DETERMINANTS OF CONSUMER'S BEER BRAND PREFERENCE IN ETHIOPIA: A CASE STUDY ON ADDIS ABABA CITY BEER CONSUMERS

Abstract

In every product category, consumers have more choices, more information and higher expectations than ever before. To move consumer from trial to preference, brands need to deliver on their value preposition, as well as dislodge someone else from the consumer’s existing preference set. The title of the study is Determinants of consumer beer brand preference in Ethiopia: a case study on Addis Ababa City beer consumers. Therefore; the general objective of the study was to look at the determinants of consumer beer brand preference in Ethiopia in case of Addis Ababa City beer consumers. Specifically to examine the effects of consumers’ demographic characteristics, advertizing influence, reference groups influence and consumers’ situational variation on beer brand preference. The finding from the multinomial logistic regression revealed what factors determine the probability attached to respondents beer brand preference. Accordingly; age, perceived beer quality, perceived social benefit, situational influence and peer influence had positive sign and significantly affect the probability of preferring St. George beer. Whereas; family size had negative sign and significantly affect the probability of preferring St. George. Moreover; advertisement, situational and peer influence had positive sign and significantly affect the probability of preferring Habesha beer. Whereas family size had negative sign and significantly affect the probability of preferring Habesha beer. Furthermore; advertisement and situational influence had positive sign and significantly affect the probability of preferring Walia beer. Whereas sex and marital status had negative sign and significantly affect the probability of preferring Walia beer. Still there is untapped market potential that producers should take such as a market segmentation strategy and design their products in a manner that make the products appeal to different categories of individuals that can influence of personal factors on customer satisfaction. A potentially successful strategy can be that which provides products that correspond to and appreciate customers’ social status and age. It is also advised that any advertisement for beer brands should convey information about the advantages which the brand being advertised would offer over other brands. Moreover; situational influence was found to be significantly relevant to brand preference of beer, producers should in their advertisement emphasis social groups through segmenting the market into distinctive social classes