In recent years, with the growing awareness of healthy drinking water, people have increasingly stringent requirements for drinking water, especially for bottled water, which led to a fierce competition in the bottled water market. As a well-established brand in China, Nongfu Spring also joined the competition for resources in its early time, and has been well received by the public with its differentiated products and unique advertising concepts. In today's increasingly fierce homogenization competition, the development of Nongfu Spring is of great reference significance to small and medium-sized enterprises expecting to break industrial monopolies and find opportunities for their development.
Nongfu Spring made its debut in 1996. Two years later, "Nongfu Spring is a little sweet" became the most successful advertising slogan in the advertising market of that year, which made Nongfu Spring famous overnight. In 2000, Nongfu Spring officially announced that it would stop producing pure water and start to produce natural water only. On the basis of scientific research, it actively promotes the scientific knowledge to consumers that drinking water containing minerals is more beneficial to human health, and establishes brand advantages through product differentiation.
In 2003, Nongfu Spring took the lead in launching Farmer’s Orchard, a new kind of drink with 30% juice concentration in the domestic beverage market. Due to differentiated product positioning and continuous marketing promotion, Farmer’s Orchard gradually gains a foothold in the fruit juice market and plays a leading role in this market segment.In the following years, Nongfu Spring has successively launched Scream Energy Drink, Oriental Leaves and other differentiated competitive products. These different kinds of products have become one of the best in the market segments after years of market cultivation. Nongfu Spring upholds the business philosophy of step by step and gaining the initiative. It advocates innovation and seeks breakthrough so as to establish brand advantage by product differentiation. Since 2012, Nongfu Spring has held the leading position in China's bottled drinking water market for the previous 8 years. Throughout the current soft drink market, Nongfu Spring has launched ready-to-drink tea, fruit juice drinks, functional drinks and other categories. And products from Nongfu Spring ranked the top 3 in the market of ready-to-drink tea, fruit juice drinks and functional drinks. All these indicate that the soft drink market layout of Nongfu Spring is a great success.
In order to consolidate the brand positioning and competitive advantages of Nongfu Spring's natural water, the focus of its appeal has been shifted to propagating water sources and enhancing the brand impression and cognition. And the advertising tends to be more realistic. "We are not manufacturers of water. We are porters of nature" is an advertising slogan repeatedly propagated by Nongfu Spring in the past, with the purpose of continuously strengthening the cognition of the unique advantage of its water sources. After that, Nongfu Spring has fully embraced online development and built new e-commerce channels. And it has expanded the overseas market while continuously increases the brand awareness in domestic market. All these stands as driving forces for better development.
Nongfu Spring has enhanced its brand's influence with its unique market positioning and marketing philosophy. In the future, apart from the domestic market, Nongfu Spring will endeavor to seek opportunities abroad and implant it into the minds of foreign consumers. At the moment, Nongfu Spring is trying to acquire Otakiri, a New Zealand high quality mineral water brand, so as to go global and embrace a wider range of customer groups.