Does MillerCoors have the juice to go after Anheuser-Busch InBev?
MillerCoors is hoping to take advantage of the economic slump with an offensive on rival Anheuser-Busch InBev, the leading U.S. brewer.
That news comes courtesy of U.K. newspaper The Financial Times, which recently interviewed Tom Long, MillerCoors‘ president and chief commercial officer. (Read the story here.)
MillerCoors is a joint venture of Coors and Miller in the U.S. It has about 30 percent of the market, compared to Anheuser-Busch InBev’s roughly 50 percent.
MillerCoors, which controls one of the hottest brands in the U.S. (Coors Light), is increasingly talking a big game about its prospects vis-à-vis Anheuser-Busch InBev.
Budweiser and Bud Light, the main brands of Anheuser-Busch, could be “victimized” by consumers because the brands have become too used to being the default beer purchase, Long told the FT. “They are big brands without a razor sharp position,” he said, adding that MillerCoors could win over consumers by emphasizing how its brands differed from those of its bigger rival.
“This is maybe the best time for insurgent brands in 20 years,” Long said. “People are reconsidering their purchases.”
Lager Heads has asked before: Does MillerCoors have the stuff to back up its bravado? We will see. This much we know: Coors Light is doing very well, Miller Lite is not, and for the past few months Anheuser-Busch has been outpacing MillerCoors‘ overall results.
(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
Loading ...
Jeremiah McWilliams is a native Virginian who came to the Post-Dispatch in early 2007 to cover beer and other consumer products. He previously covered manufacturing for the Virginian-Pilot newspaper in Norfolk, Va. He is a graduate of Washington and Lee University. 
Unless AB-I does something to alter the taste, or loosen up on quality control (altering taste), people that just drink one beer their entire lives aren’t going to try something different, now. And even if they do try something new, they’ll already have it in their mind that the new beer tastes like sweaty socks, and their beer is the only beer worth drinking, even though the two beers are pretty much the same.
Sure, you have some people ‘boycotting’. But we’re talking a small percentage of St. Louisans, and MOST of them are boycotting for actual American products, like Schlafly, Boulevard, O’Fallon, etc.