New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Sales & Marketing
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer
Discusses the introduction of a completely new beverage to the U.S. market. New Century Brewing, which is owned by one of the founders of Boston Beer Co., is a small brewer that outsources production to third-party brewers. It has two products, a light craft beer sold in upscale shops and restaurants, and a caffeinated beer, which is oriented toward younger drinkers mainly between 21 and 25 years of age. Moonshot, created by the legendary masterbrewer, known as the "father of light beer," became the first caffeinated beer in the world. The company follows a differentiation strategy that attempts to appeal to a small niche of customers traditionally ignored by large brewers. Shortly after the introduction of each of its products, large competitors introduced similar products. Nevertheless, Moonshot has a first-to-market advantage that could potentially be leveraged.
Swot Analysis of "New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer" written by Chris Robertson, David Wesley includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Beer Caffeinated facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Entrepreneurship, Gender, Marketing, Pricing, Product development and Sales & Marketing.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer casestudy better are - – increasing household debt because of falling income levels, there is increasing trade war between United States & China, technology disruption, supply chains are disrupted by pandemic , geopolitical disruptions, increasing commodity prices, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy,
digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, increasing inequality as vast percentage of new income is going to the top 1%, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Beer Caffeinated, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Beer Caffeinated operates in.
According to Harvard Business Review, 75% of the managers use SWOT analysis for various purposes such as – evaluating current scenario, strategic planning, new venture feasibility, personal growth goals, new market entry, Go To market strategies, portfolio management and strategic trade-off assessment, organizational restructuring, etc.
SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix
SWOT analysis of New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Beer Caffeinated
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Sales & Marketing field.
4. Making a Sales & Marketing topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Beer Caffeinated
Strengths New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Beer Caffeinated in New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer Harvard Business Review case study are -
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Beer Caffeinated are driving operational speed, building greater agility, and keeping the organization nimble to compete with new competitors. It helps are organization to ideate new ideas, and execute them swiftly in the marketplace.
Innovation driven organization
– Beer Caffeinated is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Beer Caffeinated has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in, as mentioned in case study New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
High switching costs
– The high switching costs that Beer Caffeinated has built up over years in its products and services combo offer has resulted in high retention of customers, lower marketing costs, and greater ability of the firm to focus on its customers.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Beer Caffeinated in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Training and development
– Beer Caffeinated has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer Harvard Business Review case study by analyzing – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Sales & Marketing industry
– New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Beer Caffeinated to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Beer Caffeinated to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer Harvard Business Review case study comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the industry, building diversified operations across different geographies so that disruption in one part of the world doesn’t impact the overall performance of the firm, and integrating the various business operations and processes through its digital transformation drive.
Organizational Resilience of Beer Caffeinated
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Beer Caffeinated does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Low bargaining power of suppliers
– Suppliers of Beer Caffeinated in the sector have low bargaining power. New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer has further diversified its suppliers portfolio by building a robust supply chain across various countries. This helps Beer Caffeinated to manage not only supply disruptions but also source products at highly competitive prices.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Beer Caffeinated is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Learning organization
- Beer Caffeinated is a learning organization. It has inculcated three key characters of learning organization in its processes and operations – exploration, creativity, and expansiveness. The work place at Beer Caffeinated is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
Weaknesses New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer are -
Low market penetration in new markets
– Outside its home market of Beer Caffeinated, firm in the HBR case study New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer needs to spend more promotional, marketing, and advertising efforts to penetrate international markets.
Ability to respond to the competition
– As the decision making is very deliberative, highlighted in the case study New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer, in the dynamic environment Beer Caffeinated has struggled to respond to the nimble upstart competition. Beer Caffeinated has reasonably good record with similar level competitors but it has struggled with new entrants taking away niches of its business.
Need for greater diversity
– Beer Caffeinated has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Beer Caffeinated has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. Beer Caffeinated even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.
Lack of clear differentiation of Beer Caffeinated products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Beer Caffeinated needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
High cash cycle compare to competitors
Beer Caffeinated has a high cash cycle compare to other players in the industry. It needs to shorten the cash cycle by 12% to be more competitive in the marketplace, reduce inventory costs, and be more profitable.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Beer Caffeinated is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Sales & Marketing segment. Beer Caffeinated needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Beer Caffeinated to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Beer Caffeinated has created an environment where the organization is dominated by functional specialists rather than management generalist. This has resulted into product oriented approach rather than marketing oriented approach or consumers oriented approach.
Compensation and incentives
– The revenue per employee as mentioned in the HBR case study New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer, is just above the industry average. Beer Caffeinated needs to redesign the compensation structure and incentives to increase the revenue per employees. Some of the steps that it can take are – hiring more specialists on project basis, etc.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer HBR case study mentions - Beer Caffeinated takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the industry in last five years.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer HBR case study still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Beer Caffeinated has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Opportunities New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities highlighted in the Harvard Business Review case study New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer are -
Loyalty marketing
– Beer Caffeinated has focused on building a highly responsive customer relationship management platform. This platform is built on in-house data and driven by analytics and artificial intelligence. The customer analytics can help the organization to fine tune its loyalty marketing efforts, increase the wallet share of the organization, reduce wastage on mainstream advertising spending, build better pricing strategies using personalization, etc.
Manufacturing automation
– Beer Caffeinated can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Sales & Marketing segment. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
Use of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies for transactions
– The popularity of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as asset class and medium of transaction has opened new opportunities for Beer Caffeinated in the consumer business. Now Beer Caffeinated can target international markets with far fewer capital restrictions requirements than the existing system.
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help Beer Caffeinated to reconfigure its entire business model. For example it can used blockchain based technologies to reduce piracy of its products in the big markets such as China. Secondly it can use the popularity of e-commerce in various developing markets to build a Direct to Customer business model rather than the current Channel Heavy distribution network.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Beer Caffeinated can still utilize the low interest rates to borrow money for capital investment. Secondly it can also use the increase of government spending in infrastructure projects to get new business.
Buying journey improvements
– Beer Caffeinated can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer suggest that firm can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Sales & Marketing industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Beer Caffeinated can take advantage of these changes in consumer behavior to build a far more efficient business model. For example consumer regular ordering of products can reduce both last mile delivery costs and market penetration costs. Beer Caffeinated can further use this consumer data to build better customer loyalty, provide better products and service collection, and improve the value proposition in inflationary times.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Beer Caffeinated can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Beer Caffeinated operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Sales & Marketing sector.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Beer Caffeinated can leverage digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the production process, customer analytics to get better insights into consumer behavior, realtime digital dashboards to get better sales tracking, logistics and transportation, product tracking, etc.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Beer Caffeinated to expand its talent hiring zone. According to McKinsey Global Institute, 20% of the high end workforce in fields such as finance, information technology, can continously work from remote local post Covid-19. This presents a really great opportunity for Beer Caffeinated to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Beer Caffeinated to increase its market reach. Beer Caffeinated will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Identify volunteer opportunities
– Covid-19 has impacted working population in two ways – it has led to people soul searching about their professional choices, resulting in mass resignation. Secondly it has encouraged people to do things that they are passionate about. This has opened opportunities for businesses to build volunteer oriented socially driven projects. Beer Caffeinated can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Beer Caffeinated to conduct training and development for its employees across the world. This will result in not only reducing the cost of training but also help employees in different part of the world to integrate with the headquarter work culture, ethos, and standards.
Threats New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer are -
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Beer Caffeinated can face lack of demand in the market place because of Fed actions to reduce inflation. This can lead to sluggish growth in the economy, lower demands, lower investments, higher borrowing costs, and consolidation in the field.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Beer Caffeinated high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
Backlash against dominant players
– US Congress and other legislative arms of the government are getting tough on big business especially technology companies. The digital arm of Beer Caffeinated business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Instability in the European markets
– European Union markets are facing three big challenges post Covid – expanded balance sheets, Brexit related business disruption, and aggressive Russia looking to distract the existing security mechanism. Beer Caffeinated will face different problems in different parts of Europe. For example it will face inflationary pressures in UK, France, and Germany, balance sheet expansion and demand challenges in Southern European countries, and geopolitical instability in the Eastern Europe.
High level of anxiety and lack of motivation
– the Great Resignation in United States is the sign of broader dissatisfaction among the workforce in United States. Beer Caffeinated needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Sales & Marketing industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Regulatory challenges
– Beer Caffeinated needs to prepare for regulatory challenges as consumer protection groups and other pressure groups are vigorously advocating for more regulations on big business - to reduce inequality, to create a level playing field, to product data privacy and consumer privacy, to reduce the influence of big money on democratic institutions, etc. This can lead to significant changes in the Sales & Marketing industry regulations.
New competition
– After the dotcom bust of 2001, financial crisis of 2008-09, the business formation in US economy had declined. But in 2020 alone, there are more than 1.5 million new business applications in United States. This can lead to greater competition for Beer Caffeinated in the Sales & Marketing sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Increasing wage structure of Beer Caffeinated
– Post Covid-19 there is a sharp increase in the wages especially in the jobs that require interaction with people. The increasing wages can put downward pressure on the margins of Beer Caffeinated.
Capital market disruption
– During the Covid-19, Dow Jones has touched record high. The valuations of a number of companies are way beyond their existing business model potential. This can lead to capital market correction which can put a number of suppliers, collaborators, value chain partners in great financial difficulty. It will directly impact the business of Beer Caffeinated.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Sales & Marketing field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Beer Caffeinated can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Beer Caffeinated can face downward pressure on margins from increasing competition from international players. The international players have stable revenue in their home market and can use those resources to penetrate prominent markets illustrated in HBR case study New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer .
Learning curve for new practices
– As the technology based on artificial intelligence and machine learning platform is getting complex, as highlighted in case study New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer, Beer Caffeinated may face longer learning curve for training and development of existing employees. This can open space for more nimble competitors in the field of Sales & Marketing .
Consumer confidence and its impact on Beer Caffeinated demand
– There is a high probability of declining consumer confidence, given – high inflammation rate, rise of gig economy, lower job stability, increasing cost of living, higher interest rates, and aging demography. All the factors contribute to people saving higher rate of their income, resulting in lower consumer demand in the industry and other sectors.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers in the HBR case study New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer needs to zero down on the relative importance of each factor mentioned in the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants.
We can provide the relative importance to each factor by assigning relative weights. Weighted SWOT analysis process is a three stage process –
First stage for doing weighted SWOT analysis of the case study New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer is to rank the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. This will help you to assess the most important strengths and weaknesses of the firm and which one of the strengths and weaknesses mentioned in the initial lists are marginal and can be left out.
Second stage for conducting weighted SWOT analysis of the Harvard case study New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer is to give probabilities to the external strategic factors thus better understanding the opportunities and threats arising out of macro environment changes and developments.
Third stage of constructing weighted SWOT analysis of New Century Brewing: Moonshot Caffeinated Beer is to provide strategic recommendations includes – joining likelihood of external strategic factors such as opportunities and threats to the internal strategic factors – strengths and weaknesses. You should start with external factors as they will provide the direction of the overall industry. Secondly by joining probabilities with internal strategic factors can help the company not only strategic fit but also the most probably strategic trade-off that Beer Caffeinated needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
