Craft beer representation amongst men in two different cultures

Abstract

Consumption of craft beer has been changing worldwide; it passed from a rarely known to a common product amongst consumers. In the past years craft beer sales have been growing faster than the dominant lager-style in countries with different beer tradition like Mexico and France. A change in consumption habits is a sign that the representation of the product is changing. It is, therefore, valuable to understand the elements and structure of this new representation. The present study was conducted to understand the impact of culture and consumption habits on beer representation. Three-hundred male consumers (craft and industrial beer users) were interviewed in Mexico and France. Participants were asked to perform: (1) free word association task using “craft beer” as inductor word, (2) ranking task of the evoked words based on their importance, and (3) valence rating task of each evoked word. Each word was characterized by a mean importance value and a frequency of elicitation to identify their role as central or peripheral elements in the representation. Results showed that consumers from same culture share similar social representations of craft beer, even when they have different consumption habits (craft–industrial). Mexican consumers share alcohol, and flavour as central elements in their representations but share only one peripheral element “tradition”. French consumers share two central elements taste and party. When comparing consumers across cultures, French and Mexican craft participants share no central elements in their representations towards beer; whereas industrial beer consumers share one element “alcohol”. Craft consumers seem to have a more structured social representation, sustained or nourished on consumption habits, whilst the representation of industrial beer consumers seems less resistant, or capable of changing over time.