naming of packaged water, that many marketing gimmicks were banned. After the concept competition was restricted, price wars broke out in the industry, and brands tried their best to attract consumers by making their products look more cost-effective on shelves.
But large-capacity water is different. As long as water enterprises ensure good cost performance, they can deliver products to consumers' homes in cases through e-commerce platforms and various instant retail platforms. For manufacturers, this has a great advantage: one order can directly lock the consumer's demand for the next week or even half a month.
At the same time, once consumers stock up on large-capacity water, their consumption psychology will change. After all, large-capacity water is much more cost-effective than small bottled water. In addition to direct drinking, it can also be used for cooking, making soup and brewing tea, which virtually increases the total consumption, even in scenarios where consumers originally used tap water.
Another very important point is that although large-capacity water is sold at a low price, its per-liter price is still higher than that of the 19L large blue bucket water. To some extent, large-capacity water has diverted the market share of the 19L large blue bucket in many scenarios. High-value products diverting the original market of low-value products is naturally a good thing for manufacturers.
03 The large water trend is an inevitable outcome
In fact, the 19L large blue bucket can be regarded as the originator of large-capacity water.
This kind of recycled barreled water has a regional segmented subscription water supply system. The franchised exclusive water stations that Robust promoted in the early years are typical examples. The brand delimits a 1km effective service radius for each water station, and only sets one exclusive water shop in the same area, so as to operate in a divided manner and avoid internal price competition. Consumers call to order water, pay a deposit of 30-50 yuan for the water bucket, and the water delivery worker delivers the water and recycles the empty bucket at the same time.
This model has not disappeared to this day, and it is still common in offices, factory areas and many old residential communities. However, its living space in household scenarios is likely to gradually shrink.
Because the 19L bucket is more suitable for traditional families of three or even multi-generational families living under one roof in household scenarios. The whole family drinks water and cooks every day, and they can finish a bucket in three to five days, with a very high turnover rate.
But nowadays, the proportion of one-person households and two-person households in cities has risen sharply, making the large blue bucket a very "unwise" choice.
The first problem is hygiene. For young people who seldom cook at home, they may not finish a 19L bucket of water in half a month. But about 5 days after the barreled water is opened, the total number of colonies in the bucket will start to rise exponentially. Spending money to drink stale water is obviously not a sensible choice.
Secondly, the working hours of water delivery workers often conflict with the working hours of young people living alone. The delivery workers cannot carry the water into the house and replace the empty bucket for the residents personally, so the young people have to do it themselves. Dragging the nearly 20kg water into the house and even lifting it onto the water dispenser is not a pleasant experience.
Another point is that young people in cities are highly mobile, and changing apartments is a common occurrence. In this case, ordering barreled water will become very troublesome, and insisting on ordering barreled water for no reason is purely asking for unnecessary trouble.
In contrast, the 1.5L large-capacity water is a very good choice. You can buy one or two bottles at the supermarket downstairs when you get home every day, and it is not tiring to carry them home. The water volume is just enough to be drunk before it goes stale. For a two-person household, 4L large-capacity water is just the right choice.
If you are too lazy to carry water by yourself, the domestic retail formats have already prepared the soil for the large-capacity water trend. The instant retail format based on front warehouses allows everyone to call for a delivery almost anytime and anywhere, and the rider will rush to deliver the water to your door. This extremely efficient delivery efficiency completely outperforms the water delivery model of 19L large blue buckets.
When delivery and fulfillment are no longer problems, the difference between water and other ordinary FMCG products will be very small, and the preference for consumption specifications will be more determined by the demand side.
You have to admit that as the urbanization rate keeps rising, and more and more young people choose to work in core big cities, the family structure in Chinese society will show a substantial "atomization" trend, and there will be more and more single-person and two-person small families. Correspondingly, the audience of large-capacity water will also keep growing.
Therefore, the mainstream popularity of large-capacity water is a microcosm of the end of China's "extended family" era and the beginning of the "atomized society" era. It is not young people who choose large-capacity water, but the times that choose it.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Zhiwei", written by Zhiwei Editorial Department, and authorized for release by 36Kr.