Even if Innocent is pretty great, they're not alone in the Smoothie industry

 

Innocent places itself on two distinct markets: the fresh juice and smoothies markets. In the mid 2000’s customers witnessed a real boom and incredibly rapid growth of the smoothies industry. It made up 17% of the near £1bn UK juice market in 2004, meaning the opportunities for Innocent are huge.

 

Regarding the fresh juices market, Innocent finds itself in competition with giants of the industry such as PepsiCo who own both Tropicana and Copella. One of Innocent’s CEOs, Richard Reed, said that Innocent is “going with a promise of taste, quality and ethics, while Pepsi is about cheaper prices”. This provides an essential differentiating factor and delivering value for consumers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Over the years, and especially since 2004, consumers have begun to become more and more conscious about health and food goodness, this explains the huge market share of smoothies among the juice market. In this respect, Innocent was one the first companies to take advantage of this trend beginning in 1999, although competition was not far behind them. That is why competitors such as Froosh (a Swedish based company launched in late 2004) or Michel et Augustin (based in Paris since 2004 but started international exportation less than three years later) have soon emerged on the market.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Indeed, those two brands can be closely related to Innocent in the way they approach customer relationships, communication, packaging, marketing, sustainable actions, environment and social involvement but mostly, because they define themselves as premium quality products as well.

 

We believe that when Innocent first entered the market in 1999, they identified an opportunity using the Blue Ocean Strategy (Kim and Mauborgne 2005). Unlike those already in the market, Innocent wanted to create a product using 100% fresh fruit juices and no concentrates as these contain far more sugar and less fruit. After being told by the supply chains early on that this wasn’t feasible and you need concentrates to boost shelf life, they were determined to do it right, and to this very day, they still use 100% fresh fruit. This core concept is what sets Innocent out from the rest of its competitors and provided it with a Blue Ocean Strategy for the first 10 years of its life.

 

It is no wonder that new competitors continue to be ever increasing in this market since the consumer remains highly food conscious and thus, is looking for goodness and natural and healthy products. The growing trend of cooking at home, cooking TV shows or contests, health campaigns and existing healthy brands are only going to motivate new competitors entering the race.

 

Innocent’s Value Strategy Chart according to Kim and Mauborgne (2005)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We based this analysis on four distinct characteristics valued by Innocent drinks:

- Healthiness of the product

- Sustainability and environmental impact of the product and the company

- Quality assurance

- Child friendly

We believe that Innocent is prevailing on almost every one of these elements compared to Tropicana or Froosh. However Froosh places itself as a solid competitor for environmental awareness due to its sustainability ethos. In terms of pricing, Froosh and Innocent are similar, but Innocent still holds a clear competitive advantage over Froosh as it delivers higher overall value to the consumer for a similar price point.