How Canadians 'Drink Around': An Expose on Alcohol Consumption in Canada

Summer is here and this is the ideal time to kick back and live the Canadian Dream - the weekend, the cottage, some sunshine, and a two-four or a bottle or two of your favourite wine or spirits. But before you crack open those coolers and grab yourself a cold one, we thought we'd take a look at the ways Canadians consume Beverage Alcohol and expose some myths.

Many studies have been conducted on the Beverage Alcohol drinking incidence of legal aged Canadians (Beverage Alcohol is defined as Beer, Wine, Spirits/Liquor, Cider, Coolers, and Pre-Mixed Cocktails). Five health organizations (including Health Canada) released a study in 2005, the Canadian Addiction Survey, which showed that eight-out-of-ten Canadians of legal drinking age (LDA) are past year Beverage Alcohol drinkers. Furthermore, when only monthly or more often drinkers are considered, that proportion comes down to 62%.

As we all know from our experience in observing drinking behaviour within our families, our network of friends, acquaintances at parties and strangers on-premise (in bars and restaurants), there is a HUGE range of drinking behaviour across that drinker base. But there is ALSO a considerable range of drinking behaviour exhibited by a single drinker across the wide variety of occasions in which they might be drinking.

Manufacturers of Beverage Alcohol already had information about how Beverage Alcohol was purchased - but they needed to understand how it was consumed by different demographic groups in different occasions - by time of day, day of week, by where they were, by who they were with, by the presence of food, by the activity associated with drinking, etc. Ipsos Reid launched a syndicated study, the Alcohol Consumption Tracker (ACT) in September of 2011 to identify the precise Beverage Alcohol drinking behaviour of LDA Canadians.

For the past 20 months, via an on-line diary, we have tracked the day-to-day behaviour for nearly 22,500 drinkers over the course of a month... who consumed Beverage Alcohol in over 280,000 drinking occasions. ACT also tracks over 1300 different brands. Because we have such a robust database, we are able to bring dimension to the question: How much do Canadians `drink around'?

Let's explore (and expose) some popular myths:

Myth #1: Many Canadians are completely loyal to a single Beverage Alcohol category.

• We view the Beverage Alcohol marketplace as consisting of four categories: Beer, Wine, Spirits and Ciders/Coolers/Pre-Mixed Cocktails (or, Flavoured Alcoholic Beverages, aka FABs). We see that only 25% of drinkers are completely loyal to a single category in an average month.
• Of that, there are 11% of drinkers who are completely loyal to Beer, 9% to Wine, 5% to Spirits and 1% to FABs.
• The other 75% consume from two, three, or all four of the categories.
• The single largest drinker group is those who drink from the Beer, Wine AND Spirits categories... representing 21% of Beverage Alcohol drinkers.
• More importantly, the 25% of drinkers who are completely loyal to their category are not the drinkers that are responsible for a lot of Beverage Alcohol volume - they account for a disproportionately low 16% of market volume.
• It is the drinkers who drink Beer, Wine AND Spirits products in a given month that are so important to category volume - those 21% of all drinkers represent 30% of all category volume.
• FACT: Canadian drinkers `drink around'... even on a category level.

Myth #2: Beer drinkers are much more loyal to Beer than are other kinds of Beverage Alcohol drinkers to their respective category.

• OK, maybe this isn't so much a myth because there is some basis in fact... but, the difference in loyalty for Beer vs. the other categories may be less than you think.
• Of all the people who drink Beer, that category represents 55% of their total Beverage Alcohol volume over an average month - that's the behavioural expression of loyalty towards Beer.
• Comparatively, there is a 42% loyalty level for Wine drinkers, and a 31% loyalty level for Spirits drinkers (loyalty is MUCH lower for FABs).
• FACT: Yes, Beer drinkers are more loyal... but the gap in loyalty between them and Wine drinkers may be a lot less than you had expected.

Myth #3: Beverage Alcohol consumption On Premise (in bars, restaurants, hotels, banquet halls, etc.) is a sizeable portion of category volume.

• Note: this belief may be related to the propensity of Beverage Alcohol marketing that reflects On Premise settings... as well as to the tendency for On Premise drinking occasions to be more `memorable' than habitual home drinking.
• The 4 main venues where people drink on a monthly basis are: the drinker's own home (88% of all drinkers), someone else's home (59%), restaurants (41%) and bars (33%).
• Clearly, not everyone who consumes Beverage Alcohol at home drinks in these other three venues - well over half of people who drink at home do not drink at restaurants and/or two-thirds do not drink at bars, at least on a monthly basis.
• ACT tells us that 57% of Beverage Alcohol volume is consumed at home. This relates to the kind of habitual drinking that goes on at home (relaxing after the work day is done, with everyday meals, while watching TV, doing chores, etc.). It is the result of the average Canadian Beverage Alcohol drinker reporting over 12 drinking occurrences across all venues over the course of a month... with almost 9 of those occurrences being in their own home (or 70%).
• The remaining Beverage Alcohol volume is spread across someone else's home (17%), bars (10%), restaurants (6%), hotels/motels/banquet halls (3%) and other venues (7%)... or, 19% in various On Premise locations.
• However, Canadians drink a higher amount of Beverage Alcohol per occurrence when in bars vs. when at home, in someone else's home and/or in restaurants. In fact, per occurrence, Canadians drink 35% more at bars than they do in their own home. This is why bars are so much more important to industry volume than are restaurants.
• FACT: 19% of industry volume consumed On Premise IS a sizeable portion! However, it may be less than many people suspect. While at-home consumption is much more significant due to the frequency in which Beverage Alcohol is consumed, the higher volume consumed per occurrence in bars elevates the importance of this venue in particular.

Myth #4: Beverage Alcohol drinkers consume a fairly small circle of brands.

• As we alluded to earlier, Beverage Alcohol drinkers consume from an average of 2.2 categories per month.
• So, clearly, drinkers must consume at least 2.2 brands on average!
• In reality, across the 1300 Beverage Alcohol brands that ACT tracks (note: they are clearly a great many more brands available for consumption), drinkers consume an average of 4.8 brands per month.
• However, this varies dramatically from the Very Light drinkers (2.4 brands/month) to the Very Heavy drinkers (8.7 brands/month).
• FACT: While consumers may have their `usual' brands, the sheer number of occasions in which Beverage Alcohol is consumed... and the wide array of needs that consumers are trying to satisfy during those occasions... means that a fairly wide brand palette is required to satisfy the average Canadian drinker.

For more info about ACT Canada or ACT U.S.(a parallel study launched in the U.S. in Jan'13), please contact John Mohler at [email protected] or Dan Herlihy at [email protected].