Green Bay vs. Pittsburgh – Who Wins the Super Bowl of Beer?

January 31, 2011

Beer and football have more in common than just drafts, especially at Super Bowl party time. And whether Green Bay or Pittsburgh wins the NFL’s Super Bowl XLV, we already know which city’s fans are less about six-pack abs than six packs of beer, thanks to Esri’s 2010 Consumer Spending database. Combined with the company’s powerful mapping technologies, we can visually analyze the data in just a few clicks and quickly learn the winners of the year’s Beer-Buying Bowl.

So what does our deep drink of data show? When it comes to beer, residents in Green Bay’s Designated Market Area outpour Pittsburgh in nearly every way, on a per-household basis, and both for in-home and out-of-home purchases. Pittsburgh, with nearly 2.5 times as many residents, buys more beer total, but on a per household basis, Green Bay’s thirsty Cheeseheads pack it in across every category:

Category	Green Bay	Pittsburgh
Beer and Ale, Home Purchases per Household	$144.91	$133.58
Beer, Full-Service Restaurants per Household	$82.47	$76.97
Beer, Fast-Food Restaurants per Household	$18.29	$17.64

Neither town can claim the national beer-buying championship, however. Despite the nearby Napa Valley wine region, for instance, California’s Bay Area DMA (which includes San Francisco and Oakland) spends more on beer for in-home consumption than any other football town, some $236.49 per household. Some cynics might suggest that beer-buying bonanza has been fueled by the hometown teams’ flat performance in recent years, but it’s also been helped along by the region’s higher cost of living, and of drinking.

By contrast, while New Orleans has a reputation for letting les bon temps roulez in support of its beloved Saints, the DMA’s residents spend about half as much as those thirsty Bay Area folks, at just $122.51 per year for in-home beer consumption per household, Esri’s data analysis shows.

Bay Area residents also spend more in restaurants on beer than any other city, at $156.36 per household. That’s more than five times the average in Detroit, whose team’s less-than-leonine record in recent years might have left fans crying in their beers at the corner bar, but only at a kitten-sized rate of just $29.39 per household.

Want to learn more, whether about American beer-buying habits or any of hundreds of other products and services that consumers purchase every year? Consult Esri’s 2010 Consumer Spending database, which identifies hundreds of items in categories such as Apparel, Financial, Food & Beverage, Entertainment & Recreation, and Household Goods & Services. You can use this database to:

Learn what products consumers want, and compare regional differences;
Compare your customers’ spending patterns to broader consumer trends;
Identify profitable customer types by their spending habits;
Tailor promotions to fit consumer demand.

To learn more about how Esri can help build your business, visit http://www.esri.com/data/esri_data/consumer-spending.html.

5 responses

Harley Collins

Jan 31, 2011

Awesome article!

Insightful, easy and informative read packed with with lots of great and timely information.

Thanks for sharing!

Reply
Craig Sandy

Feb 1, 2011

It would be interesting to overlay the drinking associated diseases/illnesses layers and see if they match the consumption layers. This could then be a useful tool for health services planning on particular diseases or illnesses treatment or preventative programs.

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John

Feb 1, 2011

Maybe they buy cheaper beer in Pittsburgh…a higher payroll does not necessarily equal a championship team!

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ryan burns

Feb 1, 2011

So, just a methodological clarification, because it wasn’t quite explicit in the map or description… The unit of analysis here was a Census block? And Esri’s 2010 Consumer Spending database, I assume, uses “total amount spent on beer”, making the conceptual formula for the map: [(total spent on beer)/(total number of households)]? I’m asking because, perhaps due to my lack of imagination, it’s hard to believe that people in densely-populated regions (cities, the Northeast, etc.) drink so much substantially more beer than in less-populated areas. For instance, almost nobody in West Virginia drinks beer, except in Charleston? Really? Forgive my skepticism; I’m more interested than critical!

Oh, and was the title of the map “cex_beer” intended to cause a good chuckle? 🙂

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Pam Allison

Feb 2, 2011

Answers to Ryan Burns:

So, just a methodological clarification, because it wasn’t quite explicit in the map or description… The unit of analysis here was a Census block?
>>>The presented map is shown at the ZIP Code level.

And Esri’s 2010 Consumer Spending database, I assume, uses “total amount spent on beer”, making the conceptual formula for the map: [(total spent on beer)/(total number of households)]?
>>>The Esri Consumer Spending data does calculate a total amount spent on beer at the specific geography level, down to the block group. The average is calculated by dividing the total by the total number of households.

I’m asking because, perhaps due to my lack of imagination, it’s hard to believe that people in densely-populated regions (cities, the Northeast, etc.) drink so much substantially more beer than in less-populated areas. For instance, almost nobody in West Virginia drinks beer, except in Charleston? Really? Forgive my skepticism; I’m more interested than critical!
>>>To compare different areas of the country is typically better to review indexes. This is due to the fact that the total amount spent is also reflective of price levels and income levels, which differ in urban and rural areas. Esri offers a Spending Potential Index which compares the average expenditure for a product locally to the average amount spent nationally. An index of 100 is average. An SPI of 120 shows that average spending by local consumers is 20 percent above the national average.

Oh, and was the title of the map “cex_beer” intended to cause a good chuckle?
>>>CEX is the acronym for the Consumer Expenditure (CEX) Survey that is conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Esri’s Consumer Spending data is built using these Consumer Expenditure Surveys.
For more information about the Esri Consumer Spending database methodology, please visit http://www.esri.com/library/whitepapers/pdfs/consumer-expenditure-methodology-2010.pdf

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