The role of gender and product consumption in the mental representation of industrial and craft beers: An exploratory study with Mexican consumers

Why do people eat and drink as they do? This complex question is of great interest to both the academic and industrial world. In recent years, a change of consumption has been noticed in several countries with an increase in interest for traditional and craft products. This is the case, for example, for the beer sector, going from a beer category dominated by one style to a wider range of options of industrial beers and to less commercial options such as craft beers. A change in patterns of consumption is usually an indicator that the perception towards the product is changing. In this study, the objective is to understand the impact of gender (men versus women) and type of consumption (craft versus industrial beer) on mental beer representations. Four groups of participants were asked to visually sort a set of beer in the presence of brand and packaging. The results show both similarities and differences in the categorization made by each group of consumers. Overall, participants agreed more on their categorization of industrial beers than they did with craft beers. Gender differences were perceived in the sorting task especially in terms of the number of groups used to sort beers, more groups in men; but also in the words used to describe beers. When comparing the results across women and men, it was seen that the latter sort the beers based on previous knowledge (cognitive dimension) while women rely more on the affective dimension (like do not like) to sort the beers. An interaction effect was also found between gender and type of consumption which highlights the complex relationship that consumers have towards beers.