Entrepreneurship

Beer Tourism and Authentic Entrepreneurship in Switzerland

Beer entrepreneurship and tourism

Start & End Date

01/09/2018 - 31/05/2020

Main Applicant

Cruz, M., EHL Hospitality Business School

External Funding

HES-SO

Original Research Title

Authenticity as a Resource for Entrepreneurship and Tourism: the Case of the Beer Boom in Switzerland

Project Description

This project aimed at understanding:

How authenticity serves as a resource for entrepreneurs to break with barriers to entry in industries historically driven by large and mass producers
How authenticity can help entrepreneurs to enhance the competitive advantage of a tourism destination.

Authenticity has proven to be resourceful for a diversity of outcomes such as organizational evaluations, industry emergence, and stakeholder’ perceptions about organizations. For instance, firms coming across as authentic are more likely to receive more favorable responses from customers, experience lower mortality rates, and even be treated more fairly by suppliers. However, to date little is known about how authenticity can influence market entry particularly in industries where incumbent producers are likely to be perceived as fairly authentic. This is important for entrepreneurs to understand how to enter such industries and learn how to use authenticity on their favor. In addition to this, while authenticity is a tourism product often sought after, little is known about how entrepreneurs’ authenticity can help in enhancing the development of a tourism destination.

To test these arguments, this project focused on the beer boom in Switzerland. The Swiss beer industry has been flourishing in the last decade and thereby new opportunities arise for entrepreneurs as well as for tourism in Switzerland. After 2010, the number of breweries in Switzerland has been increasing by 146% and only in 2016, 120 new breweries were established in Swiss territory. This is an interesting phenomenon to explore the objectives of this project particularly because the beer industry is one of the most ancient industries worldwide, where authenticity can be hard to imitate by newcomers to the industry. Thus, from a theoretical standpoint, entrepreneurs should face constraints when pursuing entrepreneurial attempts such as establishing companies in industries like these. However, the beer boom in Switzerland proves different.

Scientific Output

Bivona, E., & Cruz, M. (2021). Can business model innovation help SMEs in the food service sector during COVID-19? British Food Journal, 123(11), 3638-3658. https://doi.org/10.1108/BFJ-07-2020-0643

Cruz, M., & Beck, N. (2022). All we want is authentic beer: the role of geographic communities and authenticity on breweries’ reactions to competition. British Food Journal, 124(12), 4496-4515

Cruz, M. (2021, September 27-30). Understanding the heterogeneous effects of entrepreneurship on tourism: the case of beer tourism in Switzerland. [Paper presentation]. EuroCHRIE2021, Aalborg, Denmark. [Online].

EHL Insights

Coronavirus Boosts Innovation in the Beer Industry

According to GastroSuisse, alcoholic beverages are the second most important source of revenue for restaurants (20% of the total turnover), and beer alone constitutes a steady seven percent (7%) of the turnover made in an average Swiss restaurant. Restaurants and pubs are the main distribution channel for over 1200 breweries, Swiss supermarkets are only the second choice of purchase for beer consumers. While 65% of all breweries in the country heavily rely on local events, restaurants and bars for the distribution of their products, home delivery is usually only an option for the largest ones. With closed restaurants and bars, and events cancelled throughout the country, the coronavirus crisis is putting the beer industry in a tight spot.

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Beer Tourism: Tasting the Beer Boom in Switzerland

With the exponential growth of the beer industry in Switzerland over the past decade, beer tourism has emerged as a tourist activity in its own right across many cantons. Craft breweries showcasing their beer together with local members of the community have set up beer hiking tours where tourists walk around stunning Swiss landscapes, tasting local beers, meeting local brewers and enjoying the local food. Highly attractive to beer aficionados, beer tourism is becoming an interesting experiential activity in Switzerland where tourists combine leisure and discovery.

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