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Craftwashing in the U.S. Beer Industry

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  • Howard, Philip H.

Abstract

(1) Background: Big brewers, which have experienced declining sales for their beer brands in the last decade, have been accused of “craftwashing” by some craft brewers and their aficionados—they define craftwashing as big brewers (>6 million barrels per year) taking advantage of the increasing sales of craft beer by emulating these products or by acquiring craft breweries, while also obscuring their ownership from consumers; (2) Methods: To estimate the prevalence of these practices, the ownership of U.S. mainstream and craft beer brands was decoded and visualized. In addition, an exploratory case study analyzed how these ownership relations are represented in the craft sections of selected retailers (n = 16) in the Lansing, Michigan metropolitan area; (3) Results: By October 2017 in the U.S., all but one big brewer had either acquired a craft brewery, or formed a distribution alliance with one—without disclosing these relationships on the packaging. In the study area, 30% of 4- and 6-pack facings recorded in craft beer sections (n = 1145) had ownership ties to big brewers; (4) Conclusions: Craftwashing is common in the U.S. beer industry, and this suggests consumers must exert substantial effort to become aware of their own role in reinforcing these practices.

Suggested Citation

  • Howard, Philip H., 2018. "Craftwashing in the U.S. Beer Industry," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 4(1), pages 1-13.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:espost:172505
    DOI: 10.3390/beverages4010001
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Nitzan, Jonathan & Bichler, Shimshon, 2009. "Capital as Power. A Study of Order and Creorder," EconStor Books, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, number 157973, July.
    2. Trey Malone & Jayson L. Lusk, 2016. "Brewing up entrepreneurship: government intervention in beer," Journal of Entrepreneurship and Public Policy, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 5(3), pages 325-342, November.
    3. Trey Malone & Dustin Chambers, 2017. "Quantifying Federal Regulatory Burdens in the Beer Value Chain," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(3), pages 466-471, June.
    4. Bichler, Shimshon & Nitzan, Jonathan, 2020. "Growing through Sabotage: Energizing Hierarchical Power," Review of Capital as Power, Capital As Power - Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism, vol. 1(5), pages 1-78.
    5. Stephan F. Gohmann, 2016. "Why Are There so Few Breweries in the South?," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 40(5), pages 1071-1092, September.
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    Cited by:

    1. Liam Keenan, 2020. "The geographies of the institutional and industrial constraints on the financialization of German brewing," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 52(8), pages 1662-1680, November.
    2. Samane Zare & Mahdi Asgari & Timothy Woods & Yuqing Zheng, 2020. "Consumer proximity and brand loyalty in craft soda marketing: A case study of Ale‐8‐One," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 36(4), pages 522-541, October.

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