US light beer segment now totals less than 50% of overall beer consumption, as most of its major brands struggle to gain any traction in spite of significant investment in marketing and promotional support, according to new report

Nevin Barich

DUBLIN , August 23, 2013 (press release) – Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/8nlsq8/usa_beer_market) has announced the addition of Canadean Ltd's new report "USA Beer Market Insights 2013" to their offering.

This report comprises of high level market research data on the United States beer industry. The report covers total market (on- and off-premise) and includes valuable insight and analysis on beer market trends, brands, brewers, packaging, distribution channels, market valuation and pricing.

Key Features and Benefits:

This report provides readers with an excellent way of gaining a thorough understanding of the dynamics and structure of the United States Beer industry. Data includes volumes from 2008 to 2012 plus forecasts for 2013, enabling historical and current trend analysis.

This report provides readers with in-depth market segmentation: mainstream, premium, super premium, discount, alcoholic strength, local segmentation, beer type.

This report provides data and analysis of the performance of both domestic and imported brands and reports on new product activity in 2012.

This report provides an analysis of industry structure, reports on company volumes and contains brewer profiles for major brewers

This report provides distribution channel data (on- vs off-premise) and discusses the latest trends in the key sub-channels. Packaging data includes consumption volumes by pack material, type, size, refillable vs non-refillable, multi-serve vs single serve. Market valuation data and pricing data, including beer consumption by price segment/distribution channel and selected consumer beer prices are also included.

Key Market Issues:

Over many years the US beer market has become overly dependent upon a handful of top-selling mega brands and the micro brewery scene has provided an alternative to this and shown that consumers are interested in new, innovative beers..

Within the core beer market segments new products made a significant contribution to the turnaround in the fortunes of the beer market. For example the success of Bud Light Platinum in its first year helped to stem the decline of light beer consumption.

However most of the larger and more established beer brands experienced another year of quite significant declines as unemployment, underemployment and continuing pressures on household incomes among blue-collar workers once again curtailed discretionary spending by the nations core beer drinkers.

In spite of an explosion of new craft brands coming onto the US beer market over recent years, it still remains dominated by a relatively small number of national brands: just 10 top-selling names accounted for over 60% of all consumption in 2012. However, what is clear is that this dominance is steadily but surely being eroded

One of the most impressive features of the US beer market is the high level of import penetration with two of the top 10 brands being shipped in from overseas rather than being produced locally. Corona Extra has grown to be the largest of these with a market share of almost 4%.

Key Highlights:

The huge Light segment lost share and volume as most of its major brands struggled to gain any traction in spite of significant investment in marketing and promotional support. Light Beer is now down to under 50% of consumption.

New product success was not enough to prevent A-BInBev or MillerCoors sales and share from sliding further during the year though the two companies still hold almost two thirds of all US beer sales. Each company has been steadily building its presence in the craft beer segment in order to bolster its portfolio. As well as the overall beer market growing in 2012, per capita consumption also grew after years of decline. Despite volume loses the leading brewers were able to increase their profitability during the year thanks to further bouts of cost-cutting and another round of above inflation price increases from October. Imports grew their share of consumption for the fourth straight year rising to almost 15% of sales with much of the growth driven by new introductions including a rapid expansion of sales from countries and less traditional beer exporters which have hitherto not enjoyed a significant share of US sales.

Brewer Profiles

Anheuser-Busch Inbev (A-Binbev)

Anheuser-Busch Brand Volumes, 2008-2012

Boston Beer Company

Boston Beer Co. Brand Volumes, 2008-2012

Millercoors

Millercoors Brand Volumes, 2008-2012

North American Breweries

North American Breweries Brand Volumes, 2008-2012

Pabst Brewing Company

Pabst Brand Volumes, 2008-2012

D G Yuengling And Son

Yuengling Brewery Brand Volumes, 2008-2012

Smaller Brewers/Importers

Crown Imports Llc

Craft Brew Alliance

Diageo-Guinness United States

Heineken United States

F X Matt Brewing Company

Sierra Nevada Brewing Company

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/8nlsq8/usa_beer_market