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...