Foster’s Lager in Australia
Introduction
Foster’s Lager is an Australian lager brand that is owned by a South African brewing company, SABMiller. The beer is brewed in countries such as the UK under license. Its annual sale of 5 million hectoliters worldwide puts it as the second most selling beer after Carling. Despite these relatively high sales, Foster’s Lager is only popular outside of Australia. In Australia, the brand continues to perform poorly as compared to other brands such as Carlton Draught and Victoria Bitter. According to statistics from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the UK consumes approximately 1.2 billion pints of Foster’s Lager every year while Australia consumes roughly over 100 million pints annually (Koetting, 2013). This lack of popularity in its home country calls for a repositioning of the brand so that it can compete with other brands for a share of the local market. This paper seeks to analyze how repositioning of Foster’s Lager in Australia can increase its popularity and further drive its sales in the country high enough to match those in other countries such as the UK and the USA.
Situation Analysis One of the most critical underlying factors explaining Foster’s Lager’s poor performance in Australia can be traced back to buyer behavior and failure of Foster’s Group to address the problem (Barrand, 2005). The Australian market has, for a long time, been known to hold strong connections with brands that have a local aspect to them. Owned by a South African company, there have been concerns that Foster’s Lager is not as “Australian” as other brands. The brand has been accused of neglecting the Australian lager style and adopting a more foreign “European style”. While this could have been done to woo the European market, it has clearly and to a large extent reduced its local market share. With a