Marketing Strategy- New Belgium Brewer - Case Study Example

Marketing Strategy - New Belgium Brewer Introduction The beer brewing industry in Europe is highly concentrated. In the year 2000, the United Kingdom experienced a massive change in its brewing industry. It is during this time when the New Belgium Brewing Industry was introduced into the Unite Kingdom brewing market. Notably, during this period, the Belgium inter brew becomes the newest leader in the brewing market. During this period, the brewing industry made the most significant restructuring process that had never been experienced in the entire history of beer. Moreover, in the year 2000, the United Kingdom beer market or industry was valued at 16.42 Euros billion. This was estimated to be a rise of over 9.4 percent in the beer market since 1996. However, the beer market was static for the same period. The effect was pegged on the significant entries of brewers into the market. All these factors including the then market price transparency indicated that the market might have been susceptible to duopolistic or oligopolistic behavior. The marketing strategy of the New Belgium Brewing after entering the brewing market focused on the relationship on marketing that applied “barstool to barstool” marketing methods and creation of “brand stewards” within its grassroots. These marketing strategies aimed at spreading the news about the introduction of the New Belgium craft beer into the market (Wales and Reaich 201). With the maturing of the company brand and leadership strategies, the company marketing became intensively active and forced. Notably, the company opted to use bicycle events, touring taste-testing vehicles, and interesting take away merchandise. Furthermore, the activities make the company strengthen the industry’s relationship with customers, leading to a significant gain in market share. Therefore, essay will examine what improvement and challenges the New Belgium Company has underwent since its introduction into the brewing market (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development 101). Pestle Analysis on the New Belgium Industry This is the analysis that involves the identification of social, political, economic, and technological influences on an organization. Politics sometimes relates to legal influences. Generally, the rates of excise duty levied on brewers in the United Kingdom has ever had been increasing compared to other parts of Europe. Notably, the value of excise duty in the United Kingdom is almost seven times higher than the other parts of Europe, particularly in France (Wales and Reaich 21). The high rates of excise duty in United Kingdom has led to major smuggling operations in the country. The smuggling has made the prices of beer rise extremely high even higher than the rates of inflation. This may be considered as the after that made the prices of beers sold by the new Belgium Industry are expensive. The industry sells its beers expensive so that it can be profitable out of high excise duty. Notably, the high prices of beer in the United Kingdom forced most of the beer customers to travel to other countries to go buy from such countries stores. This affected the sales of beer in United Kingdom, especially to the newly introduced brewer, the New Belgium Industry. This act led to the emergence of professional smugglers (Fine 96). The law, that was introduced, in the year 2000 restricted households on the quantity of beer they were expected to have in the public houses. This regulation in a way affected the turnover of the New Belgium industry, regarding it was a new brewer into the market. The sales of New Belgium beers were also affected by the economy according to the government statistics in the year 1999, before the New Belgium brewers joint the market, the retail of beer had fallen (Wales and Reaich 81). This was contributed for by partially low inflation, great home consumption that was attributed by cutting down of the supper marketing price, discounting and promotion of pubs. The easing of the inflation made the marketing of beer by New Belgium Brewers to be productive since customers could save cash for beer. Additionally, customers were no longer travelling to other countries for beer since the beer prices were affordable (Fine 40). The social or cultural believes of customers may have affected the output of the industry since this will automatically affect their consumption rate and pattern. The increased consumption of alcohol at home is often due to the increased entertainment sources at home including cable TV, videos, satellites, and the internet. These modes of entertainment have increased the alcohol consumption at home. These modes of entertainment also act as a sure means of marketing a product. However, New Belgium Industry did intensify its marketing campaigns in restaurants, bars, and nightclubs (Wales and Reaich 201). Therefore, the customers it often reaches from its campaigns are only those in such clubs or those who happened to be part of its bicycle ride off road shores (Ferrell et al 71). The other side of the culture that may intensively affect the consumption of the beer is the customers’ concern for their health. The New Belgium industry must have realized this had allowed room for differed persons with regards different health and food concern. A brand of this brewer is consumable vegetarians. Moreover, new Belgium industry has beer for other sets of person. In addition, any change of culture behavior highly affects the consumption trend and rate of alcohol consumption (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development 146). SWOT Analysis on the New Belgium Brewing Industry SWOT analysis in the strategic planning that is often used by business organizations in evaluating their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that are involved in that particular business venture. It often involves identifying specific objectives of the business as well as identifying internal and external factors that favor or unfavorable to the achieving the set goals and objectives. In relation to the New Belgium Brewing Industry, the industry enjoys numerous benefits that include high quality beer production since the entire employees are shareholders of the industry thus they are compelled to producing quality beer. Additionally, the beer produced accommodates different types of customers including vegetarians, the elderly, as well as the female sex. However, the industry has certain weaknesses that include limited marketing plans. Often it uses limited marketing techniques (Ferrell and Hartline 49). Additionally, the industry has in efficient product distribution systems. This makes its beer reach only a few customers. Gauging its weaknesses and strengths, the New Belgium Brewers should identify some of the existing opportunity in order to improve its sales and productivities. The industry should invest on innovation in order to attract and maintain new customers. Furthermore, the industry should improve on its marketing strategy in order to widen its market (Wales and Reaich 201). The industry can even target international markets (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development 112). From the pestle analysis, it is clear that the New Belgium Brewers, just like other brewing industries had been affected intensively by economy. The industry may reduce such economic threats by embarking on large volume production. Large volumes of production are less expensive, and they often reduce cost of production. With low cost of production, the industry may set the prices of its beer products at cheaper prices that are affording to all economies and social set ups (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development 185). Finally, the management of the industry should not only maximize the already identified strengths but should work on the existing opportunities. Nonetheless, the management should not completely overlook its strengths but should ensure they are maintained at the highest levels possible. Additionally, they should reduce the existing weakness as possible. Works Cited Ferrell O, Hartline M. Marketing Strategy. united States: Cengage Learning, 2010. Print Ferrell O, Fraedrich J. and Ferrell. Business Ethics:Ethical Decision Making & Cases. NJ: Cengage Learning, 2012. Print Fine G. The SWOT Analysis: Using Your Strength to Overcome Weaknesses, Using Opportunities to Overcome Threats. Califonia: CreateSpace, 2009. Print Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. OECD Science, Technology, And Industry Outlook. U.S.A.: OECD Publishing, 2004. Print Wales J, Reaich N. Business Studies AS The Complete Companion OCR Specification. NY: Nelson Thornes, 2004. Print Read More