Consumer Nation

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Six items that have consumers buzzing in the world of beer, wine and spirits as we head into Memorial Day weekend:

Brewers Target Millennials to Drive Growth: Move over Boomers, the beer business is targeting Millennials, the category of about 80 million consumers born between 1980 and 1995. MillerCoors recently announced it is rolling out a coconut flavored “malt beverage” and an apple flavored beer in the hopes of wooing back young consumers who have passed on beer in favor of wine or liquor. Meanwhile Heineken is also making an aggressive push to reach Millennials, putting 15 percent of its marketing spend towards social media, which the brewer says is second only to TV in terms of where the segment spends its time. Heineken expects Millennials to make up 70 percent of the growth in the beer category the next 10 years. 

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Flash-sale websites such as Gilt Groupe and Ru La La were hailed as disruptors in the ecommerce space, but recently there’s been a bit of a disruption in their success story, prompting some to wonder if flash-sale sites are more of a marketing gimmick than a sustainable business model.

Source: Fab.com Fab.com was once lumped into the flash-sale genre, but the company just revamped its site to put the emphasis on social shopping.

The sector, while still growing, is being shaken up by consolidation, layoffs and slowing growth rates. Many industry analysts suspect that will continue unless flash-sale sites adapt.

Take design shopping site Fab. The company was once lumped into the “flash-sale” genre, but Fab recently revamped its website putting the spotlight firmly on features that help shoppers share information about products with friends. The new design was most noteworthy for what it didn’t highlight: sales.

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Pining for the days when consumers considered shopping a sport? Perhaps you’re looking in the wrong place.

Flash-sale sites like Gilt.com, RueLaLa.com and BeyondtheRack.com came on the scene when recession-wary consumers were hungry for bargains and still reserved about their spending. The sites took advantage of retailer overstocks to lure shoppers in with high-quality merchandise at rock-bottom prices. But now, consumers and retailers are on more solid footing, but the sites don’t appear to be losing their allure.

“The flash-sale sites are becoming an increasingly important part of Internet retailing,” said KeyBanc Capital Markets Retail Analyst Edward Yruma. “The idea of product scarcity gives consumers a real reason to shop. We think flash sites are not only showing that the consumer is still looking for a bargain, but that the recreational element of shopping may be slowly coming back.”

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Bloomberg | Getty Images While smaller beer brands may be more nimble, one global brewer who has managed to successfully navigate the social media waters is Heineken. With more than 6.8 million "likes" on its main Facebook account, it has the largest worldwide fan base of any beer brand on the platform.

“Got craft beer?”

The phrase may seem like a laughable spoof of the famous “got milk?” campaign but not long ago the need for a similar style campaign was being discussed in craft beer circles.

“Years ago we debated on the (Brewers Association) PR and Marketing Committee if we needed a ‘got milk?’-type campaign, if we needed to be on TV or billboards talking about craft beer,” Steve Hindy, Brooklyn Brewery's co-founder and president, recently told a group assembled at the Brewers Association Craft Brewers Conference. “I began to realize that’s crazy, that’s not us.”

It turns out they didn’t need one. The media landscape was changing and helping the upstart brands get the word out. The power of the Internet had a much more valuable and lasting impact than any billboard or TV spot could hope to capture.

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Six items that have consumers buzzing in the world of beer, wine and spirits as we head into the weekend:

1.Yuengling Takes Top Honors in Harris Poll: Yuengling is a beer brand on a roll. Already dubbed “America’s Oldest Brewery,” a 2011 jump in volume allowed Yuengling to grab a tie for the title of “Largest American-owned Brewer.” Now it has taken the top spot in the 2012 Harris Poll EquiTrend study. Yuengling Traditional Lager, available in only 14 states, beat out brands such as Corona, Molson Coors Brewing's

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[TAP  Loading...      ()   ] Blue Moon, Diageo's

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[DEO  Loading...      ()   ] Guinness Stout, and Boston Beer's

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[SAM  Loading...      ()   ] Sam Adams for the title of “Beer Brand of the Year."

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Headlines about Wal-Mart Stores' better-than-expected earnings mean that, at least for now, Wall Street isn't so concerned about bribery allegations in Mexico and pending investigations.

Source: Walmart

The world's largest retailer

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[WMT  Loading...      ()   ] beat the Street on both the top and bottom line, reporting earnings of $1.09 a share on revenues of $113 billion. The second-quarter forecast calls for earnings of $1.13 to $1.18 a share, a range that brackets the average analyst estimate of $1.16 a share, reported by Thomson Reuters.

Wal-Mart's U.S. same-store sales growth is arguably the most important — and closely watched — metric, and the first quarter's gain of 2.6 percent year-over-year continues to put it on a positive trend.

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Just when you thought JCPenney expectations might be low enough? Nope. Not even close. Turns out the American consumer is addicted to a deal.

Ryan T. Conaty | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The problem is the JCPenney

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[JCP  Loading...      ()   ] management team did not realize just how much their customer is addicted to the coupon drug. Weaning them off their addiction looks like a bigger challenge than Ron Johnson had originally anticipated.

Same-store sales for first quarter plunged 18.9 percent and the reported loss was more than two-times expectations.

Customer traffic was the main issue, and for the foreseeable future, I am not sure why that would change. Traffic declined 10 percent. High-traffic weekends were simply not high traffic, and the number of shoppers in the stores fell 12 percent year-over-year. Notably weekends tend to be more skewed to the bargain-hunting coupon wavers.

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Worries about fuel prices are trumping concerns about unemployment for U.S. retailers, according to a BDO USA study. Unemployment had been a larger retailer concern since 2009.

In the study, BDO looked at the most recent 10-k filings from the 100 largest public retailers in the U.S. The study found that 99 of the retailers cited general economic conditions as a potential risk to their business. However, this year, fuel prices also loomed larger on the radar screen. About 71 percent of retailers cited fuel prices as one of their chief concerns, up from 58 percent last year.

Gasoline prices have fallen sharply in the past month, but earlier in the spring prices surged, sparking fears that the higher prices would crimp consumer spending.

Unemployment remains a concern for about 68 percent of retailers, the study found. But worries about the labor market reached their peak in 2010, when about 70 percent of retailers said it was one of their top concerns.

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