PRESENTED in an unusually-shaped heavy glass bottle with outsized black lettering, it could be a fine vodka. On sale for £80 ($99) in Harrods, an upmarket department store in London, it has a price tag to match. In fact, it is a bottle of water. Harvested directly from Norwegian icebergs that are up to 4,000 years old, Svalbardi is one of hundreds of water brands that are sourced from exotic places and marketed as luxury products.

From the basic to the expensive, the market for bottled water is an attractive place to be. According to Zenith Global, a consulting firm, the global market has grown by 9% annually in recent years and is worth $147bn. The main reason is changing lifestyles. People are spending more time, and eating more of their meals, away from home. They are also switching from soft drinks and alcohol to healthier fare. Data from Beverage Marketing Corporation (BMC), another consultancy, show that consumption of bottled water overtook that of sugary soft drinks in America in 2016 (see chart).

Basic brands, such as Aquafina from PepsiCo, compete on price and have slim margins. (The cost of the raw material, which comes from either natural or municipal sources, is next to nothing; the main costs are packaging, distribution and marketing.) At the other end of the scale, convincing customers to pay a lot should be hard when your product doesn’t have a distinctive taste and an alternative is freely available from the tap in most rich countries. But “premiumisation” is working. Though still a small part of the American market, really high-cost bottled water (selling for more than $1.30 a litre) has been one of its fastest-growing areas, says BMC. Premium water is hardly a new idea. The Perrier brand, which is owned by Nestlé, a Swiss consumer-goods giant, and Evian, owned by Danone, a French one, have long emphasised the uniqueness of their natural sources to sell water. But the newest offerings are promoting a lifestyle. Coca-Cola’s premium water brand, which is advertised by Jennifer Aniston, is marketed as “inspirational” water for successful people. That is also the buzzword for PepsiCo’s LIFEWTR, launched in America with a 30-second ad during last month’s Super Bowl. For the fashion crowd, one range of Evian bottles features artwork from Christian Lacroix.

Adding flavour is another way to dress up water. Grocery stores stock fruit-flavoured waters and “plant” waters, such as coconut, maple or birch. Water that has been fortified with vitamins and minerals is a hit with exercise junkies. The market is small but lucrative: sales of flavoured water amount to only 4% of the volume of plain water sold, according to Zenith, but bring in 15% of the total revenue.

At the luxury end of the market, water has become more like wine, argues Michael Mascha, the author of a guide to fine water. In expensive restaurants the precise origin of water is what matters; many eateries offer water lists along with the wine selection. For power-lunchers in health-conscious Los Angeles, says Mr Mascha, buying an expensive bottle of water is a way to signal status.

High prices can be controversial, given that many people in poor countries have limited access to drinking water and environmental worries dog the industry. Transporting water from exotic places is costly; most plastic bottles languish in landfill sites; and some firms, such as Nestlé, have been accused by environmental groups of monopolising water sources at the expense of local communities, for instance during periods of drought in California. (Nestlé says it monitors environmental conditions around its source springs and that it adheres to sustainable practices.) Many brands address such concerns head-on. Svalbardi water is certified as carbon-neutral, for example; Coca-Cola funds drinking-water projects in Africa.

The thirst for posh water will only deepen, predicts Euromonitor, a market-research firm, as middle-class consumption in poorer countries catches up and as Westerners continue shunning unhealthy soft drinks. If so, the ingenuity seen so far in the bottled-water industry may be just a drip from the iceberg.