"Goat" wrote in message
news:bjEpe.6931$xI2.1025@trnddc09...

Agree. But a major change in taste WILL result in a loss of sales =$

No doubt about it. Whatever informs or dictates individual tastes, the
result is very real.

I point to "New Coke" as an example.

I recall the outrage (purely a matter of hearsay on my part, as I don't
drink much soda and have no brand preferences) but I don't remember whether
it caused many outright defections to the opposition. I suppose diehard
Coke fans were stymied by the fact that, for all practical purposes, there
were no options but to swallow the new product (and their pride) or switch
over to the loathed Pepsi. It seems to me that AB and Miller never quite so
dominated the beer market in the U.S. as to leave the hapless consumer in
such dire straits. There have always been at least a few other smaller
national and some fairly successful regional brands available. Even today
there are enough of the established generic American beers left to give fans
of the style a number of viable options.....Olympia, Coors, Pearl, PBR, etc.

To help with this is why the makers of
"horse ****" make more than one beer and pretty much leave the original
alone. This is to keep the loyal fans happy and try to win over those who
don't like horse ****. (not really a fan of horse **** myself FWIW)

Aside from the "Lite" beers (an extraordinary phenomenon) most of their
experiments with other styles haven't been all that successful. In large
part, this results from their own efforts at establishing and maintaining a
widespread preference for a certain style. Anything that departs very far
from what their customer base expects will not only leave them cold, but
also make them nervous about the future. Anything that doesn't won't
attract anyone who doesn't care for their flagship brews.

Miller experimented rather heavily with a number of "micros" back about ten
years ago. Some of them actually made it to the marketplace, where they
promptly failed. Their customer base wasn't interested because they were
too different, others weren't interested because they weren't different
enough. Both camps were highly suspicious. They also tried some things
that never made it to market. I got to try some of them by way of a friend
who was in management at Miller. Some of each group were actually pretty
decent. Miller dropped all of them because it was deemed that they just
weren't worth the trouble. They preferred to continue to go after market
share by tried and true methods.....marketing, price cutting, buying up the
competition, advertising, etc. rather than extending the product line.

In part I think the success of horse **** is that it IS widely available,
any bar, any store, any place that sells beer (U.S.) WILL have horse ****
you can count on it and don't have to think about it. It is also cheaper
than most "good" beers. As far as taste at an early age... at the ripe old
age of 15 my favorite beer was Little Kings. Why? It was easy to steal.
Simple as that. Favorite beer now...Guinness. I don't see at all how
Little
Kings trained me to like Guinness. Or wait maybe I do. I get it... one
tastes like **** one tastes goooooood.

Personally, I think Guinness is grossly overrated......but, to each his own.


But really how many of us drink now what we did then? Be it stolen or
snuck
out of dad's fridge, or friend's dad's fridge.

"This ain't your fathers beer"
Natural Lite {:-? Yuck!

What makes the whole thing even more interesting is the impossibility of
determining for certain that ANY of them is your father's beer. Aside from
deliberate changes in formulas (or recipes, if you prefer), something we
know happened a lot throughout the history of brewing in America, there is
also undetectable incremental change in basic ingredients. Even today it is
expensive and extremely difficult to ensure that the barley going into one
batch is identical to what went into the last.....the fact that a brewer has
identified certain parameters does not, can not, guarantee that others, as
yet unidentified, won't make a difference over time.

Then too, individual perceptions change over time. I don't know whether any
of the beers I drank when I was in my teens are the same products (in any
meaningful sense) today as they were in the 60s, but they sure taste
different to me.

Wolfgang