The Significance of Branding within the German Beer Culture

Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject Communications - Public Relations, Advertising, Marketing, Social Media, grade: 1,0, European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), language: English, abstract: In the seminar Cultural Branding, that was conducted by Dr. Marcin Poprawski, wediscussed the connections and intersections of the two topics culture and brands, asthe title of the seminar suggests. We dealt with culture mainly as national culture andwith brands mainly as product brands. The nation that I want to examine in this paperis the German nation, the product that I want to examine is beer.A first connection between Germany and beer is obvious. Beer is part andparcel of the German culture. In the first chapter of this paper, I want to illustrate howsignificant the factor beer is for the identity of Germany and Germans. It will also beshown how people from foreign countries perceive the connection between Germansand beer and how they value German beer. Starting from these results, it will beexplained how the self-perception and the perception by others of Germany and itsculture is historically rooted.After this short look back on the German history, we will focus on the presenttime. The contemporary German beer market will be described. I will give some factsand figures about the German beer market as a whole and also about the size andthe productivity of individual breweries. Following that, I will draw the attention on thevariety of types of beer that are produced in Germany. During the examination of thevariety, we will find out that certain types of beer are preferred in certain regions inGermany. This leads us to the question if and to which extend the preference for acertain type of beer is connected to the relevant culture.Then, the influence of national, regional and local culture on the buyingdecision of consumers will be examined. For that I will consult basic literature f