Mountain Man Brewing

Santoro, John

Group #7

Mountain Man Brewing Company

A. What is distinctive about MMC’s products? What distinguishes it from their competitors? What is distinctive about its customers? How is MMBC’s promotion distinctive and effective? What has allowed MMBC to create a strong brand?

Mountain Man Brewing Company (MMBC) has a high level of brand recognition in its core sales territory. In a recent study, the product is known as the “Best Beer in West Virginia”, best-know regional beer and best beer in Indiana along with “America’s Championship Lager” at the American Beer Championship in 2005. MMBC relied on its history as a family-owned brewer to create an aura of authenticity. MMBC core customers are defined as blue-collar, middle-to-lower income men (72% < $74.9k/year) over the age of 45 (64%). In terms of MMBC’s promotion, they emphasized the local aspect to their product, which had great appeal to their core customers. This allowed the company to stay competitive against larger, national brands.

B. What has caused MMBC’s decline despite its strong brand? Describe the market MMBC serves and the beer market in general. Describe the competition and MMBC’s threats. What is the likely future of competitive brewers? What is MMBC’s market/competitive position?

Market share deterioration is due to craft and import beers gaining ground in the East Central region and pricing pressures that advantaged larger brewers that had scale. The US market for beer is ~$75B and broken into the following categories: major brewers such as Miller account for 74% of the market, second-tier account for 12.5%, imports for 12% and craft beers for 1.5%. MMBC has $50M of the ~$75B total. The threat to MMBC is the aging, concentrated demographic of their core customers, the shift to craft beers and the growing popularity of light beer with younger customers who were the primary beer consumers. As MMBC does not have a light product, they can...