A study of the impact of coronavirus on consumer perceptions and consumption of corona beer

Abstract

Corona Beer has been brewed and bottled in Mexico since 1925. In 1981, it was introduced into the United States market, where Corona Extra became the fastest growing imported beer in the country’s history. Now, Corona Extra is the top selling imported beer, the fifth most sold beer throughout the United States, and the most valuable beer brand in the world- valued at $8.1B US (Waterworth, 2020) [17]. From the beginning of COVID-19, the virus which caused the global pandemic of 2020, the virus was called the coronavirus. A coronavirus is relatively common, and most will catch a coronavirus at least once in their life (Sauer, 2020) [14]. For Corona Beer, though, the link to a virus causing a global pandemic was an unfortunate coincidence. The previous iterations of the coronavirus (SARS and MERS) were not called coronavirus in public, so this linking of the virus and the beer only happened during COVID-19. The Coronavirus outbreak started in Wuhan, China resulting in a respiratory disease that has infected and killed hundreds of thousands, shut down schools, businesses, and infrastructures and had a huge negative toll on global economies. From January 18th to January 26th searches for “Corona Beer virus” spiked 2,300% (O’Kane, 2020) [9]. The goal for our research was to understand how much connection consumers made between the virus and the beer, and our hypothesis was it would have hurt the brand. We found quite the opposite, and Corona Beer has seen record sales during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our research shows only positive connections in consumer perceptions of the brand.