Boston Beer Company Case Essay

background knowledge Information_ The Boston Beer Company, which was founded in 1984, had a actually diversified thriving result aura which entailed ab out twenty antithetic kinds of beers. Their reaping was available in over cardinal various countries and used a meshwork of around four hundred distributors. Revenues grew from 21 million dollars to 210 million dollars from inception to 1997._Problem and probability Identification_ As a result of the telephoners yield line and its variety, the gild encountered replications avering and upholding of their crossings such(prenominal) as Lightship which has been withering in recent years and which doesnt befool the volume like other crossways to sustain distribution. Since the blithe beer business that Lightship belonged to was one that was cursorily growing, the Boston Beer Company felt the require to investigate its products disappointment.The research to do so took place in different forms such as competition, gro cery, and financial analyses, customer surveys, and lastly deep emotional analysis utilise the ZMET technique. _Alternatives_ One option the research team is conveying is introducing a new light beer into their product line. It is understandable that since the high-priced light beer patience is one of the biggest and rapidly growing scene of action in the beer industry, the Boston Beer Company wants to adopt and take advantage of this field to march on enhance its name and maintain its market ploughshare and its standing.However, there are issues in terms of positioning and marketing of this product. The product needs to be communicated as a light, rich, fun beer and targeted at a different audience that entails women. In addition to the incident that this option might cause encroach in terms of the stigmatize date creation a macho unskilful beer brewer, using it doesnt solve the worry for Lightship if Lightship is going to be kept in the market offerings.A nonher opt ion the research team considered was repositioning Lightship and throwing in more(prenominal) effort and investment into the marketing of the product. It was clear that, compared to one of their biggest competitors Heineken, the Boston Beer Company has had inconvenience oneself and sort-of failed to build a unique brand identity for this product. The product was not successfully differentiated and positioned in the market in order for it to build market share and improve standings.This failure could make it tricky for the alliance to reposition itself and sort consumer perceptions to come upon their interests and so it might be a waste of time and efforts. Finally, the last option is the dreaded one of not competing in this realm of the industry. This is a very thoroughgoing option since this realm is a long and growing segment of the market and they would be missing out on a lot if they decide to pull out it.The failure to fit into this field, however, might shake proved t hat the Boston Beer Company is not fightnt enough and ready to compete in this segment. _Critical Issues_ There are deuce main critical issues that the company should consider when making the decision about their stain in the light beer industry. One critical issue concerns the brand image the company has an comprehensive brand image of being a premium masculine macho craft beer brewer and shaking that could be seen to influence consumer perceptions.The second critical issue relates to the field study and the results it yielded do they resoluteness our questions about how to position the light beer product or on whether we should even inject/keep products in this segment of the market. _Conclusion and Recommendation_ afterwards reviewing the results of the various research techniques, the recommended option would be to introduce a new high-end light beer into the market (while probably retiring Lightship).making use of the ZMET research results, this new product should be p ositioned in a port that represents an active, refreshing, and healthy lifestyle. Having a new product instead of improving Lightship is best in order to avoid the difficult efforts of having to change stubborn consumer perceptions. Also, in terms of the umbrella brand image of BBC being a macho tough image, having a specialise offering targeted at other audiences allow for probably add to the image of having twain instead of eroding the existing image.