Old Brands Are Best
Russia’s breweries launched no new brand on the market past year, Business Analytica concluded. People in the companies say that introducing new brands has become too expensive, as the advertising restrictions are too tough and the media inflation exceeds 30 percent.
The capacity of beer market reached 393 billion rubles past year; the key brands were Baltika (15.4 percent; Baltika Brewery), Klinskoe (5.2 percent; SUN InBev) and Arsenalnoe (3.7 percent; Baltika Brewery), says the 2007 survey of beer market compiled by Business Analytica.
Formally, over 140 new brands emerged on the market past year, appearing, however, either in the beer cocktail sector (Blazer, Alko, etc.) that covers just 1.5 percent of the sales or as new family-members of existing brands. The breweries launched no new brands in 2007, Business Analytica concluded.
For the breweries, today’s trend is to experiment with different tastes and packages of existing brands. The leaders have formed their brand portfolios and launching new brands would be attracting the clients from established brands. Moreover, the launch of new brands would cost too much today, representatives of breweries explained.
So, first time over many years, Russia had no new beer brands in 2007. The production of Bud (Heineken, under the license of Anheuser-Busch) and Sol (Efes, under the license of Mexico Femsa Cerveza) was set into motion in Russia in 2006, while Baltika came up with its Cooler. But the achievements weren’t particularly high, according to Business Analytica. Bud covered no more than 0.7 percent of the licensed sector and Sol won the share of 0.4 percent.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Feb. 20, 2008
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