Chapter 2- Firm Performance and Competitive Advantage

A competitive advantage is the strategy that a company designs where their product or service has a distinct  edge or created more economic value over the competition in the area that they focus in.  The value of having a competitive advantage is paramount to businesses that operate in all industries because of the nature of competition.  When a company has the competitive advantage over rivaling companies, they focus on the customers perception of what they value most, whether it be service, product, goodwill, or the overall message that they send out in their companies beliefs.

Sam Adams sends this perception out to their customers by delivering a product that has the best ingredients and craftsmanship in the business.


Higher Standards

Samuel Adams sets superior standards for quality, hand crafted beer. Insisting that only the world's finest all natural ingredients make the best beer, Jim and the brewers at Samuel Adams travel the world to hand select the finest ingredients. Their hands-on involvement ensures the highest standards for the best ingredients needed to make quality beer. In fact, on Jim's annual hops selection trip to Bavaria the hops farmers always comment on how Jim doesn't just sniff the hops, he 'dives' into them.

Each batch of Samuel Adams® beer is brewed with hand-crafted care and attention to detail to ensure fresh, quality beer. So that consumers enjoy only fresh Samuel Adams®, Jim pioneered consumer readable freshness dating in 1988. Today, Samuel Adams is the only brewer with a cooperative program with its distributors to buy back its beer when it's past its peak freshness date.   --http://www.bostonbeer.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=69432&p=irol-homeprofile


http://www.bostonbeer.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=69432&p=irol-homeprofile

With this dedication, Sam Adams forms a separation from the competition that fosters a sustained competitive advantage that is yet to be copied domestically.

Here is a link that supports the quality that is perceived in the industry:

http://www.americasmostproductive.com/2009/companies/samuel-adams.php    

Boston Beer Company Inc. Chapter 1

The company that I will be following this semester is The Boston Beer Company Inc.



The Boston Beer Company is the parent company for Sam Adams which is the largest brewer of handcrafted beers in America but only make up less than 1% of the United States Beer market.

Founder and now chairman Jim Koch started Sam Adams with the idea that he could find a niche market in the beer industry that gave customers a full flavored drinking experience.  Jim's expectations are strict when it comes to what is going in his beers but he is also not closed to pushing the envelope.

Sam Adams has been around since 1984.  It is traded on the NYSE under the ticker symbol: SAM

To read up more on The Boston Beer company go here or here.




Facebook:  Sam Adams - for the love of beer!