• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, March 1, 2020

It took the company a while to respond, but Corona parent Constellation brands issued a statement late Friday taking issue with a survey from PR firm 5WPR reporting “38% of beer-drinking Americans would not buy Corona under any circumstances now.”

The PR shop said it took the survey of 737 “American beer drinkers” last Tuesday and Wednesday to gauge the impact of the coronavirus crisis, concluding it was a “disaster” for the brand.

Constellation said concerns raised by the survey about the brand’s business and consumer sentiment were “unfounded.”

“Based on recent IRI retail trends, sales of Corona Extra remain strong, with dollar sales up 5% in the U.S. per the latest four-week period ended Feb. 16, nearly doubling the 52-week trend for the brand,” the company stated.

Bill Newlands, president-CEO at Constellation Brands, stated: “It’s extremely unfortunate that recent misinformation about the impact of this virus on our business has been circulating in traditional and social media without further investigation or validation. These claims simply do not reflect our business performance and consumer sentiment, which includes feedback from our distributor and retailer partners across the country. We’ve seen no impact to our people, facilities or operations and our business continues to perform very well.”

Newlands also noted Corona and the firm’s other beer brands are “focused almost entirely on the U.S. market. Our company does not have much exposure to international markets, such as China, that have been most impacted by this situation.”