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The European brewing industry has experienced considerable development related to the changes of beer production volume. These trends are generalised by Vernon’s concept of product life-cycle that is already anchored in the economic geography. The differences of its growth, maturity and decline stages are important to study transnational corporations’ (TNC) strategies within the combination of different stages of all European markets. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to verify how the TNCs’ behaviour in individual countries depends on the stages of their beer markets. In the beer life-cycle perspective, Europe can be divided into several regions with a similar stage of development. Expected behaviour of brewing TNCs in the dependence of the countries’ stage in the beer life-cycle have been proved in the large extent. Some interesting differences were, however, also found. The paper finally pointed on the rising beer life-cycle of microbreweries, which could replace the life-cycle of traditional breweries.

Global industry has been undergoing changes in the concentration of brand ownership and production, with acquisitions and closures being a major factor in this evolution. The impacts of such activities are commonly studied from an economic perspective and from the perspective of internal firm-level and deal-level factors, while the influence of external geographical factors is largely neglected. Our research focuses mainly on the importance of geographical cultural factors affecting beer brands whose production location was moved after the closure of the original breweries. The research includes a complete sample of 30 brands from recently closed breweries across Europe. Brands are divided into seven categories according to how their marketing strategy has (or has not) changed in terms of exploiting regional and national identity. The overall success of these brands is then measured in terms of the development of their share in the home countries’ markets. Differences in brands’ strategies and successes are explained through a wide range of country-level factors and the individual characteristics of the breweries. It is shown that the level of beer tradition or identity in the countries, as well as the country’s beer life-cycle position, plays a crucial role in the evolution of the studied brands.

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Microbreweries and beer tourism are a good example of the „neolocalism” turn in the globalized world. As a reaction to the unified beer offer of the large transnational brewery groups, there is a clear increase of the consumers’ demand for the bigger diversity of the beer offer. Seeking for the new beer styles in unique places – the beer tourism – is targeted not just to the microbreweries, but also to multitap restaurants with the large beer offer and to the beer festivals. The goal of this paper is to map the growing popularity of these beer tourism destinations in the Czech Republic and Poland and also among the big cities and smaller municipalities, and to compare the openness to the foreign beer brands and styles among the consumers in both countries.