Consumo e formação de mercado: um estudo sobre as microcervejarias de Porto Alegre

Abstract

This study intends to understand the development of microbreweries market in Porto Alegre. Although today we can easily observe several microbreweries, craft beers bars and events that promotes this culture all over the city, the milestones and agents responsible for conducting this market until the present scenario was not clear. This study aimed to identify these milestones and actors enabling an analysis of the development of this market through the lens of CCT. This theoretical stream was chosen to enable an investigation about market emergence as a social construction, emphasizing not only the actions of firms but all stakeholders that actively contributed to the emergence of this market. This theoretical position has obtained an increasing strength as we observe the emergence of several works that make use of CCT in conjunction with other instruments that arose from social theories such as legitimation, cooptation, commoditization and actor-network theory. This study benefited from the proposals of Martin and Schouten (2014) market analysis, according to them a market is a movement that may have its origin influenced by the actions of the firms or by consumers and consumption practices. This perspective was chosen because since the beginning of this research it was believed that the selected market was a movement driven by home brewers. The research has shown that the craft beers market in the city of Porto Alegre has its origin in the mid-90s, a period which had the emergence of the first microbrewery of Brazil in the capital of Rio Grande do Sul and also the appearance of the first supplier of brewers inputs. The beginning of the establishment of the foundations that supported the growth of this market had a great influence of large firms, this was found through obtained data that illustrates a large foreign interest in the potential of our market many years before we had the emergence of more microbreweries and all other actors who are part of the community of craft beers. But it was only when the union of homemade brewers occurred that the market began to be established through the emergence of entities such as Acerva Gaúcha and AGM that supports the practices and interests of this community. During the exhibition of the results became clear the greatest amount of evidences of a market emergence driven by consumers and their communities over a market development driven by firms. Unlike the studies that supported the theoretical foundation of this work, we demonstrated that even markets led by consumption can have a great influence of firms and these dynamics can occur peacefully.