Dive Brief:
- Anheuser-Busch InBev credited BEES, its business-to-business e-commerce platform, with growing its net promoter score to 60, according to its annual report released last month. Since the introduction of BEES in 2020, AB InBev’s NPS score has grown 30 points.
- AB InBev launched BEES to sell to small- and medium-sized retail partners and provide them with a smoother purchasing journey, according to a company blog post.
- BEES has helped expand AB InBev’s reach and increase profits. “BEES continues to accelerate usage and reach, capturing approximately $40 billion in gross merchandising value this year, a 27% increase year-over-year, and reaching 3.7 million monthly active users,” CEO Michel Doukeris said during a Q4 2023 earnings call last month.
Dive Insight:
BEES is a key aspect of AB InBev’s second strategic pillar to digitize and monetize its ecosystem.
Introduced during the height of the pandemic in April 2020 in the Dominican Republic, BEES now serves users in 26 markets. It’s already proved successful in monetizing AB InBev’s ecosystem; digital B2B revenue accounted for roughly 70% of global net revenue in Q4 2023.
The platform digitizes every touch point in AB InBev’s route to market. This allows the company to increase sales and elevate customer relationships, according to AB InBev.
"At the end of the day, retailers shop for a living. They need a great shopping experience," Ricardo Tadeu, chief growth officer of AB InBev, said in a 2023 company blog post. "We were seeing that all the benefits that consumers saw in their day-to-day lives — in terms of convenience, a wide variety of products at a very good price, flexible delivery — were not being translated to the retailer.”
BEES addressed that disparity and raised the company’s service level around the world, Tadeu said.
Through BEEs, store owners can place orders for AB InBev’s products any time they want, schedule deliveries, access personalized shopping recommendations and even gain points for every purchase they make that can then be exchanged for merchandise.
BEEs also offers third-party products through its marketplace business, allowing it to further grow its relationship with retailers. Its marketplace business is live in 15 markets.
AB InBev closed out fiscal year 2023 with revenue reaching an all-time high of $59.4 billion, up 7.8% year over year.
