Marketing Assignment 2

GROUP EBE8-02:
Sven Boekestijn

Thijmen Calis

Milosz Krasowski

Pieter Jan Tavenier

Table of Contents
Table  of  Contents  ........................................................................................................................................  2  
1.   Introduction  .........................................................................................................................................  3  
2.   Overview  of  Heineken’s  activities  ........................................................................................................  3  
3.   The  performance  of  Heineken  over  the  past  5  years  ..........................................................................  5  
4.   The  analysis  of  Heineken’s  international  marketing  activities  ............................................................  6  
4.1.  Segmentation  ...................................................................................................................................  6  
4.1.1   General  characteristics  ........................................................................................................  6  
4.1.2   Specific  characteristics  .........................................................................................................  7  
4.2   Targeting  ......................................................................................................................................  7  
4.3   Positioning  ...................................................................................................................................  7  
4.4   Product  strategies  ........................................................................................................................  8  
4.5   Entry  modes  and  distribution  strategies  ......................................................................................  8  
4.6   Promotion  strategies  ...................................................................................................................  9  
4.7   Price  strategies  ..........................................................................................................................  10  
5.   Miscellaneous  topics  .........................................................................................................................  10  
5.1   Ethical  issues  ..............................................................................................................................  11  
5.2.   Parallel import  ...........................................................................................................................  11  
5.3.   Environmental responsibility  .....................................................................................................  11  
6.   Conclusion  .........................................................................................................................................  12  
Reference  list  .............................................................................................................................................  13  
 

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 1. Introduction

“Believe in yourself but do not be overconfident. And the last thing: be yourself.”

Francois van Boxmeer, the CEO of Heineken

This Dutch multinational is one of the greatest breweries in the world due to the fact that it is active in
178 countries around the world. In 1864 Gerard Adriaan Heineken established his first brewery in
Amsterdam, which is the beginning of the story of Heineken.

However, the actual establishment of the brand Heineken was in 1973. The firm started to grow over time
what resulted in the preparedness to take a next step, which was to list Heineken on the Dutch Stock
Exchange market. The board of directors of Heineken had to think globally about which markets should
be entered and which marketing strategy could be undertaken to support the global ideas. These strategies
will be explained later in this report about Heineken.

Like many other international firms Heineken faced some problems in entering new markets. An
excellent example of these problems can be contemplated in the American market; in 1933 Heineken
succeeded in selling his product in America after 13 years of prohibition. In 2012 the firm is active in
Central and Eastern Europe, Western Europe, America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia Pacific.

In Western Europe Heineken plays an important role in the beer market; for example in the Netherlands
and in Spain it is market leader. Heineken employs about 85.000 people over 70 countries and its
international headquarter is settled in Amsterdam, but the head quarter of the Netherlands is in
Zoeterwoude. Heineken sells a broad range of products, such as Brand, Desperados, Sol, Dos Equis en
Primus, however, its main products are Heineken Lager Beer and Amstel Lager Beer. Throughout the
years Heineken also started to develop other activities than only the beer selling activities; these
complementary activities will be described in the next section of this report.

Nowadays, Heineken focuses on five priorities, which were to “Grow the Heineken brand, to keep
consumer-inspired, customer-oriented and brand-led, to capture the opportunities in emerging markets, to
leverage the benefits of Heineken’s global scale and to drive personal leadership in order to maintain its
competitive advantage” (Annual Report Heineken, 2012)

Despite these five priorities of Heineken, it will have to anticipate on the higher growth volume rates in
Africa, South-America and Asia compared to the European and American markets in order to maintain its
current international competitive position. More information about the strategies of Heineken, which is
the core part of our analysis about the global marketing strategy of the company, and some miscellaneous
topics will be described later in this report.

2. Overview of Heineken’s activities

In this section of the report the products and served markets of Heineken will be discussed. Moreover, the
information about the cultural issues concerning the products and the position in the market will be
provided in each paragraph with regards to the market regions for Heineken. Traditionally Heineken is a
firm focused on expanding its market shares and willing to think globally and the company has had
confidence in selling its product right from the start.

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The campaign and marketing strategies of Heineken can support the quality of its products, but in fact
Heineken has to maintain that it actually delivers that good quality it presents to their customers.
Moreover, Heineken offers a wide variety of products all over the world. They sell about 250
international and local products, encompassing the flagship of Heineken and other important products like
Amstel Premium Pilsener, Desperados, Strongbow Gold and Sol and the company divided its operations
into five regions.

Western Europe is responsible for 42,3% of Heineken’s revenue and the main brands sold in this region
are Heineken Lager Beer, Amstel Lager Beer, Desperados, Strongbow Gold and Cruzcampo.
Heineken focuses on the premium position in Western Europe when operating in this constant market. In
2012 Heineken reports that the market share in France, UK, Ireland and Belgium has increased, the
market share in Spain has decreased and that The Netherlands turned out to be a stable market. In the
Netherlands some additional (customized) products such as beertenders, buckler (alcohol free beer), the
icon, draught kegs, and extra cold beer are being sold.1

Central and Eastern Europe contributes for 17,8% to the revenues of Heineken and the main brands in this
region are Heineken Lager Beer, Gässer, Bazant Radler, Żywiec and Oxota. Heineken’s focus in this
region is on the price of the beer. The implementation of the selected price contributed to increased
revenues in this region. In the future Heineken will try to keep focusing on pricing, but also on brand
equity building, and leveraging regional products and commercial capabilities in this region. There is
market growth in this region, especially in markets with strong positions such as Russia, Poland, Austria
and Romania. In December 2012 Heineken declared that it has agreed on partnerships in Kazakhstan and
Serbia, which means that the markets in this region have not been satisfied yet.

In the Americas the contribution to the revenues of Heineken is 24.6%. The group beer volume in this
region tends to keep growing; in 2012 the markets grew by 3.5% with respect to 2011. The revenue grew
by 8% and this is the result of the main brands sold which are Dos Equis Lager, Kaiser, Cristal, Heineken
Lager Beer and Tecate. The US market is considered to be a stable market for Heineken, although the Dos
Equis Lager started to gain more popularity in the US. Moreover the US market turned out to sensitive to
marketing campaigns, which leaded to higher brand equity. Mexico and Brazil are growing markets,
which are mostly served with more local brands as the Tecate and the Dos Equis. The same marketing
strategy is used in the fast-growing market of Brazil. Thus Heineken chooses to implement a strong
pricing in these two countries and decided to focus on local adaptation in these emerging markets.

The region Africa and the Middle East is responsible for 14.4% of the revenues of Heineken and is
comparable to markets as Brazil and Mexico, because of its high organic growth of 12% with respect to
2011. The main brands of this region are Star, Primus, Mützig, Heineken Lager Beer and Maltina. Higher
availability of products is necessary to gain more market share in this region and to overcome the
consumer price inflation. Heineken tries to deliver a wide variety of brands to anticipate on local
adaptation and to introduce a specific marketing strategy to build-up brand equity in this region. These
goals are partly achieved by creating joint ventures.

The Asia Pacific region contributes for 2.9% to the revenue of Heineken, but the markets represent an
organic growth of 6.2% mainly due to the markets of Vietnam, Indonesia, South Korea and a UBL joint
venture in the Indian market. Heineken Lager Beer is sold in this region, but also Tiger, Kingfisher
Bintang and SP. Especially in India the success is the result of the joint venture, which focuses on selling
the Kingfisher brand family. The joint venture can gain Heineken some experience, which can be used to
further build-out its brands in this region in the future, but as mentioned before more information about
the strategies of Heineken will be provided later in this report.
                                                                                                                       
1
 http://yourheineken.heineken.com/nl  

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In the next section the performance of Heineken over the last five years will be discussed. (The
information in this section is based on the annual report of Heineken 2012)

3. The performance of Heineken over the past 5 years

According to the annual report of Heineken N.V. (2012), the company has been developing strongly
during the years 2008-2012. Despite the recent crisis affecting the world’s economy, the company has
been growing each year and earned a net profit. To judge the true performance of the company it should
be compared to the main competitors’ performances, which are AB InBev and SABMiller. The graph
(figure 1) presents the revenue, net profit and volume of sold beer of Heineken and its competitors: AB
InBev and SABMiller. Profits and revenues of Heineken’s competitors were transformed into Euro by
using the average exchange rates, also given in the table.2 It can be seen that during recent 5 years
Heineken was the most expanding company and gained the biggest market share. Its volume of the beer
sold was increasing strongly while the competitors’ volumes were more or less staying the same. The net
profit grew strongly but it was comparable with SABMiller’s growth and much smaller than AB InBev’s
growth. The revenue of Heineken also grew but its growth was smaller than Ab InBev’s growth and
smaller than SABMiller’s growth.

Revenue  in  millions   Net  Profit  in   Volume  of  sold  beer  in   %  c hange  of  
Heineken of  EUR %  c hange millions  of  EUR %  c hange millions  of  hectolitres volume
2008 €                                          14,319.00 €                                1,013.00 125.8
2009 €                                          14,701.00 2.67% €                                1,055.00 4.15% 125.2 -­‐0 .48%
2010 €                                          16,133.00 9.74% €                                1,456.00 38.01% 145.9 16.53%
2011 €                                          17,123.00 6.14% €                                1,584.00 8.79% 164.6 12.82%
2012 €                                          18,383.00 7.36% €                                1,696.00 7.07% 171.7 4.31%
Revenue  in  millions   Net  Profit  in   Volume  of  sold  beer  in   %  c hange  of  
ABInBev of  EUR %  c hange millions  of  EUR %  c hange millions  of  hectolitres volume
2008 €                                          27,841.34 €                                1,785.32 416
2009 €                                          27,494.98 -­‐1 .24% €                                2,937.40 64.53% 409 -­‐1 .68%
2010 €                                          28,493.15 3.63% €                                3,956.40 34.69% 399 -­‐2 .44%
2011 €                                          29,206.41 2.50% €                                4,823.85 21.93% 399 0.00%
2012 €                                          32,164.22 10.13% €                                5,891.95 22.14% 403 1.00%
Revenue  in  millions   Net  Profit  in   Volume  of  sold  beer  in   %  c hange  of  
SABMiller of  EUR %  c hange millions  of  EUR %  c hange millions  of  hectolitres volume
2008 €                                          16,941.71 €                                1,526.52 239
2009 €                                          18,925.90 11.71% €                                1,544.62 1.19% 210 -­‐1 2.13%
2010 €                  20,684.75 9.29% €              1,969.57 27.51% 213 1.43%
2011 €                  21,176.63 2.38% €              2,257.46 14.62% 218 2.35%
2012 €                  25,392.89 19.91% €              2,750.60 21.84% 229 5.05%
Year 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
1EUR=  $                                        0.71    $                                0.75    $                              0.79    $                                0.75    $                                                                                                        0.81    

Figure  1  Performance  of  Heineken,  ABInBev  and  SABMiller  (Heineken’s,  ABInBev’s  and  SABMiller’s  annual  reports,  2012)  

Based on these figures one can conclude that Heineken was developing strongly during past years.
Heineken became an even more serious competitor for SABMiller and AB InBev, which are the two
biggest breweries in the world. However, the increase in revenues and profits was not proportional

                                                                                                                       
2
 http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International-Taxpayers/Yearly-Average-Currency-Exchange-Rates  

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enough to gain in market share. Therefore, Heineken should increase its revenues and profits in order to
have more financial resources to maintain the market share in the future.

4. The analysis of Heineken’s international marketing activities

The company Heineken is the owner of multiple brands (see figure 2) , such as Amstel, Dos Equis and
Strongbow, which all aim for different market segments.

Figure  2  Brands  

The discussion about the segmentation, targeting, positioning and the international strategies of Heineken
described in the next paragraphs will all be regarding the Heineken premium lager beer, most of the time
often referred to as Heineken. Although in the Netherlands the beer of Heineken is regarded to fit in the
same category as the other brands, in the rest of the world Heineken positions itself as premium beer.3
Later on there will be more about the positioning of Heineken within the international markets, but first
the segmentation of the market will be discussed.

4.1.  Segmentation  
The international market segmentation from the work of Hollensen (2005) is used to determine the
segment, Heineken premium lager beer desires to aim at. For Heineken it is important to identify their
segment in order to target their markets. The consumer Heineken focuses on is characterized by its
drinking habit, disposable income, age, gender, lifestyle and cultural habits. The effectiveness of this
segment will later on be tested with the four segment criteria: measurability, accessibility, profitability
and actionability.

4.1.1 General  characteristics  

Geographic characteristics: Heineken divides the operating markets into regions, which is the
regiocentric approach. These are: Western Europe, Africa and the Middle East, Central and Eastern
Europe, Americas and Asia Pacific (Annual Report Heineken, 2012). Such a division is necessary in order
to align the strategy with market conditions. The regions differ in economic development and culture.
Therefore, Heineken operates on the whole globe and maximizes its competitive advantage due to
dividing markets into regions and appointing directors of each region. (Annual Report Heineken, 2012) It
helps the company to adjust better to consumers’ preferences in different geographic places. For example,
                                                                                                                       
1
 http://www.heinekeninternational.com/products_brands_brands.aspx  

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without geographic segmentation Heineken would not have succeeded in Eastern Europe where the
disposable income is smaller compared to the Western Europe. Therefore, the segmentation on
geographic characteristics is a key to success of Heineken.

Demographic characteristics: The consumer of Heineken is also segmented by using demographic

factors. The two factors, which are most crucial in the beer industry, are an age and a gender of a
consumer. The premium beer is mainly sold to consumers under age 25- 50 years.4 At this age the
consumer is neither underage nor too old. In most countries drinking alcohol is allowed for people older
than 18-21 years. According to the statistics men dominate drinking beer and therefore the focus of
Heineken is on men. 5

Social organization: Heineken’s consumers are from the middle to high-income class because Heineken
Premium beer is more expensive than the casual beers and therefore, more exclusive than other brands.6

4.1.2 Specific  characteristics  

Psychographic characteristics: The premium beer of Heineken is sold to consumers who are richer and
from higher social class. Their consumers are therefore very aware of what they drink and the quality of
the beer and its brand is therefore important. These consumers are brand loyal because it interconnects
them with a society class they want to be in and a higher value which the beer delivers fits their more
sophisticated and demanding lifestyle. The consumers who drink premium beer are self-conscious,
represent themselves with brands and are likely to want the newest and best products in the
market.7Therefore, the high quality of the Heineken beer was the main goal since its very beginning and
was highly stressed. The strong brand of Heineken is advertised in a way, which fits the consumer
description given above.

4.2 Targeting  
Basing on the segmentation analysis the targeted consumer is a male from the middle to high-income
class between 25 and 50 years old. He lives in a city and is often high educated, brand aware, status-
minded and sophisticated in his behaviour. All these general characteristics are measurable, accessible
and actionable. Therefore these characteristics are very effective and thus very useful for the market
segmentation of Heineken. On the other hand, the psychographic characteristics of this consumer are less
effective due to low measurability, accessibility and actionability. Despite the previous, this does not
mean that it is not relevant. In fact, in this specific situation of Heineken premium, it is probably the most
relevant characteristic of Heineken’s segment. The premium status Heineken wants to sell, has to be
maintained premium by its customers. If Heineken fails to attract the segment it’s aiming for and the
premium beer becomes too popular under the lower classes, higher-classes or more educated people have
less incentives to buy the beer. This damages the brand and the marketing strategy of Heineken.

4.3 Positioning  
Positioning is not about changing a product, but influences the mind of customers. ‘The basic approach of
positioning is not to create something new and different. But to manipulate what’s already up there in the

                                                                                                                       
4
 http://skemabeers.wordpress.com/products/  
http://business.highbeam.com/408258/article-­‐1G1-­‐118443526/consumer-­‐characteristics  
5
 http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/09/04/cheers-­‐5-­‐intoxicating-­‐facts-­‐about-­‐beer/  
http://business.highbeam.com/408258/article-­‐1G1-­‐118443526/consumer-­‐characteristics  
6
 http://skemabeers.wordpress.com/products/  
 http://www.ukessays.com/essays/business/beer-­‐brands-­‐market.php#ixzz2Nnb8aeXo  
7

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mind. To retie the connections that already exists.’ (Ries, A. and Trout, J., Positioning: the battle of your
mind, 2000)
Heineken wants to position itself in the mind of the consumers as a high-quality, innovative and enjoyable
beer and portrays its drinkers as young, sophisticated, confident, successful and fun men who want to
drink beer in a luxurious way. Heineken beer is also about ‘a drink for friends, coming together and
enjoying good times’.8 The positioning statement of Heineken is as follows: "For successful, middle class
men, Heineken is the beer that offers an enjoyable good-time."9 The international commercials of
Heineken represent this positioning statement. The commercials include most of the time a group well-
dressed young men, a luxurious setting and a fun scenario.10 The factors within Heineken
commercials are: internationalisation, premium quality, enjoyed together and entertainer
(www.ebiquity.com). They are going to be discussed later in this report. Moreover, with slogans such as
‘’Heineken, serving the planet’’ or ‘’open your world’’ they imply to be more than just a high quality beer
brand. Through these slogans and commercials they create a feeling and a connection with the brand.
Heineken also uses sponsorship as a way of positioning. By sponsoring the Champions League a
tournament of high-quality football, which people, especially men, enjoy with friends. This is linked to
the premium beer of Heineken.
They want to manipulate your mind in such a way that you do not perceive Heineken as just ‘’a nice
tasting beer’’, but as an experience, a way of living, meant for people who want to have a premiumisation
of their life. Their way of emotional positioning is a very strong aspect in Heinekens success up till now.

4.4 Product  strategies

Heineken presents itself as a global brand and offers premium beer as a global product (Doole and Lowe,
2008). It is the world’s best-selling premium lager beer, which matches with the global slogan: ‘serving
the planet’.11 In contrast to the Heineken premium beer, the company Heineken has other brands in its
portfolio, which only serve a country or region and are thus more locally adapted. For Heineken it has
central guidelines and standards regarding the brand style, brand value and brand development.12 The
product strategy for Heineken premium beer is thus a standardization strategy to leverage the global
image of the product. The international status of Heineken is an extra impulse for the more cosmopolitan
consumers to buy the product. Selling Heineken under one brand name over more than 170 countries
maximizes the impact of the brand.13 Brand awareness is important for Heineken to distinguish itself all
over the world. The green bottles, the star and smiling ‘e’s’ on the label all support the branding of
Heineken and brand identification among customers. On the product Heineken makes no references to its
country of origin, this emphasizes the international image Heineken wants to have. As for the branding,
which is similar across countries the ingredients and quality are also the same worldwide. 5% of the
Heineken beer brewed is a different final product due to local legal/tax reasons.14

4.5 Entry  modes  and  distribution  strategies  

Heineken has now over 100 breweries spread out all over the world. Heineken is currently selling beer to
more than 170 countries and has fully owned operations in 70 countries. As history tells us, Heineken has
a mixed combination of the waterfall approach and the shower approach when we look at the sequence of
entering new markets. In 1933 Heineken exported beer to the US, which is an advanced country, for the

                                                                                                                       
8
 http://www.ebiquity.com/media/120147/brand%20review%20sample.pdf  
9
 http://forget-­‐milk-­‐got-­‐beer.blogspot.nl/2012/11/heineken-­‐segmentation-­‐positioning-­‐target.html  
10
 http://www.ebiquity.com  
11
 http://marketing432.wikispaces.com/file/view/Heineken+in+Beer-­‐+World.pdf  
12
 http://www.heinekeninternational.com/brands_and_brewing_page.aspx  
 http://www.frw.rug.nl/persons/groote/cursus/global%20village/websites/0910/heineken/summary.html  
13

14
 http://www.heinekeninternational.com/faqpage.aspx  

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first time. However, in 1900 they had already exported beer to Nigeria, which was a less developed
country. This sequence suggests that Heineken applies the shower approach. On the contrary, we can see
over time that Heineken first enters advanced countries such as western Europe and the US, and in the
past ten years they have been expanding drastically also in developing countries. So a combination of
incremental and simultaneous entries with more propensities to incremental is the main expansion
strategy of Heineken.

The strategy of how Heineken enters new markets is very sequential. First they start with exporting their
beer to the targeted market to build up image and brand awareness; this contributes to the reduction of the
liability of foreignness. If this succeeds they start licensing to local breweries in order to expand market
Heineken’s market share. In case of success they will consider an intermediate mode or even a
hierarchical mode. This is a smart strategic way to avoid risks and eventually obtain the full benefits of
ownership. Also the choice of a hierarchical mode or an intermediate mode is depending on the brand
they want to sell. Heineken has its premium brand, which is standardized globally; so in this case they
prefer fully ownership to maintain the standard quality and image. In case of local adaption with local
brands they would choose for an intermediate mode with a local firm because of the specific knowledge
of their domestic markets.

Because of the many breweries Heineken has all over the world, the distribution channel of their product
becomes in some parts of the world less complex and long. Mainly in Europe Heineken fully owns
operations in these countries and have short distribution channels from producer to retailer to
supermarket/bars/clubs. However, Heineken also exports a critical amount of his premium beer.
Especially in North America all the premium beer of Heineken is imported. This is because Heineken still
has not dominated the beer market in the US and as stated earlier, Heineken does not enter a market via
an intermediate or hierarchical mode without having expanded their market share significantly. This
export mode creates a more complex distribution system and requires more communication and
organization skills and will also influences the price of their product.

4.6 Promotion  strategies  

In 2012 Heineken has spent approximately 12.5%, 2.25 billion euros, of its revenues on promotional
activities. From this, one can conclude that promotion is a major aspect of Heinekens total activities.
According to the Hollensen (2012) the promotion consists of advertising, public relations, sales
promotion, direct marketing, personal selling and viral marketing/social networking. The promotion
activities with the biggest international reach are described below.

Heineken’s strategy focuses their promotion, in the category of public relations, on a few different
cultural events. These events include sports, music and films. As mentioned before Heineken has a
sponsorship deal with the UEFA to promote Heineken during the Champions League. The chief
commercial officer of Heineken describes the deal as follows:
‘The UEFA Champions League is one of the world's premier sporting competitions with unrivalled
international reach and professional standards. This makes it a perfect match for Heineken, the world's
most international premium beer brand.’15

                                                                                                                       
15
 http://www.uefa.com/uefa/events/marketing/news/newsid=1635417.html  

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Heineken may shown on the billboards within the stadiums and will be promoted during the commercial
breaks.

Heineken is also present at the Rugby World Cup, the Olympics (2012) and they have their own
international tennis tournament, which is called the Heineken Open. Another approach to reach the
international consumers is through sponsoring music events, having a Heineken music portal and in the
Netherlands you have for example a Heineken music hall. In the film sector Heineken is less active than
in the field of sports or music, but Heineken did some big promotions along with the launches of the last
two James Bond movies. It even changed the Martini, the original drink of the old James Bonds, with a
bottle of Heineken.16

Heineken launched in 2011 the ‘’open your world’’ campaign. This campaign brought all the major
themes and brand values together and created one effective idea with four major aspects:
Internationalisation, premium quality, enjoyed together and entertainer. Internationalisation refers to the
range of Heineken. Its beer is sold around the globe and is meant for every culture and country. This is
also emphasized in the commercials. The commercials are a form of advertising Premium quality is
represented by the high class people in the commercials. Furthermore, in all the commercials there are
people talking with each other and having a good time which refers to the enjoyed together and the
entertainer part. With three very successful and award winning commercials, Heineken has positioned
itself even better throughout the world.

All these promotional activities are about reaching as many potential consumers as possible, to get
Heineken linked in the mind with the favourite sport tournaments, music events or movies of the
consumers, to increase the brand awareness and to improve international status of Heineken.
Heineken has big international standardized promotional activities, but also operates in a local way. This
local adaption can be seen in language adaptations in commercials, specific local commercials or the
sponsoring of local events.

4.7 Price  strategies  

The premium beer of Heineken is placed internationally in the medium to higher price classes compared
to the competitors. Heineken has different price strategies in different countries, so the medium or higher
price depends on the country. In the Netherlands and Poland for example Heineken is a more mainstream
brand and is medium priced. In the US, however, Heineken is higher priced and has a more exclusive
status. Heineken follows a market pricing strategy and compares the price and quality of its beer with
competitors. As the Heineken International website states, they deliver competitively priced, quality
products. The price strategy also depends on the phase of beer in the product life cycle. In countries where
Heineken is just introduced and is still innovative a higher price can be chosen than in the more mature
markets as Europe. Also prices differ all over the world due to importing cost and government
regulations. All in all Heineken presents its beer as premium beer and position itself in the premium price
class, but the prices may differ locally in specific cases, due to a specific price strategy or due to different
costs.

5. Miscellaneous topics

In this section the additional important factors, which influence the perception of the brand Heineken, its
                                                                                                                       
16
 http://www.heinekeninternational.com/mediakitsponsorships.aspx  

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marketing strategy and its performance, will be discussed. Ignoring one of them can possibly cause the
marketing strategy to become a failure. Therefore, Heineken must take them into account when the
strategy is implemented. Three things are relevant for Heineken:
ethical issues, parallel import and environmental responsibility.

5.1 Ethical  issues  

Heineken must be aware of ethical issues when selling its products. Almost all products of Heineken
contain alcohol (Annual Report Heineken, 2012). Alcohol is harmful for a human’s organism when
consumed in excess. Also, when it is consumed by children it may harm the proper child development.17
Moreover, driving after alcohol consumption is extremely dangerous and may result in a traffic
accident.18 Therefore, Heineken advertises the responsible consumption of alcohol and prevent from
selling the beer to childish consumers. The company is also aware that the industry alone is not the key to
solve these problems. Therefore, it co-operates with different partners and NGOs to reduce the
consequences of these problems (Annual Report Heineken, 2012). In general, Heineken is aware that not
involving in ethical issues could result in brand image destruction and a revenue decrease.

5.2. Parallel import  

Another important issue is a parallel import which means that goods are imported from another country
without a permission of an official manufacturer.19 Parallel import can be disastrous to a company
because beer which is imported this way is not under the control of Heineken. Therefore, Heineken’s
brand image may be used in a way which is against its strategy. Heineken controls the sale of its product
by having official distributors and registering its trademark which is legally protected.20

5.3. Environmental responsibility

Another important issue is environment related. Producing a beer demands a lot of energy and water
which is further polluted. The brewery business emits a lot of carbon dioxides.21 Due to recent increase in
people’s awareness concerning the earth pollution, it is extremely important for the company to put an
effort in order to implement the sustainability policy. The more aware consumer is willing to buy
products which do not pollute the world and hence, the place where he or she lives in. Heineken has
already introduced several targets to reach in order to increase world’s sustainability (see figure 3). Before
year 2020 the company wants to reduce CO2 emissions by 40% and water consumption by 25%.22

                                                                                                                       
17
 http://www.shesinrecovery.com/addiction/harmfuleffects.html  
18
 http://www.edgarsnyder.com/drunk-­‐driving/drunk-­‐driving-­‐statistics.html  
19
 http://rapsinews.com/judicial_information/20130226/266530864.html  
20
 http://rapsinews.com/judicial_information/20130226/266530864.html  
21
 http://www.sustainabilityreport.heineken.com/overview/what-­‐we-­‐said-­‐and-­‐what-­‐weve-­‐done.html  
22
 http://www.environmentalleader.com/2010/04/13/heineken-­‐plans-­‐40-­‐emissions-­‐reduction-­‐by-­‐2020/  

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Figure  3  Approach  on  sustainability  Heineken

6. Conclusion

Heineken is a truly international and successful brewing company which operates in almost every
country. Its long history is characterized by a lot of successes, sharp growth and expansionary strategy.
Heineken premium beer focuses on the successful, brand-aware, higher-class men, ranging from the age
of 25 till 50. Men who want to experience quality beer while being together with friends and use
Heineken to shape their image. Heineken uses product, price and promotion strategies to position itself as
a premium high-quality brand in the mind of these men. Heineken’s global presence and premium status
is emphasized in the product, especially the branding of the product and the promotional activities. The
higher price reflects the high-quality of the Heineken beer. Along with a coherent and well-performed
marketing mix and a very efficient combination of export strategies and equity based alliances, the
premium Heineken beer conquers almost all the regions of the world. Its strategy is to enter the markets
by exporting firstly and then deciding whether to enter the market more directly. The primary activities of
Heineken are also supported by several miscellaneous factors as acting ethically, trying to sell its product
through licensed subsidiaries and implementing environmental sustainability policy. To conclude
Heineken’s beer is not only positioned in the premium segment but their international marketing strategy
is also of premium quality.

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