Case 3
When attempting to define a well-conceived strategy, one must be fully aware of both the strengths and weaknesses that one inherently possesses within the market. When speaking of the Lagunitas Brewing Company, we see a company of profound strength as well as possessing several weaknesses that act as hazardous liabilities. Perhaps the first example of a weakness is a continued lack of foresight, demonstrated through inaccurate projections for their business regarding hitting maximum capacity. Following the purchase of an 80-barrel brew house which was expected to put off hitting maximum capacity for ten years, it was found that only two years later LBC was forced to purchase a 250-barrel automated brew house to meet demand. While this reactionary approach is a weakness, we cannot forget LBC’s first strength in having amassed a considerable net-profit since the acquisition of the second brew house, nearly tripling net 2009’s net profit of $563,000 to 2010’s of $1,500,000.
A second unfortunate weakness for LBC comes from the problems of wastewater generated through the brewing. Despite best efforts to pretreat its wastewater, LBC was incurring thousands of dollars in fines from the city of Petaluma, which refused to allow wastewater to be
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dumped in the sewers. While pretreatment processes are taking place as well as the acquisition of land for a treatment plant, this inherent weakness is leading to $250,000 in shipping of wastewater a month. However, another strength is LBC’s focus on developing support from local communities through charity and a “pay it forward” attitude. This attitude has strengthened their marketing team in maintaining sponsored bands and music festivals through free beer and gas. A third weakness of LBC comes from its position within the market as the “low end of the high end beers”. This disadvantage comes at a time where the craft beer market is experiencing a boom of popularity, with 2,400 breweries in the US and 1,500 more on the way. In addition, many major American brewing companies have begun invading the craft brew space, with all the approachable popularity of craft brew with the power of a major brewery behind it. This all ultimately leads to a weakness of being stuck in a fickle market, susceptible to the winds of change in the craving for craft, which leads in to an unfortunate fourth weakness, namely the smallness of the company and its staff. While it has performed admirably in the craft brewing market, it still only possesses two breweries with less than 100 associates on payroll. This weaker dealing network means they are somewhat limited in their distribution, compared to such giants as Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors. The third major strength of LBC is its focus to make LBC’s many types of beer be indistinguishable regardless of what part of the country they’re bottled.
In LBC’s acquisition of land for their Chicago brewery, they sought to make sure that every aspect of their Petaluma brewery was replicated, including making sure the water possess no minerals in their new location, maintaining the pH balance and their quality. Finally, perhaps LBC’s largest strength and competitive asset is its branding, as well as the personality that comes with it. LBC’s branding personality is indicated through its humorous and intelligent labels, as well as its refusal to be categorized as wholly craft beer or major distributor, helping it stand
out. For Lagunitas Brewing Company’s, we see a stated 8.10% net profit margin for 2013, a respectable increase from 2012’s net profit margin of 5.26%. This comes from taking our Net Profit of $8,500,000, and dividing it by our total sales revenue of $105,000,000. What this effectively means is that for every dollar of plain revenue that they gain through sales, they are profiting $8.10 post-tax which can be utilized in developing their company’s strengths, minimizing weaknesses, acquiring new talent, or perhaps in a more direct way of maintaining a growing net profit margin.
The two organizations explained in this assignment are “Anheuser Busch” and “MOLSON Coors”. Anheuser Busch is a multinational company brewing more than 100 brands in the United States and holds a 45.8 percent of the beer market share1. The company is recognized as the No. 1 brewing company by Fortune magazine – “World’s Most Admired Company”2. Dreaming Big, Unity and Culture are the three main driving values and guiding principles which account for the success the company has achieved during the years1. All these combined with the dedication and motivation
Ferrell, O. C. (2008). “New Belgium Brewing Company(A)” in Ferrell, O. C., and Hartline, Michael D., Marketing Strategy, Fourth Edition, Mason, Ohio: Thompson Southwestern Publishing, pp. 463-470.
This report addresses the issue of whether Amsterdam Brewery should invest and promote new products or continue to focus on current products. And, whether Jeff Carefoote should pay attention to whole brands or spent expense to increase brewing capacity. The report describes a strategic plan to ensure Amsterdam Brewery’s competitiveness in the market.
From our research, Anheuser-Busch is content with being the number one beer company in the world, increasing sales each year in operation. We found that Anheuser-Busch met many views associated with the world, business, and behavioral dimensions. The company also displayed its stability as we reviewed one of its most successful products Budweiser, owned by Anheuser-Busch, under the marketing view and the financial view. Not only do they hold almost half of the market share in the industry but their stock prices, sales volume, and net sales have all increased from 2002 to 2003. We also looked at Budweiser in terms of geography and culture. We found due to the fact that the "western" countries consume the majority of beer, it only makes sense that Anheuser-Busch concentrates on that market. Along these lines, another key goal that is also important to Anheuser-Busch is to boost other beer markets that are located in other cultures, where at the time beer is not a major consumption.
Intrigued by the opportunity of owning his business, Larry Brownlow must decide whether a distributorship opportunity with Coors is a worthy venture. To aid Larry with his decision, the following pages provide an assessment of this business opportunity. With a limited research budget of $9,500 (p.143), careful selection of reports was essential to obtain both the necessary data to project profitability (e.g., revenues, cost of sales, other expenses, Coors projected market share, retail pricing data) and to provide a qualitative, consumer-focused perspective that would give these quantitative projections a solid foundation. Considering the given financial background, if Larry does not go forward with this investment, we assume he will choose to continue earning annual income from his trust at $40,000 per year (p.143). However, if he goes forward with the investment, he will cash in entire trust and take a significant financial risk. Therefore, we can reasonably assume that Larry will go forward with this investment as long as he can recover his initial investment and earn a salary that exceeds his current annual income. After calculating the possible financial income and analyzing sensitive variables, we suggest Larry takes this opportunity.
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).
The purpose of this case study is to explore the implications for expanding the products offered by Mountain Man Brewing Company (MMBC) from one product, Mountain Man Lager, to adding a Light version of the beer. This paper will evaluate the following:
Senior Management of PepsiCo is evaluating the potential acquisition of two companies – Carts of Colorado and California Pizza Kitchen – in order to expand the company’s restaurant business. If indeed PepsiCo decides to pursue the acquisition of one or both, they must decide how to align each of these business units in its historically decentralized management approach and how to forge relationships between the acquired business units and existing business units. In their evaluation, Senior Management is faced with the question of whether the necessary capital investment in order to purchase one or both of the businesses can be profitable for each of the acquired business units, but must also take into consideration that the additional business units will not hinder the profitability of the existing business units.
Companies all over the world varies but yet shares a common challenge, that is to solve problem not only effectively and efficiently but also creatively. The P-O-L-C framework which stands for Planning, Organising, Leading and Controlling plays a major role in both the company’s survivability and success. The SWOT analysis looks at both internal and external factors that can affect the Starbucks’s performance. The purpose of this report is to define and analyse how Starbucks respond and should have respond to the change of its external environment on the cofee market,This report will also identify and disscuss how The P-O-L-C framework and can help starbucks to compete and reduce the loss of their failing peformance in the Australian market and how SWOT analysis helps to define some externalities that can be a threat to Starbucks.
Monster Beverage Corp. shows that they understand their customers’ needs. They are a successful business with higher growing revenue every year. Their revenues did decrease during the economy’s recent recession (2008...
Boston Beer uses a quality strategic planning system in order to achieve their corporate objectives. They have a good system in place that they use when considering the future decisions of the company. They utilize this system each time that they decide if they are going to introduce a new product into the market. This is one of the reasons that their hard cider was able to become the number one cider in the United States in only eight months.
For one of my selections for buying stock, I invested into Starbucks, this company has attracted me with their wonders of different coffees, and I knew many others were interested in the very popular coffee company. Starbucks all started 1971 in Seattle Washington. With three men which were Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegel and Gordon Bowker each of them put in one thousand three hundred and fifty dollars along with a barrowed five thousand from the bank to start up there small coffee shop in pick place market, witch is located in down town Seattle. The name for this company was inspired from the character Starbuck from Moby Dick; this character was a coffee lover. There close friend designed there well known logo. These men never thought of this small company to get large they just thought of it as a small coffee shop. Out of all three men Siegel was the only one that work at it full time. The men depened on a man named Alfred Peet for there coffee beans but soon then started there own blends of coffee beans. With in a year opening the first store they were able to open a second store. When the 1980’s rolled around, it was a thriving company, in the Seattle area. However, the co-founders began to have other interests and were involved in other careers simultaneously. Despite that, the company was about to undergo a major turning point. A man by the name of Howard Schultz started to pursue an interest in the company. He noticed that the coffee shop had a wonderful environment. He started asking a questions and becoming more and more interested by every moment. He loved how the founders had so much knowledge on the coffee and each blend. In 1982, Schultz became director of retail operation. This was just the start to a new phase with the company.
Breckenridge Brewery has a strong business in brewing beer. Due to the lack of professional management expertise and venturing into the wrong business, the company has not been able to turn in a profit. It is important that the company try to resolve these problems as soon as possible. Only then, will the company get out of the red and hopefully, move on to a higher level.
The core business of “Illy Coffé” group is in the food industry, specifically in the coffee sector (detailed profile information can be found in the appendix). The major part of sales 88% (Prospectus, 2012) are concentrated on products based on coffee; furthermore, this sector is characterized for a strong dependence on price, strong competition, dependence of customer´s preferences and, economic factors (GDP, inflation, etc.); in fact, these characteristics denote a high risk of reduction of sales or profitability due to changes in customer demands, preferences or volatility of production costs.
Koehn, N.F., Besharov, M.A., & Miller, K. (2008). Starbucks Coffee Company in the 21st Century. [Case study]. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing.