Date: October 28, 2013 RE: CTM Exercise Four - Boston Beer ____________________________________________________________________________ I. Issue/Problem: Boston Beer was a very low budget start-up with expertise in only a specific area of overall 3 billion dollar beer industry. It competed against big players with vast amount of resources who produced variety of beers at competitive prices. A. Boston Beer was designing a company that to make a profit, had to sell beer at a 15% mark-up to other companies. 1. Beer in USA is almost a drink consumed regularly, hence consumers wouldn’t pay premium price very often just for the sake of better quality and taste.
The suppliers were traditionally large US steel companies and more recently Aluminium suppliers. Despite the fact that can companies were significant customers of steel products (fourth largest customers in aggregate) they did not have a strong bargaining position with their suppliers due to their limited individual share of sales amongst the few, large suppliers. The customers of the can companies were predominately major food and beer companies (80% of sales). These buyers had considerable power over the can companies (ability to switch suppliers; threat of self manufacture) and were able to bid down prices and dictate terms (e.g. set service levels).
Mrinalini Ranjan March 31st 2015 Yellow Tail Wine Case Write-Up The US wine market in the 90’s had relatively slow growth and was intensely competitive, fragmented and regulated. After the dotcom boom in the late 1990s, there was a 60% increase in the production of wine, leading to an oversupply of wine (by about 15-20%) and growing import competition, despite the fact that the majority of Americans continued to be beer drinkers. Over 6500 brands were competing in this saturated market, making it fairly hard for a new entrant to break in and create a brand for itself. This was compounded by the fact that distributers were mainly purchasing wine from large-scale, full-line vineyards to take advantage of economies of scale. Under these market conditions, all varieties of wine with a range of price points were available in the US.
Forecasts beyond 2012 predict the fastest growth in China but anticipate growth in Vietnam, Brazil, Ukraine, Nigeria, India and Peru. In contrast, beer consumption Europe, there has been a decline in the beer market due to the unemployment and the downtown economy. With regard to specific companies, the top five beer sales by volume in 2010 were from just four companies: AB-InBev (18%), SABMiller (14%), Heineken (9%), Carlsberg (5%). These
However, the Czech company has been “punching above its weight in the legal arena” by winning 88 of 124 disputes between 2000 and 2011 and holding exclusive rights in 68 countries, mostly in Europe, preventing AB Inbev from selling its Budweiser brand in many key markets such as Germany (USAToday, 2012). The economic situation of Czech Republic plays a significant factor as well. The socialist era left nationalization consequences of which brought to a significant decrease in the number of brewers (from 1200 to 70) producing only about 18.2 million hectoliters of beer (American Edu, n.d.). There are about 85 different breweries in the Czech Republic now, 88% of them are
The company was growing with an higher rate of the industry even if was the market leader (9% vs 5%) b. the operating margin was in line with the industry, that highlights that the company was not leveraging the bigger scale to increase profitability (2-4%). c. The company substituted the CEO, but only 8 Seniors Executives over 30 and no middle manager maintaining the structure of the firm d. Indeed analyzing the 10-k and the DG report we can see that most of the improvement came from operational efficiency 2) What was KKR investment thesis? DG dollar have a leading position in the convenience store market and did not extract all the value from operational efficiency. We can extract more value focusing on maximizing store performance and investing in new technologies to reduce OPEX. Additionally interest rates for store relocation was forecasted to go down since we were on the verge of a crisis 3) Key area of operational efficiency?
However, by the 1990s the professional classes had listened to the health advice and the number of smokers in that social class had fallen by 75%. In contrast, the number of smokers in social class V (class of unskilled occupations) had dropped by only 30%. This clearly indicates that smoking is an issue liked to social class and poverty. Other figures show that in 2008, 48% of adults in deprived areas of Scotland were smokers, a higher proportion than in deprived areas of England and Wales where the figure was only 41%. This shows how geographical location which is linked into social class can affect weather you are more likely to smoke or not.
Today, Absolut is the number one selling imported vodka in Canada, the USA, Finland and other counties Today it’s the Third largest spirit brand behind Barcardi & Smirnoff, its sold in 126 countries. Worldwide sales in 2010 are 99m litters. Now, Absolut is owned by French group Pernod Ricard; they bought Absolut for €5.63 billion in 2008 from the Swedish state. Customers At the present moment, Absolut vodka is produced for import more than for domestic use. Most of all, it is consumed in USA, Canada
This problem was mainly due to poor transportation infrastructure or requirement for inter-distribution center movement. * High rate of products return. Distribution centers received six to eight truck loads each week of products returned from stores due to obsolescence, slow sales or quality problems. * High-in stock rate. Based on Wal-mart internal data, company’s in-stock rate was in the high 90s, which was significantly higher than the industry average of 90% in 2003.
College students are much more likely to engage in binge drinking than non-college students. Annual drinking rates have declined only slightly in the past decade, remaining at or above eighty percent. The rates of binge drinking have barely budged in fact; it has been at the same rate for the past decade, which is around forty-four percent. During the same time, reports of frequent binge drinking increased slightly more so for female college students (from 17.1 percent to 20.9 percent) than for male students (from 22.4 percent to 25.2 percent). Frequent binge drinkers account for 68 percent of the alcohol consumed on college campuses, although they make up only