DISQO releases advertising consumption behaviors report with interesting insights on non-alcoholic beer  

Here comes more data to feed your head. Customer experience platform DISQO just released a booze consumption behaviors report called Alcohol & Non-Alcohol Advertising. What the hell is a customer experience platform or CX? It’s a collection of digital tools that allows companies to monitor and manage interactions with current and potential customers to gain insights about behavior and as a result more marketing opportunities. DISQO notes its CX platform for understanding customer experiences measures and tests advertising products via millions of consumers on what it calls “the industry’s largest opt-in consumer data platform,” according to the press release. In DISQO’s new Alcohol & Non-Alcohol Advertising report, the company surveyed its CX to help beverage makers and their agencies become better marketers.

From that same release:

“Alcohol marketing is evolving rapidly,” said Patrick Egan, Director of Research & Insights, DISQO. “With budget-constrained consumers who are increasingly focused on health, our insights suggest that marketers should be intentional in their messaging. Whether that’s educating about differentiated offerings, touting unique production processes, emphasizing functional benefits or justifying higher price points, advertisers need to keep up with consumers in an increasingly crowded category.”

The DISQO report is full of interesting insights. For example: 35 percent of consumers surveyed never drink alcohol, and almost 20 percent drink beer weekly. DISQO surveyed 32,000 American adults from its panel audience. Among the many topics surveyed included: “attention on traditional alcohol categories (beer, wine, liquor, cocktails), emerging alcohol formats (hard seltzer, hard kombucha, hard cider), and NA alternatives (e.g., NA beer, wine, and/or alcohol, THC-based beverages),” according to the report (download it at the link above). One of the biggest take-aways for DISQO was the interest in non-alcoholic alternatives. Data nuggets include:

• Top reactions to NA alternatives are curiosity (32 percent) and support (24 percent); Gen Zers (45 percent) feel curiosity at twice the rate of Boomers (27 percent).
• However, 15 to 20 percent of consumers are confused about the NA category, suggesting that education is still needed to win over hold-outs.

From the report:

The two biggest barriers for emerging NA alternatives are price and availability. Over 25% think that these alternatives need to be priced lower than alcoholic options, which may lead to sticker shock when they see that such options are often higher-priced on store shelves. Price notwithstanding, even finding these items on the shelves can prove problematic, as they are often buried within larger alcohol sections, leading to confusion in certain shopping experiences.

Here’s an interesting graph on why folks are gravitating to NA beer and other NA products.

The report notes that health consciousness is driving market evolution in many ways. Over 20 percent of consumers cited alcohol’s impact on either mental health or physical health as their top reason for not consuming alcohol. Approximately 40 percent stated that they are trying to drink less, and about the same percentage agree there should be clearer calorie counts on alcoholic beverages. And as noted, beer lovers don’t want to pay more for NA beer. Over 25 percent think that NA alternatives should cost less than alcoholic options. But what’s really interesting is that surveyed consumers placed less importance on brand name when it comes to buying NA products, offering new entrants an opportunity to gain market share.

There’s a lot more info. Download the Alcohol & Non-Alcohol Advertising report at that link.