Ice Cold Beer Here! (in the U.S)

 

20-jp-BEER-tmagArticleHave you ever wondered, just how much it costs to import the “better quality” beer from around the world like Corona, Modelo or Heineken or where exactly does the beer I drink come from? Most likely you drink a product either made by or distributed by Anheuser-Busch and InBev (ABI) considering they currently have aver 39% of the market share for the American Beer Industry. But just recently ABI has taken actions that will give them a majority of the market share for the American Beer Industry, which includes a 20 billion dollar acquisition of the Groupo Modelo Beer Manufacturing Company of Mexico.  This includes expanding the company internationally to Sounth America and adding the brand names of Modelo, Dos Equis and Corona.  This merger was so large that the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the company in fear of them reaching a stage of monopoly and market leader.  The result of this was for ABI to sell a 50% share of Modelo’s share to the Constellation Corporation, who currently owns about 20% market share of the American Beer Market, for only $5.5 billion.  DOJ says that this will allow for less consolidation and more competition in price in the markets.

Rob Sands, president of the Constellation Corp. says that this is the most transformational deal in the company’s 86-year history. The results of this merger range in variety and benefit both ABI and Constellation.  ABI will now have 46% market share after the acquisition as well as gaining all rights over the Brand Corona and its factories in Mexico.  Granted that they Corona accounts for over 20% of beer sales in some regions ABI distributes to, they will being seeing substantial growth in capital output and profits in the coming years.  Constellation also stands to see a similar amount of growth in the coming years.  They have aquired the brand of Modelo. Constellation makes wines from Robert Mondavi and Clos du Bois, as well as Svedka Vodka. Although they have never brewed beer before Constellation is excited about this endeavor. They will build a new state of the art facility for brewing the Modelo brand on the Texas-Mexico border. This will result in the plants capacity doubling in a matter of a few months. How do you think that these actions will affect other beer manufactures output such as Miller Coor’s? Also how do you think that this acquisition will affect beer prices of domestic, imported and micro brew beer companies?

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/anheuser-busch-reaches-deal-with-antitrust-regulators/

Google Glass’s: Varying Forcast’s due to Design Flaws

Over a year ago Google announced their ideas for a new product called Google Glass. Their idea was to release a products that would allow users to have access to smart phone applications such as email, text and video messages, face-time, and others such as these, all at the convenience of a simple voice command.   Although Google Glass has not been released to the public yet product analysts have begun to forecast the sales of this product. One analyst from IHS believes that Google will have orders of over 9 million by the year 2016, but how dies he come up with a forecast for a product that has not been even introduced to the market?  Essential this forecast has no factual basis, but rather it basis its facts on potential users and developers.

Google spokesman, Chris Dale says “Glass is designed by users and for users from all walks of life,” but the simple fact is the majority of first time users are male, and many females including the product’s designer are frustrated with this disparity.  Some of Google’s representatives believe this to be partly due to the fact that Glass has only been released to about 1000 developers, and not more widely to the public.  The majority of developers being technologically savvy males, are all over blog sights such as tumbler posting photos of themselves and the way they use their new glasses, but this has seemed to be counter productive to the products overall popularity. Some women have claims that the Glass projects design is lacking in creativity and trendiness.  One female marketing professional who was questioned about the “look” of Glass stated that they were so unattractive that she would never wear them.  Some people also commented on how they cannot believe that developers would not create these glasses in a more fashionable frame such as Gucci, Prada, Ray Ban, etc. Although I think that this products design is going to take off like a rocket, others are more skeptic.  What do you think about how Google chose to release their product? Would you consider Google selection process as sexist or is it just due to the lack of technologically savvy women applying to receive the product.  Google tends to agree with the later but intends to reduce this disparity of users when it fully launches its product into market.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/cherylsnappconner/2013/05/10/google-glass-just-for-men/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/05/10/google-glass-io-men-women/2133861/

http://www.androidauthority.com/google-glass-sales-forecast-197526/