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...

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...