Sugar-free drinks have exploded in popularity in recent years. Have you launched any new products?

In recent years, sugar-free drinks have become popular, and sugar-free tea has changed from "the most difficult drink" to "the top stream" in the minds of consumers, gaining a large number of young fans. It is worth paying attention to that Japan and South Korea, which have similar standard tea culture and habits, still have a large space to expand the domestic sugar-free tea market.

In 2023, the retail sales of sugar-free tea in Japan will account for 82.5% of the total retail sales of tea, while South Korea will account for 79.1%, close to Japan. In 2023, the retail sales of sugen-free tea in China will account for only 9.5% of the total retail sales of tea drinks, which still has a significant gap with Japan and South Korea.

So, how do the head of sugar-free tea enterprises see today's bottled sugar-free ready-drink tea market?

"Referring to the development experience of the Japanese beverage market since 1985, we observed that the continuous growth of sugar-free and low-sugar products did not replace the original share of sugar-sweetened beverages, but opened up an incremental market, thus bringing the overall beverage market to a new stage of development," said Tetsuho Kikuchi, managing director of Suntori (China) Investment Co., LTD. In 2025, the sugar-free tea market may usher in a "fierce battle moment". Suntory, which is optimistic about the continuous growth of sugar-free drinks, has also changed its "way of selling", and announced nearly 10 new products in a rare breath at the dealer conference on January 13.

After sorting out these new products, we find that sugar-free drinks represented by sugar-free tea are still the innovation focus of Suntory. Behind these specific product innovations, we see refined consumer demand for sugar-free drinks.

In 2022, the demand for healthy drinks will rise. Through the analysis of a large number of consumer reviews, it can be found that in the concept of "health without burden", consumers focus on "0 sugar", "0 fat", "natural raw materials" and so on. In this trend, beverage giants and capital have entered the market, intensive online with all kinds of "0" declared as a selling point of "0 series" products.

With the development of the market, "three zero" has become the "basic requirement", and consumers begin to put forward more refined demands. Creativity and fun are increasingly important in product innovation, and consumers are eager to explore unexpected flavors. According to Innova Market Insights' Top 10 Global Food and Beverage Trends 2025, the third trend is flavor creation. [5]

In response to these trends, sugar-free tea has also had a more diversified and segmented development direction, and brands have begun to innovate from multiple dimensions such as tea species and category expansion, flavor innovation, and segmentation scenes.

From this dealer conference, we found that Suntory is pushing forward the development direction of this refined innovation. Brands not only focus on the number of new products, but also adhere to the value innovation of consumer demand first, and pursue equal emphasis on quantity and quality.

In this paper, we will discuss how Suntory, as a leading enterprise of sugar-free tea, uses its development experience in Japan to promote the localization innovation of sugar-free tea in China and meet the segmented needs of consumers. Suntory keeps up with the market trend of health care explosion and launches new products. How to explore new growth points with the help of refined new product innovation strategy?