1.0 Introduction and Case Background
Water quality issues, especially with regards to drinking water, have garnered much attention recently in our post September 11 social climate, but attitudes towards drinking water were not always rooted in fears of a doomsday scenario. As the Brita USA case study illustrates consumer awareness and concern for clean, good tasting, and safe drinking water led to tremendous growth in the bottled water industry beginning in the mid to late Eighties.
Perhaps as an effect of the designer and brand label consciousness consumer atmosphere, that existed in the late Eighties, buying water in a bottle started to be the thing that you did. Paying a dollar for "pure mountain spring" water began to be the choice option, rather than standing in line to drink from the public fountain. In a short time many consumers, not just early adopters, began to buy bottled water. As bottled water moved from the classes to the masses, consumers began to be more concerned with price and questioned the worth of paying a dollar for water. This reasoning created opportunities for those who could fill consumers' need for low cost, good tasting, and clean water (while maybe still conveying a small sense of superiority.) Table 1 illustrates the size of the bottled water market in 1999 ? still only an 8% segment of the total 44.5 Billion gallon beverage industry. These figures also reflect a near doubling in volume from 1988 unit sales.
Table 1 | Estimated Bottled Water Segment Size in 1999
Percent Buying Gallons Appx. Spent
Still Water 45% 1,530,000,000 $ 1,530,000,000
Carbonated Water 27% 918,000,000 $ 2,754,000,000
Bottled Service (est.) 28% 952,000,000 n/a
Est. Total Bottled Water Con ...