AB InBev

The Challenge

As the world’s largest brewer, AB InBev manages a broad portfolio of global and local beer brands. However, in increasingly competitive markets — where consumers face choice overload and growing interest in alternatives (craft beers, low/no alcohol options, premium spirits) — it became critical to understand:

How visible and prominent AB InBev’s portfolio was compared to competitors.
Which brands within the portfolio carried strong spontaneous awareness and which relied more on prompted recognition.
The motivators driving consideration and purchase, such as taste, heritage, availability, or price.
The barriers preventing trial, including perceptions of mass-market positioning, relevance to younger drinkers, or competition from craft brands.

This intelligence was essential to refine AB InBev’s brand positioning, portfolio strategy, and marketing communications across customer and non-customer audiences.

The Solution

Skopos designed and executed a robust quantitative research study to provide both breadth and depth of insight:

Sample size: 2,000 respondents, representing both customers and non-customers, ensuring a balanced and statistically reliable dataset.
Awareness measurement: Captured both spontaneous recall (which beer brands come to mind unprompted) and prompted awareness (recognition when shown a list of brands).
Brand benchmarking: Direct comparisons were made between AB InBev brands and key competitors to assess share of mind in the category.
Product-specific drilldowns: Respondents were asked about individual AB InBev brands, exploring perceptions around quality, taste, relevance, and purchase intent.
Profiling analysis: Respondents were segmented into customer typologies, highlighting which consumer groups AB InBev brands resonated with most strongly, and where communications were falling short.

The Outcome

The findings provided AB InBev with strategic clarity to strengthen both portfolio management and communications:

Revealed which brands led on spontaneous awareness and where marketing spend was successfully translating into strong market visibility.
Identified brands with lower awareness but high latent appeal, signalling opportunities for targeted promotion.
Mapped the motivators most likely to drive purchase (e.g. taste for mainstream buyers, authenticity for younger drinkers, affordability for value-seekers).
Exposed barriers to consideration (e.g. “too mass-market,” “doesn’t feel relevant to me”), helping refine messaging to overcome objections.
Equipped AB InBev with actionable customer segmentation, enabling more tailored communications for different audience groups — from loyal lager drinkers to experiment-driven younger consumers.
Informed future media and sponsorship strategy, focusing spend where it would have the greatest impact on awareness and consideration.

As a result, AB InBev was able to sharpen its communication strategy to both customers and non-customers, optimising brand positioning and ensuring that its extensive portfolio was being activated in the most effective, targeted way possible.

AB InBev

The Challenge

The Solution

The Outcome

You don’t need a brief. Start with the problem.