Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh -- (SBWIRE) -- 10/17/2012 -- ReportReserve announces the inclusion of its new report published by Canadean.

This report offers a completely fresh look at consumer's Soft and Hot Drink habits, allowing marketers to understand people's consumption patterns like never before. This offers unique opportunities to effectively target new consumer groups, behaviors, and trends based on actual empirical data in Soft and Hot Drinks consumption across 10 core countries.

Introduction and Landscape

Why was the report written?
This report looks to test the stereotypes about beverage and consumption perceptions that the industry may have. The report illustrates that an in-depth study of the consumer exposes the trends to exploit and the anomalies to address. Only by looking at who is drinking, what they are drinking, when they are drinking, where they are drinking, and why they are drinking, can you put together the best marketing strategy to capitalize on the opportunities that exist in the Soft and Hot Drinks sectors.

What is the current market landscape and what is changing?
There is an assumption that Soft Drinks are drunk by the young and as consumers mature they drink more Hot Drinks. Many believe that there is a shift from Soft to Alcoholic drinks when consumers reach the legal age to drink. In fact, Older Consumers are a key age group to target in both Soft and Hot Drinks, particularly in the Non-BRIC region where aging populations limit volumes with younger consumers. Marketers risk underestimating the irresistible forces of demography.

What are the key drivers behind recent market changes?
The high growth rates seen in the developing world are an obvious attraction to beverage operators, but adding value to refreshment products in the developed world where growth rates are more sluggish provides just as appealing an opportunity. BRIC markets are often characterized by low margins and while Non-BRIC markets may be slowing, the affluence of drinkers provides them with the resources to pay more for their refreshment, despite the depressed economic climate.

What makes this report unique and essential to read?
The analysis provided is unique in the market as it tracks Soft and Hot Drinks behavior through to its actual impact on a product market. This provides readers with a unique analysis of the market, driven by survey-based data on consumer trends and groups, which is integrated with market data. This allows marketing tactics and strategies to be updated in line with the very latest consumer behaviors.

Key Features and Benefits
Unique integration of survey and market data provides market sizing consumption by key consumer groups, both by age and by gender, quantifying the value of key consumer groups by country.

Concise case studies identify best practice on how to align marketing practices to effectively target consumer trends, and shows how targeting multiple trends can be a highly effective proposition.

The impact of consumer trends is quantified by market and country to show where hotspots to target exist and exactly which trends are most important to target.

Key Market Issues
Although often categorized together, consumers in each of the BRIC markets have very different tastes and characteristics; low per capita beverage consumption is probably the main factor that they have in common. For instance, Brazil is the most developed beverage market within BRIC and has consumer consumption patterns more closely aligned to the Non-BRIC region than anywhere else.

Defying the stereotype, the survey found that Older Consumers, those aged 55 and over, punch above their weight in Soft Drinks markets. Shrewd marketers can take advantage of this by assessing how they can better exploit the product vacuum for Older Consumers.

Whereas the Hot Drinks consumption of men and women is very similar, in the overall Soft Drinks market there is a small swing in favor of men. This can be accredited to China, where Chinese women make up 48% of the survey and just 44% of the consumption. If China is discounted, the balance swings in favor of female consumption.

Marketers need to address evolving lifestyles as consumers age. This is not just with regard to product but also to packaging and marketing. In the UK for instance, the expansion of access to higher education and social trends delays the age at which people tend to settle down and start families, which has created an important consumer group within the Early Young Adults, and even Older Young Adults, age group whose lifestyles more closely resemble a “youth” market than those of Early Young Adults twenty or thirty years ago.

The ten core countries covered in this report can be categorized as having either a Coffee drinking culture or a Tea culture. The opportunities for growth are directly related to which culture each country falls into: those with a Coffee culture will offer more opportunities for Tea operators and vice versa. In the BRIC region, both categories have the potential to grow, while in the Non-BRIC markets there is likely to be some cannibalization between the two.

Key Highlights
The poor quality of municipal water and the rising affluence of consumers in the BRIC region pushes Bottled Water volumes upwards, compensating for a slowdown in Non-BRIC markets where demand is maturing; however this growth has a low margin and high volume as BRIC consumers have less disposable income.

In developed markets, Older Consumers are the most important age group in the Juices market: they account for over one-fifth of the volume of Juices consumed. Traditionally, children have been the main target audience for Juices, and to an extent they are an important consumer: Kids and Babies make up 15% of consumption; however, population dynamics mean that Older Consumers will remain the most important market in terms to total volumes.

Older Consumers account for more than a quarter of Sparkling Soft Drinks volumes in the surveyed markets, compared to just over a fifth for overall Soft Drinks. This age segment is notably important in developed markets, where they account for in excess of three in every ten liters of Soft Drinks consumed.

There is a direct correlation between age and the consumption of Hot Drinks: the older a consumer is, the more Hot Drinks they are likely to consume. In contrast to Soft Drinks, encouraging younger age groups, particularly Kids and Babies, to increase their consumption or even to take up Tea and Coffee drinking is more challenging. Other Hot Drinks, such as Hot Chocolate, generally provide more of an opportunity to get younger consumers to drink hot drinks.

In contrast to Tea, Coffee is seen as Indulgent worldwide; it is the second-most important consumer trend for Coffee, behind Personal Space and Time. Rising world coffee prices have contributed to this sense of Indulgence and Coffee's popularity has been boosted by the coffee shop phenomenon. Furthermore, Coffee can be made more indulgent through the addition of syrups, toppings, and creams, which has helped raise the profile of Coffee and educate consumers on the diverse range of Coffee products on the market.

For further information please visit http://www.reportreserve.com/report/global-trends-and-consumption-demographics-in-soft-and-hot-drinks-report-563754