The Alcohol Market in Canada

The Canadian market for alcoholic beverages is roughly $21 billion a year. Statistics Canada keeps track of sales in this market with three categories: beer, wine, and spirits. The spirits category includes drinks like vodka, rum, and brandy.

Canadians are beer drinkers. Beer sales represented 44 percent of the total alcoholic beverage market for the year ending March 2012. However, beer sales have been declining in relation to the other categories, down from 50 percent 10 years earlier. The per capita consumption of beer is over 80 litres per person. Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia saw the highest beer sales. The highest per capita beer sales were in the Yukon, where beer consumption was at 385 bottles per year.

In contrast to the beer market, wine sales have been increasing. Wine sales accounted for 31 percent of the total market. Red wine accounted for 57 percent of all wines sales. Imported products, both red and white wines, remained fairly constant with 76 percent of red wines and 63 percent of white wines sold in Canada coming from other countries. The highest total wine sales were in Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia. On a per capita basis, Quebec had the highest wine sales and Yukon came in second.

Sales of spirits have been declining. Sales of whisky- type products were the highest in market share, accounting for 27 percent of spirit sales. Vodka sales have been increasing, amounting to 24 percent of the category. The provinces with the highest sales of spirits are Ontario, British Columbia, and Quebec. On a per capita basis, the highest consumers of spirits cofound in the Yukon, Nunavut, and Northwest Territories.

Marketers of beer, wine, and spirits would be interested in finding out why the drinking habits of Canadians are changing. One reason drinking habits are changing could be the shift in demographics of the population. As the largest group of Canadiansthe baby boomersage, they tend to drink fewer alcoholic beverages, but the good news for the makers of beer, wine, and spirits is that the next largest group in Canada, the video-game generation, is now in its prime drinking years.

The video-game generation represents 26 percent of the population or just over 8.5 million people. This group could be attending college or university, still living with their parents, just buying their first house, or just starting out on their careers.

A recent study of the video-game generation's drinking habits showed that 32 percent were casual drinkers, 28 percent were regular drinkers, 23 percent did not drink at all, and 17 percent drank alcohol only on special occasions. Men were more likely to be regular drinkers, with 35 percent falling into that category.

This study segmented the video-game generation into six segments they called simple lifers, fireflies, sparks, stampeders, achievers, and pacers. The heaviest drinkers were in the stampede segment. Stampeder was the only segment that was entirely male and made up 14 percent of the group. Stampeders like to party, play video games, and watch sports, and just over 18 percent of them are French Canadian.

Over half of the men were beer drinkers and over a quarter of them preferred craft beers. Over half of this group also drank spirits, and the amount of spirits increased with age. The results of the study

into the drinking habits of the video-game generation help to explain the changes in sale patterns of alcohol reported by Statistics Canada.

The results can also assist marketers of alcoholic beverages better understand their customers in order to develop effective marketing strategies.

Questions:

1. If a winery wanted to expand its target markets further, what segment or segments of the market might the firm include? Can you think of value profiles for those segments?

2. What promotionssocial media, mobile, etc.could a beer company like Molson Coors use to reach its target market?--------------------------