Abstract
(1) Background: Big brewers, which have experienced declining sales for their beer brands in the last decade, have been accused of “craftwashing” by some craft brewers and their aficionados—they define craftwashing as big brewers (>6 million barrels per year) taking advantage of the increasing sales of craft beer by emulating these products or by acquiring craft breweries, while also obscuring their ownership from consumers; (2) Methods: To estimate the prevalence of these practices, the ownership of U.S. mainstream and craft beer brands was decoded and visualized. In addition, an exploratory case study analyzed how these ownership relations are represented in the craft sections of selected retailers (n = 16) in the Lansing, Michigan metropolitan area; (3) Results: By October 2017 in the U.S., all but one big brewer had either acquired a craft brewery, or formed a distribution alliance with one—without disclosing these relationships on the packaging. In the study area, 30% of 4- and 6-pack facings recorded in craft beer sections (n = 1145) had ownership ties to big brewers; (4) Conclusions: Craftwashing is common in the U.S. beer industry, and this suggests consumers must exert substantial effort to become aware of their own role in reinforcing these practices.
Highlights
The beer industry in the United States has experienced rapid growth in the “craft” beer segment in recent years, and declining sales in more mainstream segments
Other researchers have explored consumer perceptions of “authenticity,” and found that craft beer drinkers have negative perceptions of beer produced by big brewers [11]
Additional craft beer brands were added to the figure, if they had ownership connections with big brewers headquartered in other part of the world (e.g., Japan), or if they had ties to private equity firms
Summary
The beer industry in the United States has experienced rapid growth in the “craft” beer segment in recent years, and declining sales in more mainstream segments. By 2016, for example, the craft segment had grown to 21.9% of U.S beer sales by dollar value [1], while domestic sales were down by 2.8% [2] It is no surprise that the definitions of these categories are contested [3], and that big breweries (those producing over 6 million barrels per year) have increasingly moved into the “craft” space. They have done so by introducing craft-like brands and/or by acquiring formerly independent craft breweries. WithThe the packaging, production placement, and even price kept of these beershidden leads typical to believe that and theyeven are of these products by bigthe brewers relatively [13,14,15].consumers
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