Competitive Strategy Coopers Brewery Essay

Anheuser-Busch Companies, Inc. continually seeks opportunities to maximize shareholder value and increase efficiency. Through their extremely effective marketing

Volume decreased for the first time in over twenty years in 1975 by four percent, during that same time Coors started to push out further in an attempt to become a national brand. 1985 marked a major year for the company as it set records in volume sold and revenues from the brewing division. Between 1975 and 1985 there were major changes in the company that eventually led to the company possibly opening its second brewing facility in history in Virginia. Through these years there were many new strategies implemented to foster this growth. In this paper I will diagnose key decisions, analyze potential solutions and show the actions needed to achieve the suggested changes.

Due to globalization and this fast-growing business environment, firms struggle to earn above-average returns. They strive to establish a competitive advantage in order to earn higher returns. It is not enough for firms to establish a competitive advantage, they should also figure out ways to sustain it. There are several factors that can affect the competitiveness of a firm including customers, suppliers, existing rivals, new entrants, and substitutes. Firms should take into account these factors in order to sustain their competitive advantage. This paper analyzes Yoffie 's (2009) Cola War case, assesses concentrate producers, bottlers, and retailers in terms of Porter’s (2008) five forces of competition and provides recommendations to Coca-Cola.

The New Belgium Brewing Company (NBB) started out as a small beer brewing concept in 1991, brewing beers out of their basement. Once they determined they had a product that could be marketable, they opened their first brewery in Ft. Collins Colorado and have been growing ever since, becoming the third-largest craft brewer in the country (New Belgium Brewing Company, 2014). But just as any business there is always competition and consumer opinion which allows a business to continue to develop and grow within their market. Competition in the microbrew arena has grown over the last decade and according to the Boulder, Colorado-based Brewers Association, the number of microbreweries has surged in the past five years 73% nationally (Olson, 2014). For the New Belgium Brewing Company, they have used their competitive advantage to continue to grow their business in a market that shows heavy increases of new competition. The concept of competitive advantage is, strengths possessed by the firm or real weaknesses possessed by rival firms (Ferrell & Hartline, 2011).

After its mission statement, the company enumerates its values in support of the mission statement. The values are the following:

distributors, brewers and retailers. A change suggested in Grolsch’s historic strategy is not to adapt the market completely in this case because it is an industry that gives importance to the country-of-origin. Markets Targeted: South Africa: Monopoly Market, No.1 SABMiller (Market Share: 98%) Brazil: Occupied by major Brewery Groups. China: Competitive Market. How to Compete: South Africa Brazil China Additional Line with SABMiller Co-Promotion with SABMiller

Problem identification: The global beer industry was experiencing increasing competition due to the new and potential mergers and acquisitions of

Niche market is the subset of the market on which a specific product is focused. The market niche defines the product features aimed at satisfying specific market needs, as well as the price range, production quality and the demographics that is intended to impact. It is also a small market segment

Rivalry in the craft beer industry is high and in addition to the excise tax and overall high manufacturing cost have promoted mergers and acquisitions in order to consolidate and globalize the industry. Anheuser-Busch InBev merged with Belgium-based Inbev as one of the major transactions in 2008, forming Anheuser-Busch InBev. Heineken (HEINY) another major brewer, acquired the beer business of FEMSA in 2010. As in 2013, Anheuser- Busch InBev one of the market leaders acquired Grupo Modelo, Mexican brewer. In the following year 2014, Anheuser- Busch InBev reacquire Oriental Brewery, South Korea brewer. (Sharon Bailey) The acquisitions combined their market share and currently owns 41.2 percent of the US market.(Statista)

|Niche (single |This can be described as a sub-segment. It is normally a small narrowly defined market where there are only a few |

Niches are often transient. They may disappear owing to technology or market factors. For instance, a new technology may make the process of making the niche products easier. Or there might be shift in the customer’s

This process helps a firm or organisation in focusing its marketing effort towards a specific segment or a group of segments. Depending on the product, organisational goals, the size of the firm and the marketing resources available a firm may target only one ‘niche’ segment or alternatively focus on several related segments. Another method can be to start with one segment and add more when business grows successfully. Large companies often target all market segments and try to serve them by offering a large variety of products to suit all their needs, wants and demands.

(Barton), 2013 developed a suitable production method for a gathering of items with request and conjecture data for a restricted skyline by utilizing a Genetic Algorithm (GA). They did computational analyses for an improved model for a semiconductor supply chain. Their heuristic model has a decent outcome than other straightforward dividing heuristics in view of item qualities. The supply chain of a simplified semiconductor was considered with different products. The results of the GA are compared with results obtained by other methods. There are two major factors to make the decision about production strategy. The first is the production lead time to arrange lead time proportion, while the

A competitive strategy, or business-level strategy, is the way a business used to successfully enter and penetrate into a market (Eastwood et al, 2006), and also, to succeed in this chosen market against its competitors (Johnson et al, 2014). A company needs to develop and apply appropriate strategy to help the company to generate distinctive competences (David, 2007). Compared with the strategies implemented in other levels of operation, competitive strategy is more focused on the competition against other competitors and strategic choices to better attain market share (Harrison and St. John, 2009). According to

The lucrative beer industry has attracted numerous foreign beers to vie for the market share in Singapore which is valued at S$562.7 million. As the beer industry in Singapore is reaching maturity, beer companies have to find innovative means to remain competitive to have a profitable share of the market.