Finance And Budgeting In Today’s Climate had this noteworthy post the other day:

The cost of a beer is going up. Brewers across the world are hiking prices to compensate for lower sales volumes and higher commodity costs. This past Tuesday Anheuser-Busch made public its plans to raise prices. MillerCoors announced it is also raising prices but the reasons they site are in line with their company’s regular fall increases not the economic environment.

Industry experts expected this but these companies will only be able to raise prices so much due to the fact that the consumer will not take lightly to price increases in the current economic climate. In fact Heineken will ind a tough environment to keep raising their prices as one of their major competitors (Corona) has said it will not increase prices.

Heineken and Corona are struggling more than Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors because consumers are choosing the less expensive brands. This will lead to a very tricky balancing act, to be able to raise prices to offset costs but not to lose push consumers to another brand of beer or from any purchase. This all comes at a tough time for Micro-brewers as they were enjoying increased market share but their higher prices might push beer drinkers back to lower priced beers like Bud Lite & Coors Light.