How to Reach a Beer Drinker
1st April 2008
Drinking is part of culture in China, and there are few drinks as social as beer. At restaurants, while visiting friends, or just hanging out, beer is one of the most commonly seen drinks.
In a recent national study conducted by China Polling, panelists were asked about beer.What they drink, how they drink, where they drink, what they talk about while drinking.In the end, our sample contained 2665 panelists, of those 714 claimed to love beer more than wine, bai jiu or other hard drinks.This also shows the prevalence of drinking in China, only 4.7% of our panelists claimed to not consume any alcohol.
| What’s your favorite alcoholic beverage? | |
| Drink | Percentage |
| Wine | 37.5% |
| Bai Jiu | 26.9% |
| Beer | 26.8% |
| Non-drinkers | 4.7% |
| Hard Liquor | 4.1% |
| Note: numbers may not add up to 100% due to rounding and non-inclusion of non-top5 brandsPowered by China Polling Real Time Stats, November 2006 | |
Of our 714 beer lovers, we focus the group a little more.How much do they drink? A beer lover should at least drink on the weekends. This leaves us now with a focused group of 561 panelists who are drinking weekly or more.These are our “experienced drinkers”.
| How often do you drink beer? | |
| Frequency | Percentage |
| 2-3 times per week | 44.3% |
| Once per week | 17.5% |
| Everyday | 16.8% |
| Once every 2-3 weeks | 13.6% |
| Once a month | 7.8% |
| Note: numbers may not add up to 100% due to rounding and non-inclusion of non-top5 brandsPowered by China Polling Real Time Stats, November 2006 | |
Who can drink the most? 73.1% claim that Beijingers and Northerners drink the most, 12.5% claim Chengdu and the West. Shanghai and Guangzhou come in as lightweights.
Where do they drink? 77.7% claim to mostly drink either in restaurants or simply “outside with friends”, nowhere specific.This shows beer as being, as expected, a rather social drink.
Beer, being a social lubricant coerces a drinker to talk more freely.What do drinkers in China talk about?
| What do you talk about when you drink beer? | ||
| Topic of Conversation | Percentage | |
| Women | 61.7% | |
| Tell lies | 59.7% | |
| Tell jokes | 39.9% | |
| Work | 33.3% | |
| Money | 27.5% | |
| Sports | 23.5% | |
| Adventures | 14.1% | |
| Gossip | 13.5% | |
| Nonsense | 13.4% | |
| Cars | 9.8% | |
| Other | 3.6% | |
| Note: numbers may not add up to 100% due to rounding and non-inclusion of non-top5 brandsPowered by China Polling Real Time Stats, November 2006 | ||
Women, lies, jokes, and work top the list.If you want to strike a chord with a more than casual drinker after a few in China, these topics of conversation should strike home.