Adolph Coors Case Study

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Adolph Coors is one of the most successful and long-standing brewing companies in the industry. Their ability to adapt to the changing dynamics and circumstances of their consumers has supported their achievements since their opening in 1873. Maintaining success in any industry for over a century requires constant innovation and a dedication to improvement and development. While Coors’ overall history depicts their evident care and ability to give consumers what they want, sometimes before they know they want it, there was a period in which their lag in progression could have more greatly affected their business. From 1975-1985, the fourth generation of the Coors family redeemed the company from their period of reactive business decisions …show more content…

While Coors was initially the leader in proactive innovation in the industry, the period of 1975-1985 was filled with business model decisions that were thoughtful and controlled, but they were too slow to implement in comparison to their competitors. They started this decade of turmoil with a volume drop of 4% in 1975 by selling only 11.9 million barrels as opposed to the previous year’s 12.3 million barrels. For a company that started with exponential growth in the brewing business, Coors surprisingly fell behind entering markets that their competitors were dominating in the meantime. The longer they took to enter the sector, the light beer market for example, the more market share they lost. Their nationwide expansion took far longer than their competitors as well. All major beer brewery distributors in the industry reached 50 states by 1985 except for Coors. The overall loss in the U.S. market from their slow expansion was totaled to 21%. This was not promising especially for a company who used the cost-leadership approach according to Porters Generic …show more content…

Instead of waiting to follow their competitors in national distribution, they could have used a more “big picture” plan, allowing them to reap the benefits of first mover advantages. Coors expanded at a slow rate using 569 distribution centers in various locations across the country. If they had used a long term and overall more encompassing expansion plan, it could have facilitated opportunities to increase expansion faster instead of by a short term, one state at a time plan. Coors also would have had an easier economic starting point from their exponential growth that ushered them into the 1970s. Had they realized this sooner, and invested their profits accordingly, they might have been able to avoid distribution costs they later

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