Brewing beer has long been regarded as one of the most artisanal professions out there. When most other consumer goods and, more specifically, alcoholic beverages producers started to consolidate, with the larger players buying up the small brands, the trend in beer consumption reversed (Kelly, Kopka, Küpper & Moulton, 2018).
In a world where big brands and large-scale products started to become the standard, more and more beer consumers went looking for the smaller, more artisanal beers out there: a craft beer trend was born (Furnari, 2019). With consumer preferences diverging, how do you brew the craft beer that appeals to the highest number of consumers? That is exactly the question one AB InBev’s Chinese subsidiaries, Boxing Cat Brewery, was asking itself as well.
In 2018, Michael Jordan, head brewer at Boxing Cat Brewery, not the basketball player, and his team joined forces with Alibaba’s Tmall Innovation Center (TMIC) to brew the world’s first craft beer based on consumer preference data (Drinks Insight Network, 2019). Tmall, China’s largest B2C shopping site and Alibaba subsidiary, has an extremely large amount of data on consumer preferences and shopping behaviour. Therefore, Tmall founded the Tmall Innovation Center, where the platform works with product manufacturers to produce products and services, completely tailored to the market (Drinks Insight Network, 2019).
With the help of TMIC, the team at Boxing Cat Brewery gathered data by sending out surveys and observing shopping behaviour to learn about consumer preferences for beer taste profiles (Hsu, 2019). Boxing Cat Brewery would, in turn, use this data to brew a beer where data is the main ingredient.
Chinese beer consumers are a large fan of darker beer styles with deeper flavours, but also like a surprising twist. The result was therefore a porter beer, with hints of both chocolate and orange, named “Big Luck Big Win” (Hsu, 2019). The beer was just in time to be tested during Chinese New Year (InsideFMCG, 2019).
Craft beer is seen as a very artisanal product. Now it is brewed based on consumer data, does that make it less artisanal? What do you think, would you still buy the beer? Share your opinion in the comments below!
Sources
– Drinks Insight Network. (2019, February). Boxing Cat Brewery and Alibaba to create new beer for Chinese market. Retrieved 5 October 2020 at https://www.drinks-insight-network.com/news/boxing-cat-brewery-alibaba/.
– Furnari, C. (2019, December). Looking ahead: Beer Pros Predict The Next Decade Of Industry Trends. Forbes. Retrieved 5 October 2020 at https://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisfurnari/2020/12/31/looking-ahead-beer-pros-predict-the-next-decade-of-industry-trends/#2ac7a5104213.
– Hsu, J.W. (2019, February). AB InBev, Alibaba get crafty in China’s beer market. AliZila. Retrieved 5 October 2020 at https://www.alizila.com/ab-inbev-alibaba-get-crafty-in-chinas-beer-market/.
– InsideFMCG. (2019, February). Shanghai brewery partners with Alibaba’s Tmall to create beer for China. Retrieved 5 October 2020 at https://insidefmcg.com.au/2019/02/05/shanghai-brewery-partners-with-alibabas-tmall-to-create-beer-for-china/.
– Kelly, G., Kopka, U., Küpper, J. & Moulton, J. (2018, April). The new model for consumer goods. McKinsey & Company. Retrieved 5 October 2020 at https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/consumer-packaged-goods/our-insights/the-new-model-for-consumer-goods.
Dear Jelle,
First of all, really good job on your paper. It is a well thought example of how data can not only influence customers but also vendors. As well, it greatly forecasts how data can be key in many different fields.
I am very curious of the outcome “Big Luck Big Win” had during the Chinese New Year. As your Youtube video was released on the 3rd of February 2019 and the Chinese New Year of that year was on the 5th of February, you could have maybe gathered information to share with us.
Otherwise once again, really good job. Appealing and talkative subject.
Hi Jelle, interesting article!
It does remind me of the blog I posted earlier this week (see: Technology Impacting The Beer Industry).
I do see some similarities between Boxing Cat Brewery and the intelligentx project. Boxing Cat Brewery (in partnership with TMIC) is using shopping data of a large number of customers to determine what type of beer to produce. Intelligentx is using customer feedback about produced beers, this is then analyzed with the aid of artificial intelligence to correct or adjust their beers. Both companies are using data to make beer, a development is personally find very interesting. Since Boxing Cat Brewery is owned by AB InBev, I’m curious to see if they will implement learned practices in other breweries as well.
There is also a danger to using large datasets, which potentially may harm the variety of beers. Depending on how data is used there is a risk of creating an average beer. This can result in a beer appreciated by most people, and therefore be increase sales. If this is the main idea of the brewery, I would definitely say that it makes it less artisanal.
Cheers!