Boston Beer Company
Case Study Analysis
1. Boston Beer’s strategy is primarily focused on growth through differentiation. The sources of its competitive advantage can be classified as a company that provides high quality beer with unique flavors, a market driven approach, and a very efficient contract brewing strategy. In terms of quality, the company created a premium beer by its selective use of ingredients and less water. Boston Beer has won honors such as being the first American beer sold in Germany due to its use of only barley, yeast, hops, and water as its ingredients. With the increase in health consciousness among beer drinkers and the rise in more distinctive and flavorful brews, the Boston Beer Company has been able
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In order to grow, Boston Beer must continue to increase its market share in the overall beer market. The market continues to be dominated by the large scale breweries like Anheuser Busch, Adolph Coors Co, and Miller Brewing Co. Craft Breweries are beginning to increase their share in the overall market. It is expected that craft breweries will account for 5% of the overall beer market in 2000, up from 1.4%. However, there is increased competition in the craft beer market. There were 165 new craft brewers in 1994. This increased the total of craft breweries in the US to 750. Boston Beer will be competing with these 750 breweries for 5% of the 5 billion in US beer revenues.
Boston Beer does not plan to pay a dividend. Returns from investing in Boston Beer will solely be from growth. The company plans to release 19 million shares in the IPO. At a price of $15 per share, it would be trading at over 57 times its 2004 earnings. This will require significant growth from Boston Beer in the coming years to realize returns in this investment. Boston Beer will be competing with a growing market for a small share of the overall US beer market.
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The Boston Beer Company filed its initial public offering prospectus with the SEC because they were looking to raise between $26 and $34 million for
The next project was bottling Gordon Biersch signature beer and retailing it. This had three biggest challenges: this project was entirely Gordon’s baby and demanded time and attention; secondly the freshness of the bottled beer versus the freshly brewed was an issue for which they decided the beer would have a shelf life no longer than three months. Thirdly and the most exciting challenge was the head-to-head competition with other microbreweries and premium beers. Despite the tough competitive environment, Gordon Biersch aimed to achieve 11% of the market in three years (by 1996). This retail venture required huge investment, thus they decided to start small to prove to the investors that they could pull it off.
To this date Boston beer company main focus is to expand the Angry Orchard hard cider brand. While continually offering the highest quality products to the U.S. consumer. Due to Boston Beer’s competitive advantage over the other Hard Cider company’s. It should expand it Angry Orchard market division and develop a more west coast/European market base.
The Boston Beer Company, Inc., founded in 1984, is a leading brewer in United States, offering wide variety of high quality full-flavored, handcraftedbeers. It is distinctive due to the time-honored recipe of brewing and authentic, consistent quality of alcoholic beverages. Samuel Adams Boston Lager is the pride of BBC, regular handcrafted beer “stands for quality, inner self-worth, authenticity, and unique New England or Yankee toughness” ( Martin Roper, Chief Operating Officer). Unfortunately, the company experienced the failure of conquering light beer segment
The Boston Beer Company and Samuel Adams have both had a long history. Since the 1870s, six generations of the Koch family have been involved with beer. In the early 1980s, the seventh generations almost turned his back on the family business. After graduating from graduate school, Jim Koch wanted to stray always for the family business and seek a career in management consulting. After a short time in the consulting business, Koch decided that he just could not ignore his destiny to create a new, different beer. In 1984, Koch was on the search for a “better beer”. The only options at the time on the market were pale lagers from mass producers (Company), Koch decided there needed to be a change. In April 1985, Samuel Adams made in bar
1995 Value of Debt: Boston Beer’s debt is private, so the market value will be very similar to, if not exactly the same as, its book value.
Boston Beer Company should then conduct regional market studies to determine potential flavors for each specific region based off existing local craft breweries and popular regional flavor combinations. Each smaller market study should be conducted by local consulting firms who already have an understanding of the demographics and culture of the region they are studying. These studies should be
With the rise of at home brewing, local brewing, and the emergence of a wider range beer style, give rise to more local and regional beers companies. Older and more established companies like Molson Coors, and Anheuser-Busch were able to control the market for arguably the last forty years, both on the domestic and foreign markets. Currently Molson Coors has twelve different brands that they sell both foreign and domestically, however with this the time to diversify on a larger scale is needed. According the NYSE, the price of stock of Molson Coors has risen by almost ten dollars per stock over the last year. This has been in conjunction with brands such as Blue Moon expanding their range of flavors of beer that they provide.
The film depicts an insight of the beer industry and its current state in America. It shows some unexplored or hidden facts and journey of the beer industry which is intended to interest the beer lovers. Beer Wars film describes the daily battles in the beer industry between well-established corporate beer brands and some of the upcoming innovative beer breweries. The independent and the small breweries introduce new and innovative craft beer in this high profitable beer industry.
Boston Beer Company has five primary stakeholders within company, Martin F. Roper (President and CEO), C. James Koch (Founder and Chairman), William F. Urich (CFO and Treasurer), John C. Geist (Vice President of Sales), and Thomas W. Lance (Vice President of Operations). Of the five of them C. James Koch holds more than 34% of the shares and is the sole holder of the class B common stock that gives him the right to appoint five of the eight members that are chosen to be on the board as seen in the following quote from the 2013 Proxy Statement. “At the Annual Meeting you will be asked to elect three Class A Directors and cast an advisory vote on executive compensation. As the sole holder of Class B Common Stock, I will elect five Class B Directors and cast a vote to ratify the selection of
iv. Craft beer industry – This industry is made up of brewpubs (10% of craft beer volume), microbreweries (12% of craft beer volume), contract breweries (16% of craft beer volume) and regional craft breweries (62% of craft beer volume), Together, these craft breweries produce less than two million barrels annually control approximately 1.5% of the total beer market in the East Central region. This is the very industry which MMBC operates in.
As the world’s largest brewer, AB Inbev has the ability to compete in new and foreign markets as a strong threat. Due to their enormous capital and expansion-based strategy, they can enter any market as a challenger and shutdown competition to become the leading brewer in this market. As an aggregated note we can also see this in domestic or already dominated markets because due to economics of scale they can achieve differentiated products at a low cost.
In this paper I will be talking about the U.S. beer industry and in short an overview of the brewing industry worldwide. I will talk about the barriers to entry, economies of scale, government intervention, pricing, current market trends, product differentiation, and imports. The focus being mainly on the U.S. brewing industry oligopoly. The U.S. brewing industry has three major players: Anheuser-Busch, SAB Miller, and Coors/Molson. Anheuser-Busch is currently the largest brewer in the world, producing over 100 million barrels a year. Anheuser-Busch currently owns over 50% of the market in the United States, with Miller trailing behind at 20% and Coors at about 11% with the rest of the market occupied by imports and craft breweries. When analyzing any industry, how easy it is for newcomers to enter the market is a great importance. If there are high barriers to entry
Within the craft beer market, consumers have many products to chose. A product is anything offered within a market that which fulfills a want or need (Armstrong & Kotler, 2015). In 2012, over 1,750 breweries operated in the United States (U.S.), with over 1,920 the following year (Brewers,
Problem identification: The global beer industry was experiencing increasing competition due to the new and potential mergers and acquisitions of
Boston Beer Company (BBC) has enjoyed much success with their craft beers with Samuel Adams as their main focus. Being the leader of this segment, overtopping five of their competitors combined (Exhibit 1), the company now must decide how to take advantage of the light beer market. Boston Lightship, their current light beer, had been a small contributor in BBC’s product line. Currently, it is facing dwindling sales with product volumes down from 12 000 cases per month to 3000 cases per month.