Chinese Beverage Shoppers Increasingly Prefer High-End Bottled Waters

China’s upscale beverage buyers are turning away from sugar-sweetened soft drinks toward more healthful bottled water. Over the past half-decade, the bottled water market in China grew 12 percent a year on average, to a current value of $9.1 billion. It is forecast to reach $13.3 billion by 2021. Consumers are not just buying more bottled water (i.e., 25,906 million liters in 2016), they are buying premium, high-end brands considered healthier and better tasting. High-end brands are grabbing an increasingly larger share of the leading category: 400- to 800-milliliter sizes.