A study released by iPrice Group on International Beer Day has revealed the search behaviour of drinkers throughout Southeast Asia.

iPrice, an online shopping aggregator, analysed Google search trends for ‘beer’ and benchmarked them against reach by country.

They found that Singaporeans were the ‘thirstiest’ – searching the most for beer versus their compatriots around the region in the greatest numbers versus the overall population.

While the report doesn’t specify the surge, it is likely many people in Singapore were searching for online delivery options to avoid going out and then due to lockdowns.

Hong Kong and Philippines were close behind, with the latter seeing a 69% increase in online searches for beer immediately after lockdowns were implemented – perhaps to identify alternative ways to find beer with restrictions making it difficult to find offline.

Indonesia was the country that Googled beer the least relative to its population, though arguably the country’s size and large Muslim population down-weights the searches of a relatively large group of drinkers throughout the archipelago.

iPrice also looked at popularity of different beer brands similarly using online search behaviours as a proxy for preference.

They found that Heineken is the most searched beer brand in six countries – Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Taiwan and Vietnam – and came in second after Hoegaarden in Thailand.

Hong Kong bucked the regional trend, with Carlsberg winning the top spot and Guinesss coming in number 2.

Interestingly, when results were aggregated regionally, Asahi came in number 2 after Heineken.

While studies like this may seem flimsy (as they merely reflect consumer behaviour on a particular digital channel), marketing studies have found that search behaviour is an important factor in future market share – it is also a valuable indicator of which brands are ‘winning in digital’ by country.