Budweiser Essay

Budweiser Lager was first brewed in 1876 by E. Anheuser & Co., St. Louis. Today, AnheuserBusch is the largest brewer in the earthly concern in terms of volume, and it competes across a diverse range of commercializes. The attach to oversees more than 30 divergent beer brands, including the domestic market leader Budweiser, a number of other(a) alcoholic and nonalcoholic beverages, a gathering of theme parks, and a real estate enterpriseWhile retaining its brewing traditions, the company has adopted mod technological traditions that improve its business and marketing effectiveness. In 1997, chairman August Busch III vowed to make his company a leader in mining its customers buying patterns. The backbone to Anheuser-Buschs real-time analysis of marketing effectiveness is timely info getting information back from wholesalers and retailers on what is selling where and when. Wholesaler and store-level information has become the lifeblood of our organization, said Joe Patti, Anh eusers vice chair for retail planning and category management.Therefore, Anheuser-Busch created BudNET to connect to wholesalers, retailers, and other AnheuserBusch business partners. The system handles gross sales reporting, customer development, retail promotion notices, and weekly sales forecasting, as swell up as a wide array of logistics-related functions. BudNET is the information channel for an Anheuser-Busch system called WEARS (Wholesaler Equity Agreement reportage System). Through BudNET, the pitch shot people of the 700 U.S. distributors of Budweiser can become the eyes and ears of the brewer. WEARS and BudNET do much more than just keep tabs on the flow if icy-cold Bud off retailers refrigerated shelves.Using portable transaction computers, the delivery people also log selective information on computing proceedss, identifying what else is on the retailers shelves. At the end of the day, Anheuser-Busch gets the data and looks for trends. If Anheuser-Busch loses shel f space in a store in ClarksVille, Tennessee, they know it right away, said Joe Thompson, president of Independent Beverage Group, a research and consulting firm. Theyre better at this game than anyone, even Coca-Cola. agreement consumers means more than just gathering data on your own product or on your competitors product. Anheuser-Busch also analyzes syndicated bar-code scan data gathered by Information Resources Inc. (IRI), to track consumer buying behavior across a full range of products. Anheuser-Busch supremacyfully launched low-carb Michelob Ultra after seeing data on consumer shifts in dietary habits in other food groups. Timely, fine-grain data also back up Anheuser-Buschs marketing and product assortment. With store-level data, the company can create targeted marketing materials. For example, gay models appear on posters in San Franciscos Castro district, but not on those in the Mission district. Better data also help predict local sales during holidays, such as knowing that Atlantans celebrate Fourth of July more than St. Patricks Day.Anheuser-Busch know where cans sell better than bottles (blue-collar neighborhoods), and helped the company launch a range of Latin-inspired beverages such as Tequiza and Sauza Diablo for the growing Hispanic market.Anheuser-Busch uses a variety of internal and external data sources including consumer demographics, POS, and market data to guide product assortment decisions. AnheuserBusch uses the six-step, industry-standard best practice called Efficient Item Assortment (EIA) that is published by the Food merchandising Institute. Software, co-developed with an outside software vendor, creates a top-tine master assortment product list for individual stores and store clusters. This shaft of light won a Technology Leadership Award from Consumer Goods Technology (CGT) magazine.Anheuser-Buschs use of IT is international. Budexchange.co.uk, hosted on BudNET, tracks key data and sales of 5,000 British outlets. The syst em rewards the loyalty of trade customers with Budweiser-branded support materials. Anheuser-Busch uses the data provided by the outlets in its proactive segmented marketing communications program. In a market in which overall sales are down 5.7 portion, Budweiser sales are up 7 percent. Anheuser-Busch continues to expand its use of datalinks, using its market clout to improve data gathering and data sharing. August Busch IV, president tor domestic operations, promised that brewers and wholesalers with a clear, data-driven emphasis will have a distinct competitive advantage. Market share data confirm the success of the companys strategy Anheuser-Busch now commands 50.1 percent at the market in 2003, up from 48.9 percent in 2002.