Research in Focus – The New Consumer and the Alcoholic Drinks Industry

The fiscal maelstrom of the' Great Recession' has had a profound impact on the global socio-economic landscape. Sweeping across the world in 2008 and 2009 and causing havoc in countries as diverse as Latvia, the US, South Korea and South Africa, the sharpest contraction in world output since the Great Depression dramatically reshaped consumption trends, bringing about the arrival of a new norm. Temporary or permanent, radically fresh or an acceleration of pre-existing shifts in drinking, going out, socialising and spending patterns, such dramatic movements are but the post-natal convulsions following the birth of a new type of consumer. Euromonitor International’s latest global briefing, Beyond the Crisis – The New Consumer and the Alcoholic Drinks Industry, is an attempt to identify and contextualise the shifts, decipher their implications and point to the direction the alcoholic drinks industry will take in response. Spiros Malandrakis, alcoholic drinks analyst with Euromonitor International, investigates.