Brewers need to cater for younger generation consumers who value experiences over products themselves, according to a US researcher.
Millennial and Generation Z consumers approach food and beverage products in a different way to their elders, Datassential founder Jack Li told the recent Craft Brewers Conference.
“If you’re a boomer, you’re usually pretty sure something is going to taste good before you give it a shot,” he said.
“If you’re a millennial or Gen Z-er you’re way more likely to say, ‘I’m going to try something new’, just because it’s new. There’s an insight there.
“Don’t purposely make something that tastes terrible – that’s not a good goal, but sometimes taste doesn’t have to be the very first thing that we appeal to.”
Li said younger generation consumers want to spend their money on experiences and brewers should support that with the products they offer.
Instagrammable experiences are big in cocktails, why not beer?
“The really more interesting adult beverage menus right now are… experience-driven types of menus where the customer is doing something really cool or sharing something really interesting as part of that experience, and probably Instagramming that thing out or posting a YouTube video or something and doing some of your marketing for you,” he said.
“If you ask someone, ‘what is the most trusted recommendation you can get?’ It’s the recommendation you get from friends and family.
“We should be encouraging our consumers to do that for us. But we’ve got to give them a really new interesting thing that would make them want to say, hey I want to prove that I was a part of that thing and that I was the first one of my friends that did something with that,” said Li.
Naughty ingredients
He said the current ingredients that are trending as additives in beer – such as mango, pineapple and tangerine – are not particularly innovative.[…]
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