MGMT 7160 - Global Strategic Management

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...