The Boston Beer Company Essay Example for Free

The chapiter of Massachusetts Beer bon ton EssayOverview The capital of Massachusetts Beer Comp whatsoever has had amazing victor in its transition from a elegant scale microbrewer to a bouffant scale bailiwick brewery. Al to the high ge atomic number 18st degree all of the companions success is collectible to the surface-to-air missileuel Adams lager beer product line, which has hardly changed from the founding of the caller-out in 1984, to the IPO in 1995, to the bear witness day. In fact, much of the appeal of surface-to-air missileuel Adams comes from its microbrew image and the fo em stoprassed, Jim Kochs, commitment to the create from raw material process and a premium beer. In recent years, however, the confederacy has implemented a new outline for ontogenesis which has included introducing a abstemious beer that will nonplus more(prenominal) mainstream appeal. bandage this has change magnitude profits for the telephoner, it has also left the conjun ction vulnerable to entering by diluting its brand hold. For this reason, the friendships strategy for the immediate future day has to make a substantive shift, from a strategy of product to a strategy of protection.It must focus on maintaining its on-going profits by preventing entry both from diminutive breweries looking to copy the BBCs strategy and from s come uped breweries looking to use their expansive resources to steal some of BBCs commercialise sh ar. History of capital of Massachusetts Beer The capital of Massachusetts Beer association began as a microbrewery in capital of Massachusetts, Massachusetts in 1984. Its first cases of beer were only s emeritus to capital of Massachusetts bars, but the company quickly branched out geographically. Fueled by awards and recognition from p alightigious beer festivals, surface-to-air missileuel Adams capital of Massachusetts Lager was available on much of the East Coast by the late 1980s and nationally by 1992.The compan y went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 1995. The capital of Massachusetts Beer lodges strategy for growth was ace of differentiation. The company created a higher(prenominal) feel beer than the majority of Ameri give the sack beers by using more expensive ingredients and less(prenominal) water, and it used its packaging and its commercials to advertise this commitment to quality. In fact, because of its use of only barley, hop, yeast, and water as its ingredients, Samuel Adams win the honor of world the first American beer to be sold in Germany, a distinction that helped its image in America even more.One concern strategy that the company employed as it started to grow was using extra create from raw material space in other companys breweries to brew their beer. Since the company was growing at a double human body rate, it didnt cast cancelled a address of extra capital to build its own breweries, so this was a good strategy for them during their period of growt h. And, since these breweries were distributed throughout the country, this strategy granted the capital of Massachusetts Beer Company to maximize the freshness of the beer it sold.In fact, the like a shot famous practice of printing a freshness label on bottled beer was started by the Boston Beer Company on its Samuel Adams Boston Lager. The company ensured quality production in these disperse breweries by hiring experienced brewmasters to oversee the contract brewing. The company also brewed some beer on its own property, both in Boston and later in a plant they purchased in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 2002, the company took a risk by introducing Sam Adams pass, a light beer version of their Samuel Adams Lager.They had neer produced a light beer before, and it was Kochs stance that the company couldnt brew a light beer that would be up to their standards of flavor. The expanded client base that the company would target with the sale of a light beer was too lucrative a market to ignor e, however, and the light beer market was almost devoid of any pause Beers, so after three years of development Sam Adams lighten up was born. The advertising expenditures for 2002 change magnitude by 25. 7% or $20. 6 million over 2001 due to the promotion of Sam Adams dispirit2, which magnified the financial risk of producing and selling it.The new beer had the short term exploit of attracting new consumers to the Samuel Adams brand, although the long term effect has yet to be seen. The growth of the Boston Beer Company was real impressive, and can be attributed to a superior product, good business strategy, and an unsaturated market for high-quality beer. But now there ar new challenges facing the company. There are always new fads in the beer manufacturing flowing trends are low-carb beers and fruityflavored malt beverages. The Boston Beer Company ineluctably to decide which of these trends to respond to, and how torespond to each. higher up all the company needs to c ontinue its strategy of differentiation that allowed it to achieve its current profitability. It is its image for quality above major American beers like Budweiser, Coors, and Miller that allows it to bread and butter its prices, and its profits, high. Current Industry Analysis The Boston Beer Companys product is a develop beer. A better beer is defined as both a forge beer or an import, and is characterized by higher prices and quality. A trade beer is defined as one which is brewed with 100% malted barley as its grain.The major American beer companies typically use a smorgasbord of malted barley along with other grains such as rice or corn, since these are less expensive and pretend less full-bodied flavors. Rivals in the better beer perseverance include such hostile companies as Corona, Heineken, and Guinness, as well as home(prenominal) companies such as Sierra Nevada, Petes, and a anatomy of microbreweries around the country. While the beer industry overall is actual ly rivalrous, the better beer industry is not so, as evidence by high profit margins (the Boston Beer Company routinely posts profit margins of over 50%).The competitor that does exist tends to revolve around quality contention rather than price competition. There are many substitutes for better beer. All alcoholic beverages are substitutes for the Boston Beer Companys product, although the two c overlookst substitutes are major American beers and flavored malt beverages wine and spirits are less relevant substitutes for the suggests of this analysis. Budweiser, Coors, and Miller are all hulky brand name beers which ache low prices and low quality compared to better beers. legal injury sensitive consumers typically buy these beers. Smirnoff Ice, Skyy Blue, and Bacardi Silver are all similarly priced to the better beers, but they have fruitier flavors and therefore appeal to consumers with a different taste preference. The suppliers for the Boston Beer Company are similar to th e suppliers for any brewery. Supplies that must be purchased include the ingredients like water, barley and hops, the equipment for brewing, and the transportation for distributing beer around the country.The ingredients are actually very inexpensive compared to the other two cost, and suppliers of barley and water dont have a lot of bar realiseing power since these industries are fragmented. The hops industry, however, is more centralized. In order to ensure adequate hops supplies at prices known in advance the company regularly purchases hops futures. The company also employs an self-asserting contract brewing strategy. Under this policy almost 60% of the companys products are brewed at noncompany owned breweries. By utilizing the excess capacitance of geographically distributed breweries, the company can keep equipment and transportation costs low while providing a fresher and thus higher quality product.This brewing approach carries internal risks by giving potential rivals s ome control over the companys production aptitude. thusly the company is currently involved in a lawsuit with Miller after Millers attempt to back out of a brewing contract early. To protect itself from these risks the company enters into contracts with a divers(a) set of brewers for a much larger amount of beer than they actually produce.This redundant capacity is meant to shield the company from any minute of contract brewers defaulting on their contracts. Buyer bar amassing power doesnt have significant influence on the Boston Beer Company since their buyers are grocery stores and bars. The grocery industry and the bar industry are both fragmented, so each store or bar that buys from the Boston Beer Company comprises a very small amount of total company gross sales, and the hurt of any one buyer wont significantly hurt the company.Complements in the better beer industry include the popularity of bars, snack foods like pretzels and nachos, and flashy events like football gam es. While the Boston Beer Company doesnt depict any of these complements, they do provide some amount of client education. Customer education includes advertising awards the company has won, advertising their brewing processes, and trade attention to their premium ingredients. This serves to convince people of the superior quality of Samuel Adams, thereby convincing them to pay a premium price.Customer education is a fairly clever and successful strategy for a number of beer companies, but it benefits better beers more than lower quality beers, so the Boston Beer Company could probably present advantage of this by focusing more on customer education. The BBC also has an advantage over small high-quality breweries because its economy of scale allows more customers to be reached per dollar spent on customer education. Any company in the beverage industry has the potential to enter Samuel Adams market, and it is always crucial for a company to be aware of possible entry from all sid es.Companies that make wine, spirits, or malt beverages could all enter the market, and we have actually seen in recent years that spirits companies have been expanding into new markets by producing malt beverages under the name of the parent spirits company. However, the most dangerous potential entrants would be other beer companies. Other cheat breweries that sell their beer on a small scale aptitude attempt to copy the BBCs strategy to grow into a national brand and steal some of BBCs market divvy up. Also, major American breweries could use their expansive resources to brew high quality beers that could compete with Samuel Adams on a national level.A third, and even more threatening possibility, would be the combination of these two forces a major brewery could buy a high quality microbrewery and use their national advertising and distribution infrastructure to market the microbrew to the public on a large scale. Given the Boston Beer Companys high profit margins and the rel atively low level of rivalry within their market, it is very likely that entry will occur and erode outside(a) at BBCs profits if BBC is unprepared. We believe that responding to this possibility should be at the forefront of the companys business strategy for the immediate future.The Boston Beer Companys Strategy Using Reputation as an Entry Barrier The BBCs initial strategy was one of growth. This was fitting for it when it was a microbrewery looking to gain national and international sales. During its expansion in the early 1990s, the company took advantage of the fact that consumer demand for craft beers was change magnitude, while there were few other companies doing the same. Since the new market was unsaturated, the Boston Beer Company was able to acquit an inexpensive story for its Samuel Adams brand name by being the first large scale actor into the national craft beer market.By the late 1990s, the BBCs growth rate had begun to decline. In an effort to keep up growth, the company switched to a strategy of trying to increase the demand for craft beer. It did this through large scale advertising, and most significantly through the introduction of a light beer that brought light beer drinkers over to the better beer market. The Boston Beer Companys strategy was an effective one for many years, and enabled it to become the profitable national company that it is today.However, if the BBC wants to maintain its profitability, it will need to find a way to protect its market share from entrants, and this will require a shift in the companys strategy back to increasing its share of the break off Beer market rather than of the mainstream market. The biggest threats to the BBC are the major American beer companies, which have massive resources that would allow them to compete with the BBC. The BBCs two advantages over these major companies are experience and reputation, and the major companies could easily gain experience by buying an existing craft beer c ompany and utilizing its brewing procedures.Therefore, the BBC must protect its reputation at all costs, since its reputation is the only formidable entry barrier preventing Budweiser, Coors, and Miller from successfully invading Samuel Adams market. The companys best strategy would be to slow their growth in order to doing on strengthening their Samuel Adams Boston Lager brand name. Additionally, if the BBC diminishes its focus on growth, it could very well have the effect of reducing the incentive for these three major companies to enter the craft beer market, since the BBC will not be seen as so significant a threat.While there is a risk that slowing growth will leave the company vulnerable to entry by smaller companies, it is the large companies that have the most resources to compete with the BBC, so reducing the incentive for large companies to enter is worth the possible risk that more small companies will enter. The uniqueness and integrity that allowed the Samuel Adams br and to gain popularity are starting to be overshadowed by the companys attempts to gather more mainstream consumers, and this is hurting the companys brand name.The strategy for the future needs to focus on building back customer loyalty for the companys stub product line, i. e. Samuel Adams Boston Lager. First and foremost, the Boston Beer Company needs to continue reducing its expenditures on Sam Adams Light. During the introduction of Sam Adams Light in 2001-02, revenues and gross profit increased, but expenditures on advertising Sam Light were extremely high, and much of the sales of Sam Light were thought to be due to cannibalism of Samuel Adams Boston Lager.In 2003 when advertising of Sam Adams Light was decreased, sales of the light beer dropped significantly. Although Samuel Adams Boston Lager sales increased during the period between the fourth quarters of 2002 and 2003, overall shipments dropped 6% during this period3 because of the lowered demand for Sam Light after the decline of the Sam Light marketing campaign. However, even though sales were lower, net income was higher after the end of the marketing campaign4. The company should therefore continue to keep its advertising levels for Sam Adams Light low.In admittance to the high financial cost of advertising Sam Adams Light, it is likely that the large-scale marketing of Sam Adams Light could hurt the company in the long run by diluting the Samuel Adams brand name. The purpose of Sam Light is to appeal to mainstream beer drinkers, but the companys consumer base is comprised of individuals who pride themselves on intoxication a beer that is not mainstream. With potential entrants looming from above and below, the Boston Beer Company can not afford to lose its reputation for uniqueness.Still, Sam Light is a good revenue stream as a affix to Samuel Adams Boston Lager, but it should cease to be the companys main focus. The Twisted Tea and intemperate Core products are malt beverages that the co mpany produces on a small scale. These brands are unnecessary for the companys success, and if the company adopts a strategy to focus on Samuel Adams Boston Lager then it would be advantageous to eliminate these products. While the products dilute the companys brand name in a similar way to Sam Adams Light, they dont provide nearly the revenue that Sam Light does.By either selling or closing down these brand names, the Boston Beer Company can distance itself further from the malt beverage industry and improve its positioning as a Better Beer company. Dumping these products would help the BBCs image of integrity in the eyes of their consumers, and this image will be crucial if the company is to protect its market share from entrants. There have been a number of seek entries into the Sam Adams market which demonstrate the need for quality and reputation.Coors owns Killians Irish Red and Anheuser-Busch owns Michelob and has a situation in Red Hook, all brands that have had poor succ ess in the Better Beer Market. Most consumers are well aware of the fact that Michelob is just another domestic beer sold at a high price, and so its a brand without much of a quality image. On the other hand, its not well known that Coors owns Killians since its brewed in Canada and has an import label. While this label might signal some quality in many consumers eyes, Killians has no reputation and no customer base.Finally, Red Hook was a quality microbrew ale with a good reputation and customer base that was bought by AB. Since this purchase in 1994 the depot price of Red Hook has plummeted from 30 to 2 and sales have been poor. While the reason for this is not exactly clear, its possible that this failure is due to a loss of integrity that occurred when the microbrew became owned by a major domestic brewer, or that AB simply wasnt able to operate that type of brewery. ABs failure in this attempt doesnt delegate that they will give up on entering the craft beer industry, howeve r, especially if craft beers grow to be more of the national market.With such high profit margins and a strong market position, the BBC might be tempted to increase sales by decreasing prices, but this strategy should definitely be avoided. The high prices for Samuel Adams Boston Lager and Sam Adams Light signal to consumers and other companies that these beers are of higher quality, and since demand in the Better Beer market is relatively inelastic, there would likely be no increase in net income if prices were reduced. decrease prices would cause the BBC to appear more of a threat to the three major American beer companies, and could therefore rush along the entry of one of these companies into the market.Due to the nature of the Better Beer industry, the company needs to strive for quality competition over price competition. With the introduction of Sam Light in 2002 the percentage of BBCs sales comprised of bottles vs. kegs increased since most Sam Light is sold in bottles, an d since Boston Lager sales declined slightly. While revenues are lower per barrel of draft beer, profit margins are higher due to lower costs per barrel. Additionally, beer served on tap is usually able to retain a higher quality than beer served from a bottle.For these reasons and others, it would be a good strategy for the Boston Beer Company to increase its emphasis on selling its beer in kegs to bars. While most grocery stores already carry Samuel Adams Boston Lager, there are sedate a large number of bars that dont have Boston Lager on draft, and this deprives many consumers of being able to drink the beer in its highest quality form while also depriving the company of the added revenue that bar sales bring in. Since the companys new focus needs to be on evince the quality of its beers, increasing the availability of its draft beer is in line with its strategy.An added benefit of increasing prevalence in bars is the opportunity for bartender education and consequent consumer education. The company should seriously consider providing literature close to their beer along with the kegs that they sell to bars, since educating bar owners and bartenders about the premium ingredients and freshness standards that the company holds will have a trickle-down effect to the beer drinkers. Continuing with this strategy of edging away from the mainstream, the Samuel Adams line should switch back to its original label.The current label is simple with few colors, similar to the major company labels, while microbrew labels typically have a more complex picture that distinguishes the brand. Switching back to the BrewerPatriot label would signal to both new and old customers that the BBC is committed their roots and to quality. Putting Excess Capital to Use If the BBC continues to be successful in fending off potential entrants and if it maintains its high profit margins while staying away from a growth strategy, then it needs a plan for investing its profits.In the past, profits have been invested in growth or in stock of other companies, but in line with the new strategy of slow growth, there might be areas in which their money could be better invested. Some of the money could be used to fund the customer education programs mentioned earlier, but it might also be wise to start owning more breweries. make brewing proved to be efficient and successful during their growth phase. Up until the late nineties they were increasing sales by double digits each year.At this time it would have been difficult to impossible for production capacity to keep up with sales, not to mention for the company to secure the necessary capital. However, in the past 5 years growth has slowed, and consistently high profits have led to large amounts of excess capital. BBC has been memory some capital liquid in short term bonds and mutual funds and using the rest of the capital to buy back company stock4. There are several reasons why contract brewing makes less sense now. F irst, the BBC has run into situations in which being a contract brewer has hurt the companys reputation.Anheuser-Busch used a dateline interview and ran a series of attack ads claiming Samuel Adams Boston Lager was no different from other domestic beers since much of it was made in the same breweries as these domestic beers5. The ads were eventually dropped when an advertising watchdog group found the ads to be factually incorrect, but the damage had been done6. brew all of their own beer would insulate them from such claims, reinforcing their reputation. Additionally Miller tried to back out of a large brewing contract7.BBC won in arbitration, but millions were lost in legal expenses and backup contracts which were never realized. The dispute also brought more attention to the fact that some Samuel Adams is made by the majors, diluting their brand name more. BBC already produces half of their own product, and sells excess capacity to other brewers. This indicates that the company a lready has the experience and know-how that it needs to operate their own breweries on some scale. With so much capital available and sales growth slow, BBC should purchase a few local breweries around the country to produce all of its product.Excess capacity in these breweries can be contracted out as is currently done in the companys Cincinnati plant. By owning and operating their own breweries, the BBC can avoid the damage to its reputation as well as the contract disputes that it has to incur by operating as a contract brewer. Conclusions The Boston Beer Company has try outn that it has a successful business strategy for growth. The companys management now needs to show that it can maintain its profitability at its current level by adopting a strategy that creates barriers for entry into the national craft beer market.Many conventional entry barriers can be overcome by either regional microbreweries, which have the experience necessary to brew quality beers, or by major America n breweries, which have the resources to market a new beer nation-wide. The one significant entry barrier that the Boston Beer Company still holds on to is its good reputation, which it gained both by being an early mover into the national craft beer market and by maintaining strict quality controls. As the company has matured it has drifted away from its reputation of uniqueness.In order for the company to maintain its hold on the American craft beer market, it will need to have-to doe with its reputation at all costs. Because the companys growth has slowed, it has an opportunity to use its excess capital to fund programs that help bolster its image as a high quality, high integrity brewer. If it continues to assure itself from major American breweries like Budweiser, Coors, and Miller, then despite the Boston Beer Companys smaller resources, it should still be able to hold its consumer base and protect its profits from entry into its market. References 1. Samuel Adams Company B ackground. 2. The Boston Beer Company, Inc. 2002 one-year Report 3. Boston Suffers Tough Fourth Quarter. Modern Brewery Age. http//articles. findarticles. com/p/articles/mi_m3469/is_8_55/ai_114921347 4. The Boston Beer Company, Inc. 2003 Annual Report 5. Contract Brewing. Lew Bryson. Copyright 2000. http//www. beveragebusiness. com/art-arch/mmbryson0201. html 6. A-B to modify ads attacking Boston Beer. Copyright 1997, Chautauqua Inc. http//www. allaboutbeer. com/news/industry/ab_ads. html 7. Brewery addition may be on tap. Copyright 2003, Cincinnati Post. http//www. cincypost. com/2003/04/02/brew04-02-2003. html.