The Beer Market: global overview of a dynamic and giant market

38 litres a year: this is the average beer consumption of a French individual, way behind Czech people who hold the highest consumption in the world with 160 litres a year. In store, we, as consumers, can notice how important this market is by the diversity of brands and types of beer which are proposed to us. Highly competitive, the beer market is the second market of drinks behind the tea market and is the scene where fight a few but very big international companies. Constantly in search for more market shares, these MNCs display a lot of different methods from big scale communication campaigns of their respective brands to important strategic decisions such as the recent acquisition of the Korean leader Oriental brewery by the leader Anheuser-Busch InBev. Although the market is weakening in Western Europe, the size of the brewery market is still growing and should reach 217 billion litres in 2016, partly due to the Asian market progression.

Regarding this blog, we will focus on the French market which is, geographically speaking, the closest to us. In France, beer is mainly sold through Mass Market (70%), and a small part concerns out-of-home consumption (restaurants, bars, etc.). The French market represents a challenging situation for brands as it is declining since a couple of years. Brands must then stretch their imagination to offer a wider range of products, innovate, and differentiate their communication strategy toward their consumers in order to re-galvanize the market and therefore, stole market shares from their competitors. Obviously, the trend has been to offer new kind of beers with different flavours and mixed with other alcohol. Best examples being Desperados and Skoll, each of the innovations coming with its own positioning and universe. To satisfy the French consumer which is always more demanding, brands are offering more sophisticated products and invest more money into communication and marketing. This market is therefore more challenging for managers that need to focus on how to stand out against competitive brands which will consist on anticipating each one’s moves, reply to huge advertising campaigns and put the final consumers on the centre of their reflexions.