I think the marketing differentiation works best when it is driven by factors that are hard to measure and control, but that are perceived as high value, like flavour and style. When buying bottled water, the water is free, you're buying the bottle, the refrigeration, then real-estate & inventory space, and you can compare it on those dimensions, but if you are sensitive to the taste that can override the other factors. With cola it is much much stronger because the taste is more intense and your body is conditioned to link it to the sugar and caffeine hitting the bloodstream which gives you that immediate Pavlovian response. But taking something low-cost and using human psychology to assign a high value is how marketing makes profit. As opposed to the prosaic side of marketing where you're just letting people know you exist.
> but if you are sensitive to the taste that can override the other factors.
I can taste the difference between certain bottled water brands and that really is the number one concern for me. The differences are much less apparent to me with spring water than in the filtered tap water brands like Dasani and Aquafina (who often add salt and other minerals). For spring water brands I try to buy ones that aren't owned by Nestlé but that's not because of the product itself.
Spring water I've encountered at the source has always been exceptionally clear. That's sort of the thing about slowly passing through layers and layers of rock - mud doesn't get through.
And around here anything labeled natural mineral water must by law come with nothing added or removed (bar co2). Of course that will differ by region.
I don't have a strong preference between different brands of water, or between Pepsi and Coke. But that doesn't mean I can't taste the difference. Dasani is almost as distinctive a taste as Coke.
No, although I might have seen it. Nestlé has a long history of problems from the questionable exploitation of water resources, profiting from child/slave labor, unethically promoting infant formula over breast milk in developing countries, anti-union/labor practices, pushing for the privatization of public water access ("access to water should not be a public right."), promoting deforestation and the destruction of protected land, greenwashing the impact of plastic bottles, and that's not even all of the ethically questionable things they've done. Just as I was looking up the exact quote of from their chairman and then CEO I'm learning for the first time of complaints about their use of (and lies concerning) palm oil and their demand of £3.7m from Ethiopia while they were in the midst of a famine.
They clearly put their own profits over the lives and safety of people. I'm not taking to the streets in protest or starting facebook groups or anything, but where I can get a comparable alternative to their products I'll go out of my way to spend my money there so that I'm not supporting them.
I completely agree and there are definitely variations based on the mineral content of the source. For me, I can't stand arrowhead water because it tastes salty to me. I think a lot of it has to do with how local water supplies shape our concept of the taste of water.
