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174 CHAPTER 8 ■ Establishing a Healthy Drinking Culture

Alcohol consumption is affected by accessibility, price, and marketing. Alcohol
accessibility has been restricted by attempts to limit sales through an alcohol retail
monopoly and municipal control over licensed premises for restaurants. Also, the
high level of taxes on alcohol in Sweden has resulted in high alcohol prices. Lower
alcohol taxes have lately been proposed in Sweden in order to reduce private im-
ports from neighboring countries with cheaper alcohol, but at the moment, there
are no such discussions. Recently, a European court decision to overturn the
Swedish law that bans Internet sales of alcohol has made it possible to purchase al-
cohol via the Internet.

CASE STUDY
The Swedish Alcohol Retail Monopoly—Systembolaget

Systembolaget, the Swedish alcohol retail monopoly, is a state-owned corpora-
tion for off-premise retail sale of all alcoholic beverages containing more than
2.25% alcohol by volume. Systembolaget has 411 stores, of which 310 are self-
service outlets. The first self-service store opened in 1991. By December 2010, all
stores will be self-service. Also, Systembolaget has 520 agents in smaller commu-
nities where there is a lack of a sufficient customer base to establish stores. 1
Systembolaget is a Swedish innovation established in the mid-1800s. Similar
monopolies exist in Norway, Finland, Iceland, Faeroes, Canada (except Alberta),
and several states in the United States. Systembolaget is based on a nonprofit
idea because a lack of profit is expected to limit consumption and thus keep
alcohol-related problems down. By limiting availability to specific shops with
restricted opening hours on weekdays and Saturday, consumption levels are also
kept low. The legal age limit for selling alcoholic beverages in Systembolaget’s
stores is 20 years. In grocery stores where soft beer is sold, as well as on-premise
sale (restaurants) of different types of alcohol, the legal age limit is 18 years, the
age for Swedish suffrage.
Systembolaget has approximately 4,000 employees who receive ongoing
training, making them expert advisers in the field of food and drink
(Systembolaget, 2008a). The company monitors employee satisfaction regularly
by an employee satisfaction index (ESI; Systembolaget, 2007a). Systembolaget
has also developed a customer satisfaction index (CSI) based on a yearly survey

1 Information from former marketing director Per Bergkrantz, Systembolaget, November 6, 2008.