MGMT 7160 - Global Strategic Management

From a Beyond Meats perspective, the most likely merger or acquisition strategy that would be employed would not necessarily be from Beyond Meats - but more likely a corporate takeover. I would expect a traditional meat provider looking to either enter the market or to consolidate some of the market would perform a horizontal merger with Beyond for their plant-based technologies and proprietary methods.  One may also see a competitor like Kellogg, who has other complementary products such as condiments and other barbecue accoutrements (e.g., hamburger buns) in their portfolio already take them on to bolster their alternative meat offerings like their Incogneato and be able to market them to different consumers but also to be able to adopt some of their more efficient production technologies and gain market power in the alternative market. Looking back at VRIO analysis, we know the most important, and costly, aspect of the substitute market is in the technologies. From a market stan...

Areas to look for strategic alliances with Beyond Meats and what kind of establishment, operating and termination issues (table 13.5 on pg 380) for their strategic alliances include: Exploiting economies of scale through alliances for select providers of material inputs, including the protein source, fats and oils, and other raw ingredients: Roquette Frères (“Roquette”) for the supply of pea protein which expires on December 31, 2022 Although no longer, this is also where an alliance threat has shown to actively harm Beyond Meat previously where they had to change sourcing strategies from an exclusive supply agreement with one of their co-manufactures that led to years of restructuring expenses - at the end of last calendar year, Beyond Meats had $2.7M in accrued unpaid liabilities associated with this contract termination. Processing Strategic Alliances include: An asymmetric alliance stood up through The PLANet Partnership, LLC joint venture that is co-owned between Beyond Meat and P...

Using  https://investors.beyondmeat.com/corporate-governance  to determine Beyond Meat's Board of Directors (April 2022), Beyond Meats' Board of Directors consists of the following board members with the following committee compositions from their Corporate Governance website: Ethan Brown: Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer, Board Member Seth Goldman: Chair of the Board  Former Executive Chair of Beyond Meat, Inc. Co-Founder and Chief Change Agent of Eat the Change Diane Carhart Retired Chief Financial Officer of US Yogurt Division of Lactalis Sally Grimes  Chief Executive Officer of Clif Bar & Company  Raymond J. Lane Managing Partner, GreatPoint Ventures Partner Emeritus and Advisor of Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers LLC  Muktesh "Micky" Pant Retired Chief Executive Officer of Yum China Holdings Ned Segal Chief Financial Officer of Twitter, Inc.  Christopher Isaac "Biz" Stone Co-Founder and Creative Director of Twitter, Inc....

Beyond Meats currently competes with a limited corporate diversification strategy in the overarching protein, more specifically meat substitute, market. Most of their major competitors compete across meat, dairy, seafood, and animal feed products with acquistion strategies. While Beyond has stayed squarely in the meat market focused on beef, pork and chicken with little expressed interest in diversification ( https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/17/faux-fish-looks-to-ride-the-growing-wave-of-alternative-meats.html ), other major competitors are actively investing in meat alternatives; e.g. Nestle and Sweet Earth, Unilever and The Vegetarian Butcher. Beyond should look into diversifying across the protein-based market though; their propertiery technologies based around the pea-protein may not necessarily jive with consumer preferences in the dairy alternative market at this time (pea-milk anyone, would need to diversify their core ingredient base to step out to take on this market).  S...

Taking a look at the Beyond Meat Value Chain, defined by Robert Yaman, Beyond Meat currently fully holds capabilities in Intellectual Property and Creation of the Protein, while it has partial capabilities in Processing (Texturizing) and Distribution (Sales and Marketing/Branding). https://www.robertyaman.com/blog/vertical-integration-in-plant-based-and-cell-based-meat Based on this value chain analysis, we can see that there are opportunities for Beyond Meat in the Material Inputs, Flavoring, Packaging, and Transportation capabilities that they are currently partnered with other companies on.  Individually taking a look at each value stage that Beyond Meat's could partake in from a vertical integration standpoint: Material inputs, including the protein source, fats and oils, and other raw ingredients would be rejected as options, at least at this time in the start-up's life, for backward vertical integration. Based on the real options approach, there is too high a degree of un...

I'm not sure that I can think of examples yet where the alternative meat market, such as Beyond Meat, has seemingly engaged in tacit collusion, especially as they are working to drive down cost to have the one-on-one trade-off with traditional meat products. There is some price warring , where Impossible Foods cut their grocery store prices by 20%, going on in the industry too since the field is becoming overcrowded while the "growth in the plant-based meat category decelerated meaningfully in the U.S. retail sector from 45% in 2020 to a negative 0.4% in 2021" through the pandemic; although you may argue that this may show that Impossible is trying to take a top-dog strategy approach. The only arena that I can think there may have other types of tacit collusion is with declaring what major fast-food providers they are partnering with since traditional meat suppliers do not seem to really focus on publishing that type of information (e.g., do I know (or care) if Tyson is ...

Beyond Meats attempts to reduce the risk in the portfolio options through two overarching areas. Leveraging scouting options  as they build their portfolio of alternative meat options through the use of different strategies through their core distribution channels of U.S. Retail, U.S. Foodservice, International Retail, and International Food Service. These show the type of flexibility in the option to expand, even though they've had stock market analyst troubles in the near past, although their stock has significantly increased since their latest annual filing, due to their declining revenues during the pandemic, e.g., did they hit their peak wall (unlikely based on the overall market and their competition) or is the company itself struggling to sell its products and what levels of uncertainty around future sales does the analyst have.  Recent forays into each of these markets in 2021 for Beyond Meat included: U.S. Retail and Foodservice Distribution Changes: New versions of t...

Ways that Beyond Meats Differentiates Their Products in a Monopolistic Competition Industry As Beyond, and other plant-based meat alternatives, work to remove the product differentiation between them and traditional meat providers, although it will lead to them having a costly to duplicate product, each individual company also is working to differentiate itself from each other.  Here is how I see Beyond's strategies: Product Features Beyond tries to differentiate itself, at the highest level, on the core ingredients to their products: proteins based on peas, mung beans, faba beans, and brown rice and fats, including cocoa butter, coconut oil, and expeller-pressed canola oil.  From a product marketing standpoint, they also focused in the beginning on replicating meat-based products: e.g., the mouthfeel and physical appearance of the product, having grill marks on the burgers and having their burgers bleed through the use of beet juice. https://www.beyondmeat.com/en-US/about/our...

Beyond Meats struggles in the cost leadership category. As previously mentioned on the blog, they are working to get price parity with meat-based substitutes to remove the switching costs - their goal is by 2024 to achieve it in one product category.  Part of the problem with Beyond, unlike Impossible, was highlighted in a recent CNBC article ( https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/25/impossible-foods-beyond-meat-battle-price-parity-with-real-meat.html ) with three major reasons: "Many plant-based meat companies are new and haven’t had the years of production under their belt to match the levels of animal meat manufacturers." Beyond and Impossible were founded around the same time (2009 and 2011, respectively) whereas most traditional meat processors such as Tyson have been around for decades (Tyson since 1935 as an example). Beyond only currently has 6 manufacturing factories with 2 in Europe, 3 in America, and 1 just opened in China; Impossible has focused on partnering with a major...

Applying the VRIO framework to Beyond Meats, Inc. results in noting that there is a temporary competitive advantage with strengths and distinctive competence with the pea-based plant protein sourcing, manufacturing of their products, and focus for the company. To move to a sustained competitive advantage, they may need to diversify their sourcing out to include lab-grown meats once available to leverage their organization and R&D competencies to expand their reach to fulfill their non-animal-based protein vision. The Question of Value - "Yes" Yes; especially as they work to leverage changes in resource value through consumer tastes evolving more towards sustainable practices in their consumption habits - i.e., through products that match their views towards climate change, constraints on natural resources, animal welfare, and human welfare. Through their changing practices, whether going fully meatless or supplementing their diets with plant-based meals as evidenced by t...

In reviewing the environmental threats as opportunities section, it is not too difficult to apply some of these strategies to what Beyond Meat appears to be following, whether it is positively or negatively impacting the company. For a  "Neutralizing the Threat of Entry" opportunity perspective, the research and development efforts behind mimicking actual meat in their substitutes appear very well laid out with the following quotes from the text: "For example, a firm that invests in new technology to reduce its costs and deter entry has to absorb the large development costs associated with that new technology. Moreover, this firm has to absorb the substantial risk that the new technology will not perform adequately, despite the expense." (p. 77) In regards to their proprietary methods for making realistic meat substitutes, these are expensive and timely affairs - their chicken replacement took years of replication efforts; however, as noted in the last blog post, th...

The traditional meat industry in the US would be considered an oligopoly as "In the US, just 4 producers — Tyson Foods, JBS, Cargill, and National Beef — control more than two-thirds of all US beef processing." ( https://www.cbinsights.com/research/future-of-meat-industrial-farming/ ).  With the advent of the plant-based/meat alternative industry, I would classify Beyond Meats and other competitors to be competing in a monopolistically competitive industry - their products are not homogeneous in respects to product attributes, i.e., the product differentiation is in the underlying ingredient makeup and whether they are trying to replicate the mouthfeel/taste of meat (e.g., Impossible Foods or Beyond Meats) or not (e.g., Amy's Kitchen), and there are a large number of firms - there are over 100 food startups today working to replicate animal products with plants or lab-grown meat products.  To walk through Porter's Five Forces for Beyond Meats: The Threat of Entry - Hi...

Competitive advantage in the field of sustainable, meat alternatives such as Beyond Meats (or Quorn, Impossible Foods, or Lightlife, to name some competitors) is an interesting item to measure, especially since expanding beyond traditional meat replacements like tofu, seitan, or tempeh is relatively newer in attempting to actually replicate the taste and texture of meats.  The field is ripe for the major players as consumer tastes, particularly in America, continue trending more vegetarian and vegan-friendly foods and driving down emissions in agriculture ( https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/21/climate/plant-based-meat.html ). It is noted in "Gaining and Sustaining Competitive Advantage" on page 17 that:  Geoffrey Waring found that, among other factors, firms that operate in industries that (1) are informationally complex, (2) require customers to know a great deal in order to use an industry’s products, (3) require a great deal of research and development, and (4) have signific...