The Significance of Branding within the German Beer Culture

Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject Communications - Public Relations, Advertising, Marketing, Social Media, grade: 1,0, European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), language: English, abstract: In the seminar Cultural Branding, that was conducted by Dr. Marcin Poprawski, we discussed the connections and intersections of the two topics culture and brands, as the title of the seminar suggests. We dealt with culture mainly as national culture and with brands mainly as product brands. The nation that I want to examine in this paper is the German nation, the product that I want to examine is beer. A first connection between Germany and beer is obvious. Beer is part and parcel of the German culture. In the first chapter of this paper, I want to illustrate how significant the factor beer is for the identity of Germany and Germans. It will also be shown how people from foreign countries perceive the connection between Germans and beer and how they value German beer. Starting from these results, it will be explained how the self-perception and the perception by others of Germany and its culture is historically rooted. After this short look back on the German history, we will focus on the present time. The contemporary German beer market will be described. I will give some facts and figures about the German beer market as a whole and also about the size and the productivity of individual breweries. Following that, I will draw the attention on the variety of types of beer that are produced in Germany. During the examination of the variety, we will find out that certain types of beer are preferred in certain regions in Germany. This leads us to the question if and to which extend the preference for a certain type of beer is connected to the relevant culture. Then, the influence of national, regional and local culture on the buying decision of consumers will be examined. For that I will consult basic literature from the field of sociology and several empirical studies on consumers behaviour from the field of economy. The findings of this examination will be linked to the significance of branding. First, I will analyse what the purposes and effects of branding are in general. Then, I will apply this general ideas to the German beer market. In the last paragraph I will present an exceptional beer brand with an exceptional sales strategy to demonstrate once again that the exception proves the rule. [..]