Mountain Man Brewery Company

MOUNTAIN MAN BREWING COMPANY

1º Executive summary:

The company is decreasing her incomes every year. They need a solution to ensure the company against the new market movements.

SWOT Analysis:

• Strengths:

o Has high awareness and strong brand.

o Has high reputation as lager traditional beer.

o Own sales force.

o Has not his resources disseminated.

o Has enough production capacity.

o Use grass-root marketing which is less expensive than other ways.

• Weakness:

o It has not so much economical resources as bigger companies.

o Has not light line of products.

o The directive equipment has not the same vision.

o Every year decrease his incomes.

• Threats:

o The key consumers don’t like his current product.

o The lager beer has a decreasing tendency.

o Other companies invest lot of money in advertising.

o His core type of consumer couldn’t approve light products.

• Opportunities:

o Has a strong brand to leverage into his influence area.

o The mark has the approval by young people.

o The market tendency of light beers is growing up stably.

o Has large experience in grass-root marketing which has more impact.

2º Statement of the challenge:

The current strategy is decreasing the revenues. The market is changing and the company is not changing too. They don't know if Light beer would be the solution or the end of the MMBC.

3º Development of alternatives:

1. Launch new product line “Mountain Main Light Beer”. Is the most risked option because they need to develop a new product investing lot of money in marketing to point to the new target. On the other hand, it’s the best option to increase the revenues of the company in the future because the market tendency seems stable, and young people spend more money in alcoholic beverage and the rate of consumption is going up.

2. Selling their current production not sold to other breweries under their own brands to recover some of previous profits. Every year they are selling fewer barrels than before, so they can allocate this lack of production to other brands that are increasing their market rate and need more production but they don’t want to spend money building other factory. This way is only available for light beer production or large beer but outside of his territory.

3. Doesn't develop another product and wait until the market tendency change again. If the company take this choice, they can invest some money to improve her grass-root marketing like hiring a more aggressive marketing agency. There are some possibilities to get market share in Kentucky and Wisconsin besides take advantage in the other East Central Region states.

4. Introduce a new light beer into the market doesn’t leveraging Mountain Man’s name. The principal advantage is not risk to erode the current well positioned name of the lager beer. But taking not advantage of the name it’ll be more complicate to introduce a new brand in the market.

5. Introduce a light beer leveraging the brand’s weight but into a different definition. Not "Mountain Man" Light, but “Young Mountain Man Beer” for instance. It could be a very good option because the brand will not be damaged because most of their core consumers don't agree with light beers for Mountain Man brand. It could be focused to this people as the starting point to new generations, and it sounds cool and attractive for young people and women.

4º Evaluation criteria: Risk, timing, investment, expansion, erosion and market tendency

Alternative/Criteria Risk Timing Investment Expansion Brand Erosion Market tendency

Light Mountain Man 3 4 3 5 2 5

Sell to other brand 5 2 5 2 1 4

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