Asahi Strategy Meeting Overview

Executive Readout

The strategic frame: alcohol decline is not one decline. It is a reshaping of volume, frequency, occasions, channel mix, category mix, and the social permission around drinking. Spend is more nuanced: prices, premiumisation, larger online baskets, and occasion-led upgrades can keep value moving even when litres and trips soften.

The Asahi implication: Asahi’s strongest strategy is not simply to sell more beer. It is to defend and premiumise the beer engine while using RTDs, low/no, soft drinks, and adult refreshment to win more adult occasions across the week.

The AKQA opportunity: help Asahi become an occasion intelligence and distributed CX company. The job is to make the right Asahi drink easy to discover, choose, buy, serve, and feel good about, even when Asahi does not own the retailer, venue, algorithm, or transaction data.

The meeting provocation: the future opportunity may be less about increasing alcohol consumption and more about increasing Asahi’s share of moments where adults want refreshment, connection, flavour, status, ritual, or inclusion.

The Core Questions

Question	Short answer for the room	Strategy implication
What is Asahi’s core business strategy?	Premiumise the core beer portfolio, expand global brands, and build a multi-beverage portfolio that responds to changing wellbeing and social habits.	Treat beer, RTDs, no/low, soft drinks, and food-adjacent beverages as one occasion system.
Is alcohol decline about volume, frequency, occasions, spend, channel mix, or all of the above?	All of the above, but not evenly. Litres and frequency are under pressure; value can be protected by premiumisation and larger planned baskets; occasions are fragmenting.	Stop using “alcohol decline” as one metric. Build an occasion dashboard.
Why are people drinking less?	Health, cost, changing norms, fewer automatic nights out, more screen-based socialising, social-media surveillance, and new rituals where moderation is normal.	Build for mixed tables, moderation confidence, and experience-rich occasions.
How is in-store vs online behaviour changing?	Retail still anchors the category, but physical penetration and frequency are softening; online is smaller but growing quickly and carries larger baskets.	In-store must win impulse and recognition. Online must win planning, gifting, hosting, recommendations, and repeat.
How are categories performing differently?	RTDs and no/low are growth pockets; wine and many full-strength categories face volume pressure; beer is split between mainstream pressure, premium value, and no-alcohol growth.	Do not optimise by category alone. Optimise by job-to-be-done and occasion.
What does no/low mean?	It is defensive, recruitment-led, and ecosystem-building at once. It keeps people in brand rituals when they are not drinking full-strength alcohol.	Position no/low as inclusion and occasion expansion, not compromise.
What happens when retailers own the transaction?	Retailers control shopper identity, basket data, loyalty, retail media, recommendations, and sales attribution. Brands see only part of the customer.	Asahi needs retailer data partnerships plus its own zero-party and first-party data moments.
What role do loyalty, retail media, and recommendations play?	They are becoming the new shelf and the new shopper research layer.	Treat personalised recommendations as responsible choice architecture, not just conversion pressure.
Is the future about selling more alcohol?	Not primarily. The more resilient frame is owning more occasions with the right ABV, format, channel, and experience.	Move from share of alcohol to share-of-occasion.

Asahi’s Core Business Strategy

Asahi’s stated direction is to contribute to a sustainable society and respond to changing conceptions of wellbeing through “great taste and fun.” In commercial terms, that becomes five linked moves:

1. Premiumise the core. Asahi is still anchored in beer and high-value brands. The official strategy emphasises premiumisation centered on beer, global brand expansion, and high-value-added brands across alcohol, non-alcohol beverages, and food.
2. Globalise from a stronger regional base. Asahi operates across more than 100 markets, with over 60 production bases and more than 100 million hL of production volume across alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. From April 1, 2025, Asahi reorganised its operating structure into Japan & East Asia, Europe, and Asia Pacific, integrating Oceania and Southeast Asia.
3. Build a multi-beverage portfolio. Asahi’s advantage is portfolio breadth: beer, beer-taste beverages, RTDs, cider, soft drinks, food, and functional adjacencies. This gives it more ways to serve the same person across different dayparts and levels of alcohol intensity.
4. Expand no/low as a mainstream choice. Asahi’s official global target is for non-alcohol and low-alcohol beverages to reach 20% of the sales composition of main alcohol beverage products by 2030. In its 2024 Integrated Report, the 2023 level was 10.5%.
5. Use R&D and experience design to create new ways of drinking. Asahi explicitly frames R&D as a foundation for meeting diversifying customer needs and creating “new ways of drinking” and experience-based value.

Current watchout: Asahi’s FY2025 full-year results announcement was delayed after a cyberattack on September 29, 2025. As of the February 26, 2026 update, Asahi said the formal FY2025 announcement date was still to be determined. Use FY2024 full-year data and FY2025 progress updates carefully in any meeting materials.

Key Surprising Stats

Signal	Why it matters
Australia had 217.1 million litres of pure alcohol available for consumption in 2023-24, down from 227.3 million litres in 2020-21. Per capita availability fell from 10.9L to 9.8L.	This is a real volume decline, not just a vibes story.
In Australia, wine represented 42% of pure alcohol available for consumption in 2023-24, beer 32%, and spirits 23%.	The category conversation cannot be beer-only, even for a brewer.
Only 69% of Australians aged 14+ had consumed alcohol in the previous 12 months in 2022-23; 14.9% had never consumed a full serve.	Non-drinkers and infrequent drinkers are no longer edge cases.
Risky drinking among Australians aged 14+ was about 31% in 2022-23, similar to 2019, but long-term patterns show more abstainers under 50 and lower weekly/daily drinking than in earlier decades.	The market is moderating structurally, not collapsing uniformly.
DrinkWise’s 2024 survey found 59% of Australian drinkers had cut back in some way over the previous 12 months, up from 43% in 2018. Top reasons included health, responsible drinking, finance, lifestyle, and avoiding drunkenness.	Moderation is behavioural, not just attitudinal.
IWSR preliminary data showed total beverage alcohol volume down 2% in 2025 across 22 markets that represent roughly 75% of global volume.	The pressure is global and recent.
In those IWSR markets, RTDs were the only major category to grow in 2025: +2% volume and +4% value. No-alcohol beer grew +8% volume and +12% value.	Growth is shifting to convenience, flavour, lower ABV, and alcohol-free formats.
In 2024, no/low volume grew +13% across IWSR’s top 10 markets, including Australia, and recruited 61m no-alcohol consumers and 38m low-alcohol consumers between 2022 and 2024.	No/low is now a recruitment system, not only a substitute.
NIQ says 69.4% of Australian households purchased alcohol from retail stores in 2025, down from 71.5% in 2024; purchase frequency was down 4.9%.	Physical retail still matters, but the old trip engine is losing momentum.
NIQ says Australian ecommerce liquor sales through bottle shop websites grew +16.2%, online shopper numbers grew +14.1%, but only 8.3% of households bought liquor online in the last year.	Online is underpenetrated but strategically valuable.
NIQ says the average online liquor basket is 2.4x higher than an in-store basket.	Online is not just convenience; it is planning, hosting, premium, gifting, and stock-up.
NIQ says 60% of Australians seek out brands in retail after trying them in on-premise venues, and 43% have bought a drink because they saw it on social media or online.	Discovery, trial, and purchase are now a connected system.
Endeavour Group’s MixIn retail media launch described more than 1,675 stores, 344 hotels, over 10m monthly website/app visits, and more than 97% of BWS or Dan Murphy’s visitors leaving with a purchase.	Retailers are not just channels. They are data, media, discovery, and conversion platforms.

What Is Actually Declining?

The answer is all of the above, but differently by cohort, channel, and category.

Dimension	Direction	Evidence and interpretation
Volume	Down	Australian pure alcohol availability per capita fell from 10.9L in 2020-21 to 9.8L in 2023-24. IWSR’s preliminary 2025 data shows global TBA volume down 2% across 22 markets.
Frequency	Down	NIQ reports Australian retail alcohol purchase frequency down 4.9%. AIHW shows a long-term decline in daily and weekly drinking.
Occasions	Fragmenting	People are saving alcohol for higher-value moments, alternating with no/low, staying home, gaming, streaming, exercising, or socialising online.
Spend	Mixed	Higher prices, premiumisation, and larger planned online baskets can protect value even when litres and trips fall. Value-for-money perceptions are still a pressure point, especially on-premise.
Channel mix	Shifting	Retail remains the base, on-premise remains a discovery engine, and online is growing from a smaller base with higher basket value.
Category mix	Polarising	RTDs and no/low are growth pockets. Wine, beer, and spirits show different pressures by market and format.
Social permission	Changing	Moderation, abstinence, “zebra-striping,” and lower-ABV choices are becoming socially normal rather than apologetic.

Why Alcohol Consumption Is Declining

Wellness and Health Recalibration

Health concerns are now mainstream. AIHW shows rising abstention under 50, DrinkWise finds health is the leading stated reason Australians cut back, and Gallup reports a record 45% of Americans now say one or two drinks a day is bad for health, with young adults most likely to hold that view.

CX implication: no/low and lower-ABV choices need to feel positive, adult, and socially fluent. They should not feel like punishment or compromise.

Cost of Living and Value Pressure

Alcohol is expensive in Australia, and on-premise value perceptions are weak. NIQ notes value for money is the lowest-ranked on-premise satisfaction attribute, with spirits, cocktails, and RTDs least satisfying on value. Rabobank’s Gen Z analysis also argues that younger consumers spend from a smaller income base, even when alcohol takes a similar income share.

CX implication: premiumisation has to be visible. Serve, pack, ritual, taste, chilled availability, food pairing, and occasion fit must justify the price.

Social Norms and Surveillance

Younger drinkers are more conscious of being photographed, posted, judged, or dealing with consequences the next day. The social reward of getting drunk is lower when the reputational risk is higher.

CX implication: build experiences around social confidence, not intoxication. Think “clear tomorrow” as much as “fun tonight.”

The War on the Couch

Streaming, gaming, scrolling, food delivery, online communities, and at-home entertainment compete with the traditional night out. The competitor is not just another beer; it is inertia.

CX implication: Asahi has to help make physical social moments worth leaving home for, while also building better at-home occasions.

Changing Nightlife and New Adult Rituals

People are not only “going out for drinks.” NIQ’s Australian omnichannel work highlights experience-led venues as discovery hubs: festivals, stadiums, arenas, and game-based experience bars. People choose them because they are fun, social, interactive, and memorable.

CX implication: the brand’s role is to enrich the experience, not sit beside it. Sampling, rituals, serves, menus, staff prompts, and social content are part of the product.

In-Store Versus Online Behaviour

In-Store

In-store still carries the cold shelf, impulse, habit, trade-up, and immediate-occasion purchase. But retail penetration and frequency are softening, so every trip matters more.

What changes for Asahi:

• Shelf navigation has to solve the mixed-table problem: full-strength, mid-strength, 0.0%, RTD, wine, spirits, and adult soft drink choices in one mental model.
• Pack and signage must communicate occasion, ABV, taste, and serve quickly.
• In-store retail media, tastings, staff prompts, cooler placement, and menu tie-ins become core CX surfaces.
• The goal is not only visibility. It is choice confidence.

Online

Online is smaller but growing faster, and the basket is much larger. It over-indexes for planned occasions: parties, gifting, hosting, premium stock-up, convenience, and replenishment.

What changes for Asahi:

• Search, sponsored listings, retailer recommendations, reviews, content, and availability become the digital shelf.
• Occasion bundles become more important: BBQ, dinner, sport, gifts, mixed-drinker packs, “some people not drinking,” and low-ABV hosting.
• Personalisation should recommend the right intensity, not just more units.
• Local inventory and retail partner integrations matter because discovery without availability kills conversion.

On-Premise As The Bridge

On-premise is not only a sales channel. It is a trial and legitimacy engine. NIQ says 60% of Australians seek out brands in retail after trying them in venues.

What changes for Asahi:

• Bar staff, menus, glassware, temperature, draught quality, food pairings, and no/low placement need the same discipline as media.
• A bad serve is a brand problem, even if the venue owns the moment.

Category Performance

Category	What is happening	Strategic reading
Beer	Global beer excluding no-alcohol beer was down 2% volume in IWSR’s preliminary 2025 data, while value was flat. In Australia, on-premise beer value was strong in NIQ’s 2026 read, especially pubs.	Beer is not dead; mainstream volume is pressured while premium, pub, sessionable, and no-alcohol formats do different jobs.
Wine	Wine represented the largest share of pure alcohol availability in Australia, but global wine volume fell 4% in IWSR’s 2025 preliminary data.	Wine is culturally important but under pressure from changing occasions, younger cohorts, and format innovation elsewhere.
Spirits	Spirits was the weakest major category in IWSR’s preliminary 2025 view, down 4% volume and 9% value across the 22 markets. NIQ Australia also shows glass spirits down in on-premise value.	Spirits are vulnerable when value perception is weak, but cocktails, premium serves, and RTD migration change the picture.
RTDs	RTDs were the only major global category to grow in IWSR’s 2025 preliminary data. NIQ Australia shows RTDs as the fastest-growing on-premise category by value, with draught RTD a driver.	RTDs win on convenience, flavour, portion control, lighter ritual, and lower decision friction.
No/low	No/low grew +13% in 2024 across IWSR’s top 10 markets. No-alcohol beer grew +8% volume and +12% value in 2025 preliminary data.	No/low is the clearest proof that people still want adult drinks and social rituals, just not always full-strength alcohol.
Adult soft drinks and functional adjacencies	Growth sits outside traditional liquor definitions but competes for the same adult moments.	Asahi’s beverage and food breadth gives it a right to play beyond beer, if the portfolio is organised by occasion rather than aisle.

What No/Low Really Means

No/low is not one strategy. It has three jobs:

Job	Meaning	Asahi implication
Defensive play	Protects relevance when a consumer, venue, event, time of day, or social setting does not suit full-strength alcohol.	Keep Asahi in the ritual even when alcohol is reduced or absent.
Recruitment strategy	Lowers the barrier for moderators, younger legal-age adults, health-conscious consumers, designated drivers, weekday drinkers, and mixed groups.	Use no/low to bring people into the portfolio before, between, and beyond full-strength occasions.
Ecosystem opportunity	Creates an ABV ladder from 0.0% to mid-strength to full-strength, plus RTDs and adult refreshment.	Build “choice architecture” around intensity, taste, serve, and occasion.

The key mindset shift: no/low is not just a substitute for beer. It is a social permission tool. It lets people participate without matching the group’s alcohol intensity.

Retailers Own The Transaction

Retailers increasingly own the customer relationship that alcohol brands need most:

• Identity: account, age gate, loyalty ID, household, device, store, and payment.
• Behaviour: search, browse, basket, promotion response, replenishment, and cross-category switching.
• Media: sponsored listings, onsite display, app placements, in-store screens, radio, tasting, and closed-loop measurement.
• Decisioning: recommendations, availability, price, bundles, category pages, and shelf position.

For brands, this creates a strategic tension. Retail media can make Asahi more measurable and more targetable, but it also makes Asahi more dependent on retailer-controlled data and algorithms. The retailer can tell Asahi what was bought, but not always who drank it, why they chose it, what occasion it served, or what would have happened without the media spend.

AKQA angle: design a data model that connects retailer data, venue signals, social discovery, owned brand interactions, QR/smart packaging, event registrations, and responsible preference capture. The goal is not to collect more data for its own sake. It is to understand occasions better than the category does.

First-Party Data, Loyalty, Retail Media, And Recommendations

The next growth system sits at the intersection of four capabilities:

Capability	What it should do	What to avoid
First-party data	Build consented knowledge of preferences, occasions, ABV comfort, dietary needs, favourite serves, venues, and hosting patterns.	Treating data capture as a one-off QR gimmick.
Loyalty	Reward repertoire behaviour, hosting, discovery, inclusion, repeat, and responsible moderation choices.	Defining loyalty only as repeat purchase of the same SKU.
Retail media	Use retailer platforms for precision, measurement, launch support, and closed-loop learning.	Paying for visibility without incrementality or occasion learning.
Personalised recommendations	Help people choose the right product for the moment: ABV, flavour, format, serve, food, channel, and group context.	Recommending “more alcohol” when the better answer is lower ABV, no/low, or a different occasion.

The most useful recommendation engine for Asahi is not “people like you bought this.” It is “for this moment, with these people, in this channel, this is the right drink.”

Future Opportunity: Own More Occasions

The most resilient opportunity is not more alcohol per person. It is more relevance across more adult occasions.

That means measuring:

• Share of occasion, not only share of category.
• Repertoire penetration across full-strength, mid-strength, no/low, RTD, and adult soft drink formats.
• Mixed-table presence: occasions where some people drink and some do not.
• On-premise to retail conversion.
• Social and online discovery to purchase conversion.
• Low/no attachment and switching patterns.
• Retail media incrementality, not only impressions or ROAS.
• Responsible personalisation outcomes, including lower-ABV and no/low recommendations.

The north star for AKQA:

Make Asahi the easiest portfolio to choose for modern adult moments.

Meeting Prompts For Asahi

1. Which occasions does Asahi most want to own in Australia: BBQ, sport, pub, restaurant, at-home dinner, gifting, music, gaming, work social, moderation, or mixed-table hosting?
2. Where is growth currently coming from: volume, price, mix, channel, new households, frequency, or repertoire expansion?
3. What does Asahi know directly about consumers, and what sits inside retailer or venue walled gardens?
4. Which brands are recruit, retain, premiumise, moderate, refresh, celebrate, or pair brands?
5. What is the ABV ladder for the Australian portfolio, and is it easy for a shopper or bartender to understand?
6. Where does Asahi need distributed CX standards: shelf, fridge, menu, tap, venue staff, delivery app, retailer search, or social content?
7. What data would prove that no/low is incremental, defensive, or cannibalising in the Australian portfolio?
8. What would “share of occasion” replace in the current measurement model?

What To Park Unless Asked

The wider wiki contains deep material on GLP-1 medications, cannabis beverages, adaptogens, dealcoholisation capex, excise structures, and regulatory risk. Those are useful watchouts, but they should not lead this meeting unless Asahi steers there. The executive conversation should start with the core commercial and CX shift: people are changing when, why, where, how often, and at what intensity they drink.

Source Trail

Internal Wiki Sources

• asahi-brand-strategic-territories
• Alcohol Retail_ Consumer Behavior Shifts
• rabobank-gen-z-drinking-less-reasons-2025
• research-acquire-first-party-retailer-loyalty-data-2026-05-01
• research-investigate-asahis-non-alcohol-brand-positioning-2026-05-01
• research-what-is-asahis-actual-business-strategy-with-all-t-2026-05-01
• research-what-are-the-asahi-main-businesses-2026-05-01

External Sources Checked

• Asahi Group Medium- to Long-Term Management Policy
• Asahi Group Our Group overview
• Asahi Group FY2024 Financial Results
• Asahi Group Integrated Report 2024
• Asahi business progress update on delayed FY2025 results, February 26 2026
• AIHW Alcohol, tobacco and other drugs in Australia: Alcohol
• IWSR preliminary 2025 global beverage alcohol decline
• IWSR More than moderation: the long-term rise of no and low
• NIQ Winning the Australian Omnichannel Liquor Shopper, March 30 2026
• Endeavour Group launches MixIn retail media arm
• DrinkWise Australian Drinking Trends Report 2024
• Gallup: Alcohol Consumption Increasingly Viewed as Unhealthy in U.S.