Competitive Market Of Nano Brewery

During the past 30 years, Big Rock has provided beer drinkers across the country with a high-quality product line consisting of reputable brands such as Traditional and Grasshopper Ale. Moreover, due to the continuous change in craft beer drinkers, Big Rock has provided a diverse variety of flavours to compete in the craft market segment primarily in Alberta. However, as the industry becomes increasingly more competitive due to the exponential growth of microbreweries, Big Rock must continue to develop its brand and spread awareness beyond Alberta and across the country in order to address the stagnated growth that currently exists within the business.

     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

In a world where large, corporate breweries rule the market, craft beer is created to please an audience that applauds the styles, techniques and flavors. Though craft beer can be purchased through several different outlets, the best place to thoroughly enjoy the entire experience of the specially made beer is in the brewery where it was made. The article titled, “In Lean Times, a Stout Dream” in The Wall Street Journal1 states that, despite the hard economic times and consequent consumer cutbacks, sales of craft beer, the industry 's fastest-growing segment, rose

Strives to be the leader in micro brewing while maintaining the core values it started with and had employee buy in even before it went” 100 % employee owned in2013” (Gorski, 2013).

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.

New Belgium is, however, the third-largest craft brewery in the nation, with estimated sales of over $100 million, equaling approximately 700,000 barrels of beer per year. An analysis of the craft beer industry as a whole suggests that there is continued growth potential for New Belgium. Exhibit 5.1 of the New Belgium Brewing (B) case shows that craft beer is the fastest growing segment of the U.S. alcoholic beverage market, with an increase in market share of over 100 percent from 1999-2011. It is also an industry whose customers tend to be extremely loyal, making them less likely to view craft beer as a commodity. Consequently, craft beer has a higher probability of being immune to competition from inferior goods and substitutes. This is particularly applicable to New Belgium’s target market of “beer connoisseurs” that appreciate the high quality and taste of craft beer and who include “executives, lawyers, and accountants” with the continued ability to pay higher prices for craft beer, enabling the craft beer industry to achieve gross margins of up to 30 percent (Clark & Rogler, 2013).

In regards to business-level strategies and overall cost leadership, Anheuser-Busch is the undeniable industry leader when it comes to beer sales. Even if Anheuser-Busch beers aren 't the cheapest, they still are bought for their quality and Anheuser-Busch has gained tremendous market share for this. As for their focus, Anheuser-Busch focuses on a broad segment of customers producing a variety of beers for a variety of budgets to suit all personalities ' needs. Their differentiation factor is that even though Anheuser-Busch produces such cheaper beers as Budweiser and Bud Light, they also produce premium, more expensive beers like Bare Knuckle Stout and Shock Top Belgian White. Anheuser-Busch produces over 100 different brands of beer and

Following the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, the major breweries continued to use unmalted cereal grains to provide the full body and mouthfeel of a “real” beer while keeping the alcohol content low. The maturation tanks (they call them chip tanks) that Anheuser-Busch utilizes are horizontal and, as such, the yeast aggregates more quickly. Anheuser-Busch refers to this process as a secondary fermentation, with the idea being that the chips give the yeast more surface area to rest on. This is also combined with a procedure that re-introduces wort into the chip tank therefore activating the fermentation process again. By placing chips at the bottom of the tank, the yeast remains in suspension longer, giving it more time to reabsorb and process green beer flavors that Anheuser-Busch believes are off-flavors which detract from overall drinkability. As with most food products opinions differ regarding its taste. While some drinkers prefer the lightness of beers like Budweiser and consume it as refreshment, some beer writers consider it as being too bland. The beer is light-bodied with faint sweet notes and negligible bitterness, leading to reviews characterizing it as a “...beer of underwhelming blandness.” Despite these negative reviews, Budweiser has a 19.9 user share and accounts for 26% of sales volume in the regular domestic category,

The brewing industry can be characterized by Porter’s Five Forces framework. New entries to brewing have a relative ease in creating home micro-breweries, which is aided by

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,

Craft beer should not only be sold as premium beer among graduates and people with income of more than 75000 USD but also to people with moderate income.

Anheuser-Busch Inbev is one of the largest breweries in the world. “Currently, Anheuser-Busch InBev has a product list of more than 200 beers, including global best-sellers Budweiser, Stella Artois, Beck’s, multi-country brands like Leffe and Hoegaarden, and strong “local jewels” such as Bud Light, Skol, Brahma, Quilmes, Michelob, Harbin, Sedrin, Cass, Klinskoye, Sibirskaya Korona, Chernigivske, and Jupiler, among others that have helped to make the company so successful. In addition,

The brewing industry is interesting to examine due to its relatively unique structure. Up until November 2015, the market was dominated by four main players, known informally as the “Big Four”. AB InBev was the largest, followed by SABMiller, Heineken and Carlsberg. In November 2015, however, ABInBev and SABMiller agreed a formal $107 billion takeover deal, combining the brewers into a company which industry experts claim would control around half of the industry’s profits (Mickle, 2015). As a result of the sheer size and complexity of the merger, it is anticipated that the deal will not be finalised until the second half of 2016 as ABInBev must negotiate with anti-trust regulators around the world with respect to their potential monopolistic position. As the deal is yet to be completed, this report will analyse ABInBev independent of SABMiller.

Although sales of premium brands have fallen in a steady response to the growing popularity of the craft beer. The industry revenue has been stable over the past 5 years. As a result, from 2011 to 2016 the industry revenue is expected an increase and growth annually at 6.7 percent over the five years,with a total of $39.5 billion . (IBISWorld iExpert) In the long-term, these numbers are expected that grow 0.9 percent annually within the next five years. The potential growth will be seen in the traditional and premium beer sector. As a response, the giant companies in the industry Anheuser-Busch InBev and MillerCoors look forward into the merges and acquisitions as a strategy to maintain market dominance. The strategy is based on the

Beer Company 2 is a brewer of “seasonal and year-round beers with smaller production volume and higher prices” that “outsources most of its brewing activity” (pg. 120). It is financially conservative, and has undergone a “major cost-savings initiative to counterbalance the recent surge in packaging and freight costs” (pg. 120).