Components

Primary File

Scarlet Lane Brewing Company: Carving Out a Niche in the Craft Beer Market

Daniel H. McQuiston, Craig B. Caldwell
November 1, 2016
SKU:
BUS-004788
Region: 
North America
Topic: 
Marketing & Sales
Length: 
18 pages
Keywords: 
Advertising, marketing, marketing strategy, product positioning, start-up business, Diversity
Student Price: 
$4.00 (€3.7)
Average rating: 
0

Nick Servies, the founder and owner of Scarlet Lane Brewing Company, was faced with a dilemma. Scarlet Lane Brewing (SLB) had decided to position their brewery as producing ‘gender neutral’ beers. Gender neutral basically meant that they were attempting to appeal to both males and females, where the beer industry had traditionally appealed largely to males. SLB used no sexist advertising and brewed beers that past experience had shown had appealed to the female pallet. However, a recent marketing project completed by a student group had shown that the vast majority of both consumers and bar owners interviewed were not aware of SLB’s gender neutral positioning; and being gender neutral would have no impact on consumers’ choice of beer or bar owners carrying SLB beers in their establishment. Therefore, SLB needed to come up with a new market position.

Learning Outcomes: 
  1. Examine the importance of product positioning in an increasingly crowded market with relatively low barriers to entry
  2. Understand the importance of gaining customer input when determining product positioning strategy
  3. Examine the role that educating potential customers plays when marketing a new product
  4. Study the nuances of marketing a product where ‘being local’ is an important factor
  5. Evaluate new options for positioning a product when the original positioning strategy does not go as planned