In the Chinese health tea market, there are five main consumer categories: bottled beverages, brewing powders, solid pastes, tea bags, and on-site brewing. Tea bags are more popular among consumers, accounting for 45.9% of consumption. Health tea has a wide range of consumer groups and the categories are becoming more diversified. Each category has its own vertical segmented products, such as tea bags can be divided into bulk health tea bags or hanging ear health tea bags. The health tea industry has a variety of products and is showing a trend of diversification.
Among the consumers of health tea, female users are the majority, and nearly half of the respondents are between 36 and 55 years old. The main audience of health tea is still the middle-aged and elderly group. At the same time, 37.6% of the respondents are in the 25-35 age range, which is a young user group, and 48.8% of the young group said that their willingness to consume in the future will increase, and the young user group has gradually become an important consumer force for health tea. With the popularity of health culture and the rise of new generation consumption power, the trend of younger users has become inevitable, prompting health tea merchants to innovate brands, products and services to cope with market changes.
At present, the top three brands of tea bags among Chinese consumers are Tongrentang, Fumingyuan and Yijiangnan. Among the many tea bag companies, leading companies represented by Tongrentang have many categories and high popularity; companies focusing on tea bag health drinks of scented tea, represented by Yijiangnan and Haoshangni, have high sales volume and high verticality of single products; emerging brands represented by Chali are committed to developing the young consumer market, specializing in triangular original leaf tea bags, and their health tea field is also developing rapidly. Compared with other sub-tracks, the richness and diversity of health granules and health paste categories still need to be further expanded and improved. However, some representative brands have emerged in the market, such as Cao Jinghua, which focuses on broken wall health herbal drinks, and Tongrentang, a century-old enterprise.
The approval of the national policy on "medicine and food are of the same origin" and the expansion of laws and regulations, coupled with the rising demand for national health care, have led many companies to enter the health care bottled beverage track. For example, Yuanqi Forest, a well-known company that has been deeply involved in sugar-free tea drinks, has also begun to gradually develop a series of health care tea products. iiMedia Research Consulting analysts believe that the products on the market are mainly concentrated in red bean Huimi, red dates, wolfberry, mung bean soup and other categories of beverages. The trend of beverage homogeneity is becoming more and more obvious. Forming a differentiated competitive advantage in the product field will become a winning point for companies.
Store-made health care tea refers to health care tea with the same origin of medicine and food that is made and sold in offline professional stores. It includes not only traditional herbal tea stores, but also new health care tea stores that have become popular. Compared with ordinary beverage stores that sell coffee and milk tea, new health care tea stores have stronger health attributes, providing new choices for young people to buy offline beverages, and have become the "new favorite" of the tea beverage capital market. Many health tea companies have achieved comprehensive upgrades in the industry chain system from field to table, including raw material planting, procurement, transportation logistics, medicinal material processing, scientific research and development, distribution and transportation, marketing promotion, channel sales, etc., through innovation in the entire industry chain, to improve the quality of health tea products, stimulate consumer vitality, and expand the health tea consumption track.
Consumers mainly learn about and purchase health tea through comprehensive e-commerce platforms, short video platforms and social e-commerce platforms; consumers purchase health tea on comprehensive e-commerce platforms, accounting for the largest proportion of 71.2%, followed by live e-commerce platforms and community e-commerce platforms, accounting for 49.5% and 42.4% respectively. With the increase in the penetration rate of the online economy, the e-commerce industry has developed rapidly, and new models such as "e-commerce +" have emerged in an endless stream. China's e-commerce market has shown strong potential and vitality, and will accelerate the pace of digital transformation of physical business of health tea.
