Zima Case Summary

Zima is Clear Carbonated, malt-based beverage, was launched in 1992. It was completely outside of the Coors Umbrella with Laura Sankey as the product manager of the brand.

Whereas, Coors is a brewing company, the quality and taste of Coors resulted in a significant regional success from the beginning.

The united states beer industry is an extremely competitive market. When analyzing the beer market. Coors lies 3rd in the Beer Industry with 10.6% of overall market share.

Zima was initially successful in 1994, by targeting younger drinking crowd’s motivated to be different. Behind the slogan “Zomething Different”.

But later sales started to drop, and Zima did not live up to Coors management short-term expectations. The growth leveled off and

then declined over the course of the year 1994.
In the year following its launch, Zima tried a number of tactics to improve sales and also did a study by independent research to get a better understanding of the target consumers, with Zima having competing against Premium Beer, National Beer and Wine.
To increase sales and improve Market Share, Coor’s Zima team decided to reposition the product as a more refreshing beverage than beer, and the campaign was timed to be released in mid-spring 1998.
Laura Sankey had developed a series of investments that can be activated instead of or in addition to the clearly refreshing Campaign to return sales to the level of its early 1994 successes.
1. Key Issues?
• One of the challenges that Coors management faced when launching the Zima product line was how to market such a different type of beverage.
• The exact classification of what beverage category Zima competed in generated extensive debate amongst many managers
• The launch campaign for ZIMA and subsequent advertising that followed, was all completely outside of the Coors Umbrella.
• When looking at the Case Study, the availability of ZIMA is the lowest compared to its competitors.
2. The Big Picture Analysis?
- Fundamental Entity: Zima a clear, carbonated, malt-based beverage.
- Business Goal: Increase Sales, Improve Market Share.
- Core Competence: the core competence that set Zima apart and offers a unique experience to consumer is their “Clearly Refreshing” taste.
- Marketing Objective: Acquisition.

- Source of Volume: The current marketing objective for Zima is Acquisition and by not utilizing their parent brand, Coors Brewing Company, they are following with a sort of steal share activity in the sense that they are trying to enter the market as an alternative to beer.

- STP - Segment:

Main Variable: Socialization beverage for getting together.

Dynamic Variable: that ZIMA has is the refreshing, cool taste along with the price that stays competitive with the national brands.

- Target: ZIMA’s new advertisements would be targeted at beer drinkers.

To refine further, we can determine the current target to be competitive brand users when we consider our source of volume. However, by not relating Zima to the Coors Brewing Company, you are also targeting that group.

The revenue for ZIMA will increase If it directly competes against National Beer than when comparing to the Premium Brand, this is because the amount of market share and customers that National Brand holds is much greater than the Premium Brand.

Currently National Brand holds $50B in revenue while Premium holds $3B.

- Position:

- Situation Analysis:

• Strengths:

- Refreshing.

- Non-beer unique beverage, alternative to beer. •

Weaknesses
- Not taking advantage of the parent brand (CBC) to produce overall awareness/availability.
• Opportunities
- Distribution of the product in Convenience Stores, to increase availability.
- Different Flavors. • Threats
- Lower cost among competitor
(e.g. National Beer)

- Buyer Behavior Analysis:
- Profile of the Target Customer?
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- What do customers buy from you?
- A clear, carbonated, malt-based beverage (ZIMA), Hip, trendy drink (targeted at younger crowd), High alcoholic version beverage (targeted at me), Fruit Flavored version beverage (targeted at women) and Clearly Refreshing (alternative to beer)
- What do they buy from competitors?
- Imported Beer and Micro Brews from Premium Beer, Beer from National Beer and Wine.
- What competitor is top of mind?
- National Beer Brand.
- What are the needs, wants, and demands of your customers?
- Customer want something different to taste, something cool, refreshing and unique.
- How are you currently trying to reach this customer?
Zima is trying to reach the Customer by performing various advertising campaign, Subsequent ads, web campaigns, and alternative-rock campaign.
- Value Proposition: Customers should buy ZIMA because of the brands innovativeness/uniqueness. It is considered to be an alternative to beer and at the same time is refreshing to drink.
3. Recommendations and Rationale
- The recommendation that is to be considered would be to involve Coors Brewing Company into the brand in order to take full advantage of the parent brand. This would allow Zima to be well-established brand and would be recognized by the National Beer segment.
- As per its parent brand if ZIMA focuses on geographic expansion, and performs distribution to 50 states as that of Coors, ZIMA will have more availability and will have a significant increase in sales
- When looking at the investments, the availability of ZIMA was the area in which It suffered the most. Therefore, the first action was to increase the availability of ZIMA through exposure by investing in the Convenience Stores Channel. This investment would allow ZIMA’s availability to be promoted at many outlets throughout the country.
- The Clearly Refreshing Campaign would help leverage ZIMA’s core competence
- Pricing is about consistency with National Beer Brand, So ZIMA should also look at marketing their product towards what the consumers attribute their current needs to be, which in case, is represented as “an important part of getting together with friends after a long day at work or on the weekends”.

4. Action Plan/Marketing Strategy?

- The Clearly Refreshing Campaign would help leverage Zima’s Core Competence of their refreshing taste.

- This Campaign would bring awareness of Zima’s product among customers. So maximum investment is made in this Campaign.

- The Availability of Zima is the area in which it suffers the most, as Zima being very rare or unavailable. Therefore, more investment would be investing in the Convenience Stores channel. This would allow Zima’s availability to be promoted at over a million outlets throughout the country.

- The ancillary investments are Nicer Gourmet and The W Campaign. Although I did not achieve as much exposure as that of the Clearly Refreshing Campaign and the Convince Stores channel would allow.

- At the same time investing in the Nicer Gourmet channel and The W Campaign to see how it catered as the highly sophisticated consumer base, which would amplify Zima’s as the drink of choice for sophisticated customers.

- Please go through The Big Picture Simulation - Simulation Count

13.
- When considering the simulation, Under the Market Share we see that the Revenue Share for the National Brand decreased from 55 % to 52% whereas the Revenue Share for Zima has increased from 1% to 2%.