"Craft beer as an industry has been growing rapidly across the United States over the past two decades, especially in North Carolina (NC) (North Carolina Brewers Guild, 2011). This growth and interest in the craft beer industry has created an emerging market niche in tourism, beer tourism. The beverage and beer tourism industry is severely lacking in research in areas such as marketing. A study of visitors to North Carolina craft breweries was conducted by the author throughout the state during the fall 2011. This research provides the NC beer industry and the NC tourism industry with much needed information of who visits NC breweries, their motivations, and what marketing stimuli prompted the visit. It was found that there were four main motivational factors for tourists to visit a NC brewery, which can be explained by the push and pull theory (Dann 1977, 1981). These four factors were: craft brewery experience, enjoyment, socialization, and beer consumption. Demographics, psychographics, and preferences were also determined for brewery visitors. This research study also established that there was a viable market for beer tourism in North Carolina. Though it was found that NC has a market for brewery visits, this research did not determine a distinct niche profile for NC beer tourists. This thesis concludes with implications of brewery visitor profiles for marketing including a proposed model of beverage and culinary niche tourism, based upon the results, followed by suggestions of future research."--Abstract from author supplied metadata.