All Things Being Equal

Abstract

While many consumers enjoy beer, wine and spirits and while many restaurant professionals believe they understand the differences among the three categories, myths and misconceptions abound within the field of beverage alcohol. By observing the production processes for each category it is evident that beer, wine and spirits are more alike than different and consumer preferences and foodservice recommendations should focus on taste, price, food selection and other subjective factors rather than misinformation as to essential nature. Physiological reactions to alcohol beverages are predicated more on the number of ethyl alcohol molecules ingested than on chosen beverage category. As production processes evidence, standard servings of 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of table wine and 1.5 ounces of 80 proof distilled spirits contain equivalent amounts of chemically identical alcohol. Restaurant personnel should observe drinking patterns of beer and wine consumers as closely as spirits drinkers for adverse consequences.     

The Effect of Advertising on the Total Consumption of Alcoholic Drinks in the United Kingdom: Some Econometric Estimates

This paper reports upon an econometric investigation, using aggregate time series data, of the influence of prices, income and advertising upon the demand for alcoholic drink in the UK. The demand for alcoholic drink as a whole is studied initially, and then the analysis is disaggregated to the more detailed level of beer, spirits and wine, taken separately. Income appears to have a marked effect on the demand for these products, and price elasticities are in most cases low.

There is no evidence of a link between total advertising and the total consumption of all alcoholic drinks, spirits or wine. For beer, the evidence on the demand—advertising relationship is ambiguous but, for reasons discussed in the paper, there must be considerable doubt that beer advertising has had an expansionary effect on total beer consumption.     

Changes and trends in alcohol consumption patterns in Europe

Consumer behaviourists and consumer policy-makers are interested in the degree to which global convergence is occurring for various consumer behaviour dimensions, the extent to which the consumption patterns in different parts of the world are becoming similar and the extent to which these trends may be influenced and/or influence consumer policy. With increasing internationalization and cultural cross-fertilization, the industrialized societies of the world are converging in many ways. Shifts in alcohol consumption patterns in Europe over the past 50 years represent a case in point. As traditional cultural boundaries become blurred, consumer preferences for alcoholic beverages appear to be driven less by long-standing local and regional traditions and more by growing acceptance of a wider choice. The disparity in total alcohol consumption among the 15 countries studied has also decreased. Other powerful forces are likely to accelerate the pace of convergence in the future.     

Advertising and Alcohol Demand in the UK: Further Results

Johnson (1985) presents a system-wide analysis on the effects of advertising on the demand for beer, wine and spirits in the UK. However, his results are not consistent with other studies in the area. This paper shows that his results can be improved by using a different demand equation for the alcoholic beverages group. Furthermore, this paper also considers the analysis of treating advertising as a stock rather than a flow. This analysis reveals that advertising on beer, wine and spirits depreciates in consumers' minds fully within a year.     

A new full‐nest classification approach

This study conceptually and empirically develops an improved approach for classifying full‐nest households. Unlike existing life‐cycle models, this study separates traditional full‐nest couples who marry and have children at a young age from those who delay marriage and childbearing until their 30s. Nontraditional delayed full‐nest spouses held nontraditional sex role norms and values and experienced greater work and time pressures. They also consumed more healthy foods and beverages, avoided convenience and junk foods, but consumed more meals prepared away from home, as well as alcoholic beverages, than their traditional counterparts. While extant life‐cycle approaches use age of head of household to separate school‐age and older full‐nest families, this study uses the transitions of the youngest child to school age, and then to teenage years. This distinction more effectively captures life‐style and consumption differences than does the traditional life‐cycle approach. Overall, this new full‐nest classification scheme outperforms existing life‐cycle approaches in identifying unique sex‐role norms and values profiles as well as household food and beverage consumption patterns. It also captures meaningful and significant differences, in dollar values of home entertainment devices and furniture and of major durable assets not uncovered by previous research. Based on these findings, it is recommended that this full‐nest classification approach be incorporated into extant life‐cycle models. © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

An Investigation of the Relationship Between Need for Affect and Responses to Alcohol Public Service Announcements

ABSTRACT

The study investigates the impact of the Need for Affect personality construct on the processing of advertisements. The purpose of the present study is to gain a better understanding of how need for cognition, sensation seeking, and affect intensity as well as prior product use influence consumer responses to public service announcements. Specifically, the study attempts to improve the understanding of factors that should be considered in efforts to successfully demarket alcohol abuse among college students. The variables of need for cognition, sensation seeking, affect intensity, prior product use, memory of the advertising message, attitude toward the ad, intention to behave, and behavior are linked to create a multidimensional model. Results of the study indicate that high levels of sensation seeking and prior product use are the best predictors of behavior involving the specific product of alcoholic beverages. Need for cognition and affect intensity are not good predictors of behavior involving the specific product of alcoholic beverages. Sensation seeking is also an important indicator for prior product use of alcoholic beverages and intention to buy and consume alcoholic beverages. Although affect intensity does not have a significant effect on behavior, it does have a significant effect on memory of the advertising message.     

Convergence in global markets and consumer behaviour

Consumer behavioural scientists such as economists and marketing researchers are interested in the degree to which global convergence is occurring with respect to various consumer behaviour dimensions, particularly the extent that consumption patterns in products appear to evolve and become more similar across different parts of the world. With increasing internationalization and cultural cross‐fertilization, the traditional societies of the world are converging in many ways. The strategic marketing of flavoured alcoholic beverages is a particularly interesting example of this evolutionary process to convergence. Consumers in countries of different cultural originations are developing preferences for the same products and show increasing sign of converging around global product identity. This article presents the results of a study analysing the evolutionary process.     

Alternative Econometric Estimates of the Effect of Advertising on the Demand for Alcoholic Beverages in the United Kingdom

Using, for the first time, a system-wide approach to analysing the impact of brand advertising on generic demand and applying this new technique to the UK market for alcoholic beverages, the author finds that wine advertising has a significant impact but that spirits advertising has none.     

Lifestyle and Demographic Influences on Females' Consumption of Alcoholic Beverages

Using responses to a national survey, levels of consumption of beer, wine and spirits were related to life-style, age, education, and income. The findings suggest different sets of factors are linked to consumption levels for the various beverages, but that most life-style variables are of limited value in predicting higher levels of consumption. Implications to advertising are highlighted.     

What are you?: pragmatic,self-confident, #hashtag or a vital senior? Using marketing to curb alcoholism and encourage healthy consumption!

From a public administration approach, alcohol consumption is responsible for 3.8% of overall mortality. From a private approach, companies in the alcohol industry are faced with increasing competition, which forces them to focus their business more while promoting responsible consumption.

In this scene, an empirical investigation was carried out to determine the individual and environmental factors with most impact on alcohol consumption in the Spanish market. 1031 valid responses were obtained. Using multivariate techniques, four different consumer groups of highly alcoholic vs. slightly alcoholic beverages were identified: Pragmatic group; Self-confident group; #hashtag group and Vital Seniors group. Based on the variables (individual and environmental) that significantly define each cluster, two groups of managerial implications were stated: (i) four to recommend private managers how to reach each cluster of alcohol consumers; (ii) three to recommend public authorities how to deal with the most problematic areas (curb alcoholism & encourage healthy consumption).     

Context effects of TV programme-induced interactivity and telepresence on advertising responses

This article provides an analysis of the relationship between annual advertising expenditures and sales, using a time series regression procedure, for beer, wine, and liquor sold in the United States from 1971 to 2012. Information from these four decades provides a comprehensive analysis of the relationships of numerous variables with aggregate alcohol category sales. Even though per capita alcohol consumption has not changed much throughout this period, alcohol advertising media expenditures for all alcohol beverages have increased almost 400% since 1971. This study has provided evidence of consumption changes across categories of alcohol beverages over the past 40-plus years with the preponderance of those changes significantly correlated to fluctuations in demography, taxation and income levels – not advertising. Despite other macro-level studies with consistent findings, the perception that advertising increases consumption exists. The findings here indicate that there is either no relationship or a weak one between advertising and aggregate category sales. Therefore, advertising restrictions or bans with the purpose of reducing consumption may not have the desired effect. Implications on policy decisions regarding advertising controls are addressed.     

Rational Addiction and Alcohol Consumption: Evidence from the Nordic countries

The purpose of this paper is to test Becker and Murphy's (1988) rational addiction model on 35 years of time series data on alcohol consumption in each of the four Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. The empirical relevance of rational addiction theory is assessed by examining the influence of past and future consumption and contemporaneous prices on current consumption. More precisely, the rational addiction model maintains that past and future consumption should have a positive effect and that current price should have the conventional negative effect on consumption. In addition, some parameter restrictions (regarding past and future prices and consumption) implied by rational addiction are tested. Finally, the own-price elasticities from rational addiction specifications are compared to those obtained from more conventional demand specifications which ignore addiction. Ignoring addiction may provide misleading estimates of the price sensitivity of alcohol consumption and this may, in turn, lead to underestimation of the effects of major changes in price policy such as those currently taking place in the Nordic countries.     

Beware the Challenge of the Importers

Advertising bans can increase or decrease alcohol consumption due to effects on beverage choice, price competition, and substitution by producers towards non-banned media. We study bans on broadcast advertising in 17 OECD countries for the years 1977 to 1995, in relation to per capita alcohol consumption, liver cirrhosis mortality and motor vehicle fatalities. The results indicate that advertising bans in OECD countries have not decreased alcohol consumption or alcohol abuse.     

Pamela E. Pennock. Advertising Sin and Sickness: The Politics of Alcohol and Tobacco Marketing, 1950-1990

This book traces three efforts to ban or regulate the marketingof alcohol and tobacco products in the last half of the twentiethcentury. The first manifested itself in a string of congressionalhearings on the advertising of alcoholic beverages that beganin 1947 and continued until 1958. The second involved the antismokingpush that put warning labels on cigarette packages in 1965 andeliminated broadcast cigarette ads in 1970. The third was adrive to place similar limits     

Understanding on-the-go consumption: Identifying and quantifying its determinants

Although the amount of food and beverages consumed on-the-go has been increasing, existing research has not sufficiently examined this behavior. This study uses a mixed methods design with a qualitative study to identify four determinants of on-the-go consumption: time pressure, price consciousness, health orientation, and enjoyment. Combining the qualitative results with Behavioral Decision Theory, eight hypotheses are derived about the influence of the four determinants as well as their interrelations. Hypotheses testing and predictive validity assessment are based on two large-scale consumer samples, one main study and one validation study. The results confirm a significant influence of utilitarian determinants (time pressure and price consciousness), though they are less important than the hedonic determinant. Implications for retail managers are presented, as these results challenge conventional practices. Moreover, existing theory is extended beyond a distinction between utilitarian and hedonic motives by regarding health orientation as a hybrid determinant of on-the-go consumption.     

Trade and Financial Integration in East Asia: Effects on Co‐movements

In this paper we explore three important areas where deeper trade and financial integration in East Asia can influence: (1) business cycle co‐movements in the region, (2) the extent of risk sharing across countries and (3) price co‐movements across countries. We find evidence that trade integration enhances co‐movements of output but not of consumption across countries. Especially the fact that trade integration does not raise co‐movements of consumption as much as that of output is interpreted as trade integration does not improve the extent of risk sharing. Co‐movements of price arise most significantly as trade integration deepens, lowering the border effects and allowing better opportunities for resource reallocation across countries. In contrast, financial integration demonstrates much weaker evidence of enhancing co‐movements across countries. Deeper financial integration improves price co‐movements weakly but does not enhance output or consumption co‐movements at all. However, since the current level of financial integration in East Asia is quite low, our evidence is too early to firmly determine the role of financial integration.     

The effect of alcohol consumption and contextual cues on the evaluation of new brands of alcoholic beverages at the POS

As per ELM, consumers' motivation and ability influence the route through which they process new information. A higher magnitude of these two factors leads to systematic information processing whereas a lower level leads to peripheral information processing. This research manipulated consumers' motivation by varying the contextual cues like bundle partner's brand image and functional relationship between the items whereas their ability was manipulated by alcohol administration to test its impact on the quality perception of a new brand of alcoholic beverage and the purchase intention of the bundle. A lower magnitude of motivation and ability increases the chances of adopting a categorisation approach to evaluate the new brand, and subsequently, the entire bundle. Therefore, a bundle's contextual cues dictate the evaluation of the new brand. Additionally, the alcohol priming effect leads to a greater propensity to try new brands of alcoholic beverages even if their quality is perceived to be inferior.     

Assessing the demand for value‐based organic meats in Canada: a combined retail and household scanner‐data approach

We apply sets of weekly retail and household scanner data to estimate consumer demand of selected organic and conventional fresh beef products in the Canadian retail market. The main contribution of our study stems from the application of a two‐stage procedure that provides new and deeper insight into consumers' responses to changing retail environment and pricing for organic and conventional meat products. Combined knowledge of point‐of‐sale consumer behaviour for value‐based products, such as organic products, and distinct socio‐demographic profiles of buyers vs. non‐buyers of meat is especially interesting for retail managers and meat industry stakeholders. First, household meat consumption patterns are investigated based on household scanner data that track household's meat purchases in the period 2006–2007. The second step of analysis then involves the estimation of an almost ideal demand system for selected organic and conventional fresh beef products using retail scanner data for the period 2000–2007. The introduction of greater selections in organic product lines across mainstream supermarkets in Canada in response to consumer health concerns is expected to spur retail competition in an otherwise saturated Canadian retail market. The analysis of socio‐demographic profiles in beef consumption using individual household's purchase data reveals that besides regional differences in preferences, household size and resource characteristics are major determinants of point‐of‐sale beef purchase decisions. Our demand system results indicate that organic beef is highly dependent on price and expenditures, whereas demand for conventional beef is mostly driven by income, habits and ‘typical’ Canadian seasonal beef consumption patterns. Altogether, our conclusions on organic beef vs. conventional beef buyers may have further implications for institutional regulations.     

A cognitive and behavioral hierarchical decision‐making model of college students' alcohol consumption

This study examined college students' drinking behaviors from a consumer behavioral perspective. A consumer‐oriented, cognitive, and behavioral‐hierarchical decision‐making model was developed and tested with the use of structural equation modeling. Questionnaires were collected from undergraduate students ( n = 269) attending a large state university in the southwestern United States. Results indicated that personal values can serve as significant predictors of the attitudes college students have toward alcohol use, which in turn can predict intentions to drink. Results also indicated that intentions to drink are strongly related to actual alcohol consumption, and that gender‐predicted attitudes and alcohol use during the past month influences intentions to drink. However, the structure of the model was similar after controlling for gender differences in alcohol use and for the stability of past behavior. The model delineated the specific roles played by personal values (self‐actualizing values vs. social–hedonic values) and attitudes toward the physical and psychological consequences of drinking. Overall, social–hedonic values and psychological consequences predicted actual alcohol consumption far better than did self‐actualizing values and physical consequences, respectively. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed, and directions for future research are suggested. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.