MARKETING

Marketing Alcohol and Beverages in India

Marketing Alcohol and Beverages in India

Introduction

In addition to spending on clothes and luxury brands, more and more Indians have begun to frequent cafés, pubs, and restaurants (Hawkins & Mothersbaugh, 2010, pp. 102).

Café Culture

In 1957, some disgruntled employees of the state-run Coffee Board decided to part ways with the parent company and set up their own Indian Coffee Workers' Cooperative Society. The idea was to set up coffee bars and offer the public affordable coffee. For four decades their 160 outlets across the country were the only dedicated coffee bars that Indians were aware of. The simple interiors and the somnambulant pace of the waiters made it a haven for writers, journalists, artists, poets, and politicians—so much so that the late prime minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi saw the coffee bars as havens of dissent and even had one coffee bar in New Delhi closed down (Espejo, 2010, pp. 45).

This old world of coffee houses was rudely exposed to the rigors of competition when in 1997 the Indian government removed coffee from its list of restricted commodities. A new breed of indigenous coffee bars along the lines of the Starbucks chain emerged. While the Indian Coffee House catered to the older generations who generally spent the entire day perusing newspapers while nursing a single cup of coffee, the new coffee bars such as Barista, Café Coffee Day, Amarettos, or Qwiky's began to cater to the young and trendy by offering live music, books, and even message boards where patrons could staple their random thoughts, while they sipped exotic concoctions such as frappuccinos, macchiatos, and lattes. What these coffee bars, where a cup of coffee costs the price of a meal, offer above all is a stylish place for youngsters to “chill out” and more importantly to gaze and be gazed at by their contemporaries. It is estimated that the four coffee chains cater to more than 40,000 customers a day (Hollensen, 2011, pp. 125).

Starbucks, which already procures some of its Arabica coffee beans from India, has announced plans to enter the Indian market, but the company may find that the market has already been cornered by the indigenous versions. Barista, the leader of the pack, for instance, already runs 152 cafes and 142 express counters in 42 cities and aims to open 80 more cafes in eight cities. It also intends to open coffee bars overseas. Café Coffee Day, which first opened in Bangalore in 1996, is now looking to expand overseas in Dubai, Mauritius, Cyprus, and Singapore (Keegan & Green, 2005, pp. 96).

Pubs

Accompanying the emergence of the coffee bar are the new liquor bars known in India by the British name of pubs. For decades after India achieved independence, the Indian government was opposed to the consumption of alcohol. The reasons for this were manifold. The most important was that Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the nation who spearheaded the independence movement, was totally opposed to alcohol. This was largely because he saw it as a direct ...