Pricing Deteriorating in ‘08, But Subpremiums Soft

The first two weeks of 2008 haven't been great guns for beer pricing, at least in supermarket IRI scans from Morgan Stanley's Bill Pecoriello. It mirrors the chatter of excessive big package discounting we've been hearing about in the trade as we're heading into Super Bowl week (for example, one A-B distrib in Texas went up in pricing, but not on multipacks, then rescinded it anyway). Average pricing up just 2.4% in 2008 so far, compared to nearly 4% in