Boxing Cat Brewery
Boxing Cat Brewery brewmaster Michael Jordan and his team worked with TMIC for the beer product. Credit: Alizila.

Anheuser-Busch InBev company Boxing Cat Brewery and Alibaba’s Tmall Innovation Center (TMIC) have teamed up to develop a craft beer specifically for the Chinese market.

Boxing Cat Brewery brewmaster Michael Jordan and his team worked with TMIC in this endeavour.

For creating the beer, Boxing Cat used TMIC’s analytics and consumer feedback in order to understand the requirements of Chinese beer enthusiasts.

Based on the feedback, the brewery created a porter beer, called ‘Big Luck Big Win’, which had hints of orange and chocolate. The beverage was launched on Tmall just in time for Chinese New Year.

“We can’t expect all trends to be driven by the American craft beer scene or the English craft beer scene. There is a lot of inspiration to draw from China.”

Jordan said: “This is a complete reverse approach. We can directly work with the consumers to find out their preferences. This bypasses the sales and marketing steps and just goes straight to the brewers to create a new product based on what they prefer.”

Founded in April 2017, TMIC makes use of consumer insights from Alibaba’s nearly 700 million shoppers in order to help brands such as AB InBev to create innovative products, services and marketing campaigns for the China market.

The research includes online surveys, offline events, and algorithms to study consumer behaviour.

Boxing Cat brand manager Kelsey Willis said: “TMIC has direct access to the Chinese consumers, and it is really able to give us a more-targeted idea about who we want to move forward and create beers for them. When we get information from TMIC, it’s not a broad stroke. It’s insightful and targeted data.”

“We can’t expect all trends to be driven by the American craft beer scene or the English craft beer scene. There is a lot of inspiration to draw from China.”

China’s beer market is burgeoning, driven by its growing middle-class. According to a forecast by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the middle-class population is expected to reach around 850 million by 2030.

In October 2018, Alibaba signed an agreement to make an investment of RMB2bn ($288.3m) in local wine and spirits importer 1919.cn.

This investment gives Alibaba a 29% stake in the company, making it the second largest stakeholder of the company.