The following marketing plan outlines the marketing requirements for a new beer, called "Gusto," which is to be marketed regionally in competition with both "microbrewery" beers and major commercial beers. "Gusto" must be established in an intensely competitive marketplace, effected by market concentration, changing demographics, and evolving consumer and public attitudes. This marketing plan will consider the aspects of name selection, market targeting, demographics, cost and pricing, plant location, and advertising and promotion, among others.
NATURE OF THE INDUSTRY: Americans have been drinking beer since the earliest colonial days. Since that time, the beer industry has gone through many changes in terms of both production and consumption patterns. Prohibition disrupted the tradition of beer production and use in the United States, and had lasting effects on beer tastes: the bland taste associated with popular mass market American beers, as opposed to foreign premium beers, has been traced to the effects of Prohibition.1
By the 1970s and 1980s, post Prohibition beer drinking habits and tastes began to change. The "gourmet" movement brought about a sharp rise in the popularity of premium quality imported beers such as Heineken, beers richer in taste than mass market American beers. To the popularity of premium imports, now well established, two related trends were added in the 1980s. ________
1 William Least Heat Moon. "A Glass of Handmade." Atlantic, 260 (November, 1987): 75 79+.
One was the appearance of "handmade" beers, produced on a small
scale by "microbreweries," and marketed locally.2 Closely related to the rise of handmade beers is the appearance of "brewpubs," specialty shops which serve such beers, their own or those of local microbreweries.3 Thus, in general, there is a wider range of tastes in beer in recent years than there generally was in the past.
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