Luxury craftsmanship – the emergent luxury beer market

The purpose of this paper is to consider the design of experiential marketing strategies within the luxury beer category.

The research is exploratory in order to provide a broad, grounded starting point within the context of a changing luxury landscape.

Consumer responses to the craft beer consumption experience can be applied to the four dimensions of experiential value as defined by Mathwick et al. (2001): consumer return on investment; perceived excellence value; perceived playfulness; and perceived aesthetic value.

This analysis suggests that the degree to which a luxury beer brand is able to deliver experiential value will largely determine its market success.

This paper is the first to study experiential marketing within the context of the luxury beer category.