Research of Beverage Advertising Strategies:
Taking Nongfu Spring as an Example
Baozhi Zhang
Ruiting Hu
School of Modern Posts,
Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications,
Beijing, China
baozhicheung@foxmail.com
School of Modern Posts,
Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications,
Beijing, China
1277385612@qq.com
Yongqian Wei
School of Modern Posts,
Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications,
Beijing, China
wookyda@outlook.com
Jingji Yang
School of Modern Posts,
Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications,
Beijing, China
1091298709@qq.com
Weiwei Han
School of Modern Posts,
Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications,
Beijing, China
hanweiw@bupt.edu.cn
Abstract—The success of Nongfu Spring is inseparable from
its innovative and diversified advertising methods in the era of
“Internet +”. Through experiments and scientific analysis of
Nongfu Spring's advertising marketing, some advertising
strategies for the beverage consumer market can be summarized.
Firstly, enterprises should learn to use advertising psychological
strategies. Secondly, when design advertising words enterprises
should aim at the consumer's inner demand to give consumers
hints in the streamlined statement. At the same time, combining
with its own strategy, enterprises could use framing effect to set
price. In addition, various enterprise can also use the advantages
of Internet, and combine with the market position of their own
brands to host joint activities to achieve better brand publicity.
Keywords—beverage advertising strategy; brand effect; pricing
strategy; taste test; suggestive effect; framing effect
I. INTRODUCTION
People have been exposed to a lot of advertisements in life.
Advertising is the product of commodity economy. With the
rapid development of commodity economy, advertising has
increasingly become an important measure to promote
marketing. For enterprises, the purpose of researching
advertising strategy is to improve the effectiveness of
advertising, so that enterprises can achieve the best marketing
goals with the lowest advertising costs [1]. If an enterprise
wants to gain more market share, the media advertising will
continue to increase. The competition for advertising resources
is mainly a competition for consumers' attention. This is
directly related to the changes in the market share of each
brand, which directly affects an enterprise’s future. The total
food expenditure is one of the important factors affecting the
Engel coefficient. In the food consumption market in China,
the consumption market for beverages occupies a large part.
Therefore, the question of how to compete for consumers'
attention to gain market share is of great significance in the
beverage consumer market.
Nongfu Spring is a typical example of the successful
beverage enterprises, which succeeds through efficient
advertising. Most of the current research focuses on the
achievements of Nongfu Spring's creative advertising
promotion. The analysis of the innovation and design
motivation of advertising design has been thorough, but the
research on the advertising strategy of beverages is not
comprehensive. Page and Herr argued that product
performance judgment required integrating pieces of
performance information [2]. In the advertisement, Nongfu
Spring uses psychological suggestion according to its own
strategy application, uses the framing effect according to its
pricing strategy, uses the joint activities to increase publicity,
which all reflect the success of its publicity strategy and
information promotion.
This article takes Nongfu Spring as an example to study the
marketing characteristics of successful beverages on the
market. It uses a variety of research methods such as literature,
experiments and questionnaires to observe the innovative
marketing methods of Nongfu Spring and explore how it
establishes a brand image. We also analyze the advantages and
characteristics hidden behind the marketing strategies such as
advertising creativity and advertising methods. Through the
combination of realistic data and theory, we find out the
reasons why Nongfu Spring stood out in the “Internet +” era
and summarize it into some applicable and practical theories,
in hope that the theory is inspiring for the development of
corporate advertising strategies, and is widely used in the
market for beverage marketing, and can also be used as a basis
This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the
Central Universities (2018RC40) and Beijing Natural Science Foundation
(9184028)
978-1-7281-1941-0/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE
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for more in-depth research, which could provide a new idea for
subsequent marketing research.
II. RESEARCH PROCESS AND ANALYSIS
We focus on how Nongfu Spring builds a strong brand
image on certain respects such as the marketing strategy,
pricing strategy and propaganda strategy. Under the condition
of ensuring the number of subjects and experimental rigor, we
use new and scientific research methods to collect and analyze
data.
A. The Impact of Beverage Market Brands on Consumer
Purchasing Decisions.
According to Samuel M. McClure, Jian Li et cetera, we
known that brand knowledge for one of the drinks had a
dramatic influence on expressed behavioral preferences and on
the measured brain responses [3]. Therefore, in order to
explore the impact of Nongfu Spring's brand image on
consumer purchasing decisions, we designed and implemented
a brand effect experiment. This experiment consists of three
sub-experiments. In each sub-study, we prepared two glasses
of mineral water for the subjects, and the subjects chose their
favorite cup by tasting.
In sub-experiment A, each subject tasted two glasses of
water, respectively, and the two glasses of water did not
indicate the corresponding drinking water brand. The water in
glass 1 was Nongfu Spring and the second glass was C’est Bon.
Fig. 1. Sub-experiment A
The experimental results showed that in sub-experiment A,
60% of people think that the C’est Bon mineral water in the
glass 2 has a better taste.
In sub-experiment B, each subject tasted two glasses of
water, respectively, and the two glasses of water indicated the
corresponding drinking water brand.
Fig. 2. Sub-experiment B
The experimental results show that in sub-experiment B,
70% of people think that the mineral water of Nongfu Spring
is better than C’est Bon.
In sub-experiment C, each subject tasted two glasses of
water respectively. The glass 1 indicated the corresponding
drinking water brand, which was Nongfu Spring. The glass 2
did not indicate the brand, but the water in it was still Nongfu
Spring.
Fig. 3. Sub-experiment C
The results of the experiment showed that after drinking
the water, 70% of the mineral water in the two glasses of
Nongfu Springs felt that the mineral water in the glass 1
marked with the Nongfu Spring sign was better.
From sub-experiment A, we can see that the taste of
Nongfu Spring is not the best in mineral water. Comparing
sub-experiment A with sub-experiment B, we found that after
knowing the brand of mineral water, more people turned to
think that the taste of Nongfu Spring was better. Similarly, in
sub-experiment C, the same two glasses of water, after
learning that one of these was Nongfu Spring, everyone felt
that the taste of that glass of water was better, and even some
of the subjects firmly believed that that glass of water was
sweeter and has a finer taste. From this, we can see that the
inherent impression of Nongfu Spring in the public is "a bit
sweet" and the recognition is very high.
Based on the above three experiments, we can see that the
key to the success of Nongfu Spring is not the taste of its
mineral water, but its successful advertising plan and
marketing strategy, as well as the successful brand image.
From the perspective of consumer psychology, Nongfu
Spring's advertisement will give consumers psychological
hints, especially the series of advertisements for the quality of
mineral water, such as the “Nongfu Spring is a little sweet”,
suggesting that the taste of the water is sweet. And the water
quality is healthy, natural, and non-polluting. The goal is to
appeal to consumers who are pursuing health and pursuing a
taste. It is a better choice for them to prefer Nongfu Spring. In
addition, the water source propaganda film and the design of
the new packaging are subtly conveying its natural and healthy
product concept. In general, it is its brand image that allows
consumers to choose Nongfu Spring when they consume
different mineral waters.
B. The Impact of Commodity Pricing on Consumer
Purchasing Decision
When consumers’ cognitive resources were limited, they
tended to use automatic, affective processes over thoughtful,
cognitive ones [4]. In addition, because of the cognitive
burden, automatic emotional process is more dominant than
rational cognitive process [5]. The framing effect is a typical
example of the automatic emotional process. In order to study
the impact of the framing effect embodied in pricing on
consumer purchasing decisions, we did the following
experiment:
First of all, we only provide two kinds of mineral water
with different prices to the subjects, one is priced at 1 yuan
and the other is 2 yuan. The subjects need to choose one of
the two mineral waters as their final decision.
Fig. 4. Two different price waters prepared for the subjects in the first part of
the experiment
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The experimental results show that 33.33% of the people
chose mineral water for 1 yuan, 66.67% chose 2 yuan of
mineral water, and the weighted average treatment result of the
subjects which represent the price consumers are willing to pay
when purchasing a bottle of mineral water were
33.33%×1+66.67%×2=1.6667yuan
Fig. 5. The result of the first part of the experiment
Next, we added a third kind of mineral water with a price
of 4 yuan to the subject's choice. At this time, the subjects can
choose one kind of water from mineral waters with the price of
1 yuan, 2 yuan, and 4 yuan respectively.
Fig. 6. Three different price waters prepared for the subjects in the second part
of the experiment
The experimental results show that 16.67% of the people
chose mineral water for 1 yuan, 77.08% chose 2 yuan of
mineral water, 6.25% chose 4 yuan of mineral water. And this
time, the weighted average treatment result of the subjects is
16.67%×1+77.08%×2+6.25%×4=1.9583yuan
water rose from 1.67 yuan to 1.96 yuan. In fact, the natural
drinking water of Nongfu Spring was priced at 2 yuan.
Nongfu Spring uses the launching of mineral water for 4
yuan to pull customers from other brands with low price
advantages to their own brands. For Nongfu Spring, whose
price is almost higher than the average market price, it greatly
reduced the impact which came from its price disadvantage on
its sales. According to Nielsen-CCData, since Nongfu Springs
launched a mineral water price of 4 yuan in 2015, its sales
volume has ranked first from the third in 2016, which is
consistent with the conclusions of our experiments. In this era
when most manufacturers use price wars to attract customers,
this pricing technique of Nongfu Spring is to describe the price
of Nongfu Spring from another angle, making the pricing of
natural drinking water look more reasonable. Thereby guide
consumers to make an economic "irrational" choice in the
purchase decision of mineral water.
C. The Impact of Corporate Propaganda on Consumer
Purchasing Decisions
Based on daily observations, we found that there is a
certain correlation between “whether the advertisement affects
the purchase decision” and “whether the mineral water
package will be selected” when the consumers purchase the
mineral water. That is, most consumers who will be affected
by the advertisement will make purchase decisions according
to commodity packaging. To verify this conjecture, we
distributed questionnaires to college students and social
workers to investigate the characteristics of the more preferred
mineral water.
A total of 164 valid questionnaires were collected in this
survey, including 92 males and 72 females. Conduct a
preliminary analysis of the questionnaire, we found that
50.61% of the participants will choose the water according to
its outer packaging when buying mineral water, but the
subjects who do not require external packaging are also up to
49.39%. More than 60% of the participants believe that the
advertisements launched by mineral water manufacturers will
affect their purchasing decisions. Nearly 60% of the
participants will choose the taste of water which they like
while purchase. More than 40% of the participants thought that
they could not distinguish the difference in the taste of mineral
water. 25.61% of the respondents thought that they liked the
joint venture of mineral water brands and other brands, and
67.07% said it doesn't matter.
Fig. 7. The result of the second part of the experiment
From that, we can find the choice of subjects has changed
significantly when we added a third type of mineral water that
sells for 4 yuan to subjects' choices. The proportion of people
who chose to 1 yuan of mineral water dropped from 33.33% to
16.67%, while the proportion of people who chose to 2 yuan of
mineral water rose to 77.08%. The average price that the
subjects were willing to pay for buying a bottle of mineral
Fig. 8. Questionnaire data
Further analysis of the data, we found some new
conclusions.
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We conducted a correlation analysis on some
characteristics of the “mineral brand that is popular with
consumers”. After eliminating the meaningless data, we found
that “consumers have selected the mineral water outsourcing”
and “advertising will affect consumers' purchase of mineral
water have a significant correlation at the 0.01 level, and the
Pearson correlation coefficient is .338**. There are also
significant correlations between the “Advertising will affect
consumers’ decision to purchase mineral water” and “Looking
at the joint venture between mineral water brands and other
manufacturers” at the 0.01 lever, too. And the Pearson
correlation coefficient is .279**.
TABLE 1.
The correlation of packaging and advertising
Correlation
Will you choose
mineral water
packaging ?
Will you choose
mineral water
packaging ?
Does ad affect
your buying
decisions ?
1
Pearson
Correlation
.338**
0.000
Sig. (2-tailed)
164
164
.338**
1
N
Pearson
Correlation
0.000
Does ad affect your
Sig. (2-tailed)
buying decisions ?
164
N
164
**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed)
TABLE 2.
The correlation of joint event and advertising
Correlation
The joint venture
between mineral
water producer and
other producer
Does ad affect
your buying
decisions ?
Pearson
Correlation
Does ad affect your
buying decisions ?
1
0.000
Sig. (2-tailed)
N
Pearson
Correlation
The joint venture
between mineral water
Sig. (2-tailed)
producer and other
producer
.279**
164
164
.279**
1
widely known, while also making the ads more individualized
and diverse. And enhance the publicity effect at the same time.
In “Internet +” era, a network that spreads extremely fast can
increase the attention of both partners of the joint activities,
attracting the attention of the wider consumers and creating
their stronger desires to buy.
III. CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION
A. Main Conclusion
Take example for Nongfu Spring, this paper studies and
compares the results of the above experiments, as well as the
data analysis of the questionnaire, and finally draws the
following conclusions for the beverage market:
First, enterprises should do a good job in brand positioning,
grasp one or several important characteristics of its brand,
determine the target group, and then design a suitable
advertising slogan, packaging, etc. according to the positioning
under a large framework, best to have a certain suggestive
effect, in order to establish a good brand image in the minds of
consumers, so that their share of mind is effectively and
steadily improved.
Second, in addition to considering cost factors, enterprises
should use appropriate techniques such as the framing effect to
appropriately induce consumers after combined with its own
development strategies. For the beverage market, the mineral
water itself is small in quality elasticity, its substitutability is
weak, and the overall average price is low, which results in a
weak marginal effect. The price difference of 1 yuan or even
0.5 yuan can tremendously influence the final decision of the
consumers. Therefore, each enterprise should first formulate a
reasonable price range based on the existing price levels of the
market, and then price it within the range. Even when
necessary, enterprise can extend its product line to make the
commodity’s price seems more reasonable.
B. Discussion
This indicates that consumers who are susceptible to
advertising will also pay attention to the joint activities of the
enterprise. Enterprises can launch their joint activities which
combines with their advertisement, so that the activities can be
widely known, while also making the ads more individualized
and diverse. And enhance the publicity effect at the same time.
In “Internet +” era, a network that spreads extremely fast can
increase the attention of both partners of the joint activities,
attracting the attention of the wider consumers and creating
their stronger desires to buy.
0.000
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164
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**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed)
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