Factor Analysis of Purchasing a Third-Category Beer

There is a beer known as the third beer in Japan. This beer has been sold at a lower price than others due to the difference in tax rates. Taking this advantage, its sales volume continued to grow until 2020. However, the price advantage will gradually disappear, due to the increase in tax rates until 2026. It is said that third beer sales volume is going to decline. So, it is important to find purchasing factors other than price in third beers and translate them into products. This paper analyzes the customer demographics of “Honkirin,” a representative third beer product, to derive factors for purchasing a third beer. Based on these findings, we will also propose ideas and promotions for new third beer products. First, we extracted questionnaire items that were relevant to purchase intention for “Honkirin” by using a t variable selection method called Boruta. Then, latent class analysis was conducted, assigning samples to six classes based on the samples’ answer patterns to the selected items. After that, a chi-square test was applied for each class to identify the class which significantly contained samples with purchase intention toward “Honkirin”. After testing, we examined the overall response patterns of each class and their web usage to derive the needs and behavioral features of Honkirin’s potential customers. Finally, based on the findings from the analyses, we summarized product ideas and promotion methods for third beer that would survive after the loss of price advantage.