Mountain Man Brewing Company

Mountain Man Brewing Company: Bringing the Brand to Light

A. Competitive Advantage

Mountain Man Brewing Company (MMBC) is a family owned brewery based in West Virginia that has sold Mountain Man Lager since 1925. The lager is made with rare Bavarian hops that deliver a distinctive, flavorful, bitter-tasting flavor with higher-than-average alcohol content. Their beer is respected for its old school, regional brew characteristics which are underlined by their brown bottle and original label design from 1925. Their core consumers are primarily blue-collar men who are over the age of 45, and are in the middle-to-lower income bracket. MMBC’s long standing, independent, family-owned brewery has created an aura of authenticity and that, along with their distinctive flavor, has developed strong brand recognition and loyalty in the areas in which Mountain Man Lager is sold.

Because MMBC could not compete with the national breweries advertising and promotional budgets, distributors could not be counted on to help build brand equity and awareness.  To stay competitive, MMBC focused their small sales force on the blue collar males who purchased 60% of their beer through off-premise channels. This grass roots promotional campaign resulted in 70% of all MMBC sales coming from off-premise locations.

B. Market Situation

For six years, premium beer sales had been declining at a rate of 4% annually. Conversely, the light beer segment has grown by 4% annually over the same period of time.

With a national rise in import and craft beers, West Virginia repealed a law that limited the promotion of beer in retail locations. This enabled stores to sell at greater discounts and to drop smaller brands that yielded lower returns. With their advantage in economies of scale, this has been of particular benefit to Anheuser Busch, Miller Brewing Company, and Adolf Coors Company as they are heavy producers in the market and their products are highly advertised.  Within the...