One supermarket in Seoul is selling Oriental Brewery’s flagship lager beer Cass Fresh and Hite Jinro’s new lager Terra at the same price of 1,540 won (US$1.39) per 355-milliliter can. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Nov. 27 (Korea Bizwire) – With the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic preventing people from enjoying get-togethers and socializing in general, the South Korean beer market is undergoing a dramatic change.
In a nutshell, the sales volume of beer for home consumption now exceeds that of beer selling at bars and restaurants.
“For our products, traditionally, the sales volume of beer at bars and restaurants compared to for home use maintained a proportion of 5:5. However, as the demand for after-work get-togethers declined this year, this ratio was changed to 4:6,” Oriental Brewery Co. said.
“Prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, our beer sales at bars and restaurants and compared to home use showed a proportion of 6:4. This ratio, however, has changed to 3.5:6.5 this year,” Hite Jinro Co. noted.
As the main axis of the domestic beer market has shifted towards beer for home use, discount stores are engaged cutthroat price competition.
One supermarket in Seoul is selling Oriental Brewery’s flagship lager beer Cass Fresh and Hite Jinro’s new lager Terra at the same price of 1,540 won (US$1.39) per 355-milliliter can.
This indicates that the price competition between the two companies is fierce enough to fix the price of their flagship beers exactly at the same level, given that consumers tend to opt for cheaper options even when the price gap is no more than 100 won.
Ashley Song (ashley@koreabizwire.com)
