Beer Companies: Too Small for their Britches.
The article I chose to analyze is, "From the Mircrobrewers Who Brought you Bud, Coors . . ." This article examines what has been happening to the beer industry with respect to national microbreweries, such as, Anheuser-Bush, Miller, and Adolph Coors buying out regional breweries to attract the consumers who are now switching from the market dominating beers such as Budweiser, to regional beers like Pyramid Ale.
This article explores a competitive rivalry in the beer business which is broken up into two segments, national and regional microbrewers. National competitors have a wide market coverage and generally are large companies (i.e. Anheuser-Busch). Regional competitors are smaller than national in the fact that they only distribute in certain regions. Since the end of prohibition, the large breweries bought out and absorbed almost every regional and smaller brewery in North America, leaving the marketplace dominated (80%) by a handful a large producers. These producers have largely shaped the marketplace in their own image. In an attempt to appeal to the widest possible market they have literally diluted beer to suit the lowest common denominator. Discriminating consumers that seek beer different from mass-appeal products traditionally have bought imported beers, many of which, in turn have been bought and produced under license by the same major breweries. According to the article "A Brew Frontier," in the early 1980's all of this began to change. Hundreds of small micro and regional breweries sprang up, many of whom have passed into obscurity, but much of whom are thriving enterprises providing stiff competition to the large established breweries." However, big breweries have the advantage of large, highly-trained staffs that can turn themselves to .
endless experiment, often with an extraordinary range of materials, equipment and quality control systems.