Australians, like many consumers around the world, are cutting back personal spending by shopping less often and switching to less expensive and private label brands.  But one area where they refuse to compromise is their drink: sales of premium brands of beer, spirits and bottled wine all showed strong volume sales performance in the first quarter of 2009.
Imported and domestic premium beers posted growth of 15.3 and 18.6 percent, respectively, over the same period last year, while sales of premium spirits rose 21.3 percent.  Cheaper beer and spirit segments also …

British women are the target of a new marketing push that aims to prop up flagging beer sales in the UK, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
Beermakers like Coors and Diageo, which owns Guinness, are hoping women, a largely untapped group of potential beer customers, will be drawn to sweeter, lighter new beers they’ve introduced. 
But that strategy alone may not be enough to boost beer sales, Graham Page of Nielsen told the Journal. 
“[Women] don’t consume the volume [of beer] — and that is crucial — that men do,” Page noted.