The beer industry is concentrated in the hands of three main multinational companies that together control around the 50% of the global market share. The consolidation is estimated to increase in the years to come after the merger of the world’s biggest companies, AB InBev and SAB Miller. The deal, closed in 2016 after the acquisition of the firm by AB InBev for $103 billion, recorded the third-largest merger in corporate industry. In such a concentrated market, few small independent companies have challenged the standard products developed by these multinational organizations by providing new meanings to customers. By offering a broad variety of flavours and building a strong community of enthusiasts, craft beer movement has been able to disrupt the market reaching in 2016 around the 22% of total retail dollar sales in US. Multinational leaders of the industry adopted several moves recently to slow down the trend and to appropriate the additional profits introduced with the innovation. In particular, they acquired several craft brewing companies, they created the so-called “crafty” brands, they built strong connections with distributors to cut-off competition and they implemented different initiatives with the aim to blur the definition of craft beer. The goal of this thesis is to understand how these small companies could be able to reach such a popularity and how they could protect the disruption they introduced in a historically consolidated market. The dissertation starts with a comprehensive presentation of the innovation management and appropriability literature, in order to support the research with a strong theoretic basis. Building on the articles and the books analysed, we designed a framework through which we have studied the craft beer disruption according to three main levels: industry level (zoom-out), company level and value proposition level (zoom-in). Selecting the most growing craft breweries in the last 5 years among the 100 biggest in US, we have been able to assess the appropriability regime of the innovation and to present the most successful business model archetypes implemented. In order to contextualize the evolution of the market and to present the four archetypes to a broad audience, we built the timeline of development of the business models identified and we took advantage of metaphors to express the meanings represented by them.
Il mercato della birra è concentrato nella mano di tre aziende multinazionali che insieme controllano circa il 50% del market share globale. Questo consolidamento aumenterà notevolmente negli anni a venire in seguito alla fusione dei due maggiori operatori nel settore, AB InBev e SAB Miller. L’accordo, chiuso nel 2016 grazie all’acquisto dell’azienda da parte di AB InBev per 103 milioni di dollari, ha registrato la terza più grande fusione aziendale nella storia. In un mercato così concentrato, alcune piccole aziende indipendenti hanno messo in discussione i prodotti standardizzati offerti da queste organizzazioni multinazionali, fornendo nuovi significati ai clienti. Creando un’offerta varia nei sapori e creando una comunità di appassionati coesa, il movimento della birra artigianale è stato in grado di sovvertire il settore raggiungendo nel 2016 il 22% delle vendite totali in dollari negli Stati Uniti. Le multinazionali leader del mercato hanno tentato in tutti modi di rallentare il trend e di appropriarsi dei guadagni introdotti con l’innovazione. In particolare, acquisendo diversi birrifici artigianali, commercializzando i cosiddetti brand “crafty”, creando un forte network di distributori per tagliare fuori la concorrenza e implementando diverse iniziative volte ad offuscare la definizione di birra artigianale. L’obiettivo della tesi è quello di capire come queste piccole aziende sono state in grado di raggiungere tale popolarità e come possono difendere la rivoluzione che hanno introdotto in un mercato storicamente concentrato. Lo studio parte con un’ampia panoramica della letteratura sui temi del management dell’innovazione e dell’appropriabilità. Basandosi sugli articoli e sui libri analizzati, abbiamo sviluppato un modello grazie al quale abbiamo studiato la rivoluzione della birra artigianale secondo tre livelli: a livello di mercato, a livello aziendale e a livello di value proposition. Selezionando i birrifici artigianali che sono cresciuti di più negli ultimi 5 anni, all’interno dei 100 più grandi negli Stati Uniti, siamo stati in grado di valutare il regime di appropriabilità dell’innovazione e di presentare gli archetipi di business model più efficaci. Per contestualizzare l’evoluzione del settore e per presentare gli archetipi ad un’audience ampio, abbiamo stimato la sequenza temporale di sviluppo dei business model e abbiamo utilizzato metafore per esprimere i significati che hanno rappresentato per affacciarsi sul mercato.
Craft beer revolution : appropriability regime of the innovation and business model archetypes adopted by most growing craft breweries in U.S.
CODIFAVA, NICOLO'
2016/2017
Abstract
The beer industry is concentrated in the hands of three main multinational companies that together control around the 50% of the global market share. The consolidation is estimated to increase in the years to come after the merger of the world’s biggest companies, AB InBev and SAB Miller. The deal, closed in 2016 after the acquisition of the firm by AB InBev for $103 billion, recorded the third-largest merger in corporate industry. In such a concentrated market, few small independent companies have challenged the standard products developed by these multinational organizations by providing new meanings to customers. By offering a broad variety of flavours and building a strong community of enthusiasts, craft beer movement has been able to disrupt the market reaching in 2016 around the 22% of total retail dollar sales in US. Multinational leaders of the industry adopted several moves recently to slow down the trend and to appropriate the additional profits introduced with the innovation. In particular, they acquired several craft brewing companies, they created the so-called “crafty” brands, they built strong connections with distributors to cut-off competition and they implemented different initiatives with the aim to blur the definition of craft beer. The goal of this thesis is to understand how these small companies could be able to reach such a popularity and how they could protect the disruption they introduced in a historically consolidated market. The dissertation starts with a comprehensive presentation of the innovation management and appropriability literature, in order to support the research with a strong theoretic basis. Building on the articles and the books analysed, we designed a framework through which we have studied the craft beer disruption according to three main levels: industry level (zoom-out), company level and value proposition level (zoom-in). Selecting the most growing craft breweries in the last 5 years among the 100 biggest in US, we have been able to assess the appropriability regime of the innovation and to present the most successful business model archetypes implemented. In order to contextualize the evolution of the market and to present the four archetypes to a broad audience, we built the timeline of development of the business models identified and we took advantage of metaphors to express the meanings represented by them.| File | Dimensione | Formato | |
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https://hdl.handle.net/10589/137233