different set of changing social trends regard attitudes towards beer and other alcoholic beverages. Put briefly, the public has become much more concerned about the health and social effects of alcohol and drinking. It is fair to say that in some ways the "war on drugs" has now expanded to take in legal substances such as alcohol and tobacco products.
Part of this changing attitude, having a strong direct impact on trends and tastes in beer consumption, has to do with the public's rising concern about health.4 This has been a driving force behind the appearance of "lite" beers. Closely related is the rising popularity of "no alcohol" beers such as Kaliber, which are now viewed as healthier than ordinary beer, rather than as fussy or abstemious.
These developments offer new opportunities to beer markers, but also new challenges. Some beers which seemed promising responses to the new public attitude have fallen flat in practice. One such was Anheuser Busch's reduced alcohol "LA" ________
3"A new taste for 'brewpubs'." Newsweek, 109 (February 9, 1987), p. 49.
4Jagdish N. Sheth and S. Ram, Bringing Innovations to Market (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1987), 7 10. beer, which was introduced in 1984, and suffered steadily declining sales until withdrawn in early 1990.5 In this particular case, LA beer was "squeezed" between full alcohol lite beers on the one hand, and the no alcohol beers on the other. It has perhaps reached the point at which a full blooded guy would rather reach for a no alcohol brew that a certain import cachet instead of a merely low alcohol mass market beer.
Another social trend does not effect the nature of the consuming market, but has an important bearing on how beer is advertised. This is the public's shifting attitude toward alcohol use. Anti drinking ads are increasingly common and increasingly sophisticated; e.g., one has performer Stevie Wonder, well known...