November 24th, 2023, Bhavika Bansal
From craft sodas and innovative mocktails to health-conscious elixirs, the spectrum of non-alcoholic beverages offers a kaleidoscope of choices, each vying for attention on the consumer's palate. Understanding how consumers navigate this diverse realm of options can be a crucial area of exploration for brands and marketers.
A new YouGov survey across 17 international markets seeks to unveil the dynamic pathways by which consumers typically discover new non-alcoholic beverages. Among the consumers we polled globally, in-store promotions (24%) are the most popular means of discovery for such products, followed distantly by word-of-mouth recommendations (14%).
While a twentieth of respondents say they typically discover non-alcoholic beverages through online reviews (5%), close to a fifth say they have not come across new non-alcoholic through any of the given options (17%).
A closer look at the data for six key markets – Great Britain, Sweden, the US, the UAE, Mexico and India – reveals some more interesting nuances.
Much like in the case of the market average, in-store promotions are the most popular channel for consumers to discover non-alcoholic beverages in Great Britain, Sweden, the US and the UAE. However, consumers in Sweden (33%) are much likelier to say so than their counterparts in the US (19%) and the UAE (24%).
Word-of-mouth recommendations come in second among consumers in Great Britain (16%), the US (15%), and India (14%), a spot occupied by social media in the UAE (20%) and in-store promotions in Mexico (19%). Interestingly, the share of consumers who have discovered new non-alcoholic drinks through social media drops significantly when it comes to Great Britain, Sweden and the US (4%, 6% and 6% respectively).
Notably, more than one out of four Britons and Americans (25%) say that they not typically use any of the given channels to discover new non-alcoholic beverages, and neither do 21% of Swedes. On the other hand, this proportion falls to 9% in India, 7% in Mexico and 6% in the UAE, an indicator, perhaps, of a greater willingness to discover and embrace new or different beverages among consumers in these markets.
A look at the results by age demographics reveals that an almost equal share of respondents across all age groups have discovered a new non-alcoholic beverage or a new variant of one through word-of-mouth recommendations and television advertisements.
On the other hand, five times as many 18-to-34-year-olds say the same about social media compared to respondents aged 55 and above (15% vs. 3%).
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Methodology: YouGov Surveys: Serviced provide quick survey results from nationally representative or targeted audiences in multiple markets. The data is based on surveys of adults aged 18+ years in 18 markets with sample sizes varying between 512 and 2,000 for each market. All surveys were conducted online in August 2023 Data from each market uses a nationally representative sample apart from Mexico and India, which use urban representative samples, and Indonesia and Hong Kong, which use online representative samples. Learn more about YouGov Surveys: Serviced.