Beer industry pushes high price products in disguise

As consumers pay more and more attention to price issues, fast-moving consumer goods companies have become cautious in adjusting prices. The beer industry, which has been recognized as the lowest profit in the wine industry, although the industry believes that this year's price increase trend is inevitable, There has been no news of massive price increases in the market.

Earlier this year, the National Development and Reform Commission interviewed various industry associations and leading companies to express their determination to stabilize prices. They criticized the liquor industry's changing prices in turns, but expressed appreciation for beer companies' rising costs and appropriate price increases. The industry generally believes that the NDRC's position has acquiesced in the beer price increase, but beer companies invariably chose silence.

In this regard, the industry analysts said that in fact, beer prices have always existed, but did not take the traditional means to increase product prices in the terminal. From the perspective of the market share of different grades of products, according to monitoring data provided by the Business Research Institute of Suisse, the share of products below RMB 3 is gradually shrinking nationwide; correspondingly, the share of products over RMB 6 is expanding year by year. . According to the latest data, as of the first half of this year, the market share of beer below 3 yuan/bottle has fallen from 32.7% in 2009 to 18.6%. At the same time, the share of 6 yuan/bottle or more has risen from 19.0% to 24.0%. Analysts pointed out that the market share of high-priced products (6 yuan/bottle or more) has increased significantly in all major channels, while low-priced products (3 yuan/bottle or less) have generally shrunk. This shows that the rise in the price of beer products is a common phenomenon in all retail terminals.

In addition, some analysts have pointed out that since the beginning of this year, the “miniaturization” of the packaging of beverage products on the retail market has become a trend, and beer products are actually the originators of “downsizing” behavior. Today, this kind of "downsizing" of product capacity, but not reducing the corresponding price of "disguised price increase" behavior is widely adopted by all walks of life. Susette data show that from the two indicators of product launch and market share, the signs of shrinking “big pack” products are very clear. Taking bottled products with a capacity of more than 600 milliliters as an example, in 2009, the market share of such products was still 18.8%, and by the end of this year it had dropped to 6.6%.

In response, industry insiders stated that under the current inflation background, consumers are becoming more and more sensitive to product prices. It is no longer a wise choice to reduce the company’s own cost pressure by increasing product prices. Beer companies are a kind of small profits. In the industry, the price of product must be increased to a large extent to truly achieve the purpose of “high profit”. However, this is often unacceptable to consumers. Therefore, companies are not afraid to take risks and take various implicit price increases.