Question

Can you please help with the following questions in red. My answers are below each.

Beyond Meat Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning Strategy

Beyond Meat, a company that specialized in producing alternative meat, was the first company of its kind to go public. The company's innovative plant-based meat is available in more than 53,000 grocery stores, restaurants, hotels and Universities in the U.S. (Beyond Meat 2019). Beyond Meat is one of the fastest growing food companies in the U.S. and offers a variety of plant-based meats. The company believes the people should eat more, not less of their favorite foods. In doing so, people can address concerns related to human health, climate change, resource conservation and animal welfare.

Identify the various segments that may be interested in the company's products. Briefly evaluate the attractiveness of each segment (see slide 8, Topic 5 for reference).

Segmentation

Market segmentation allows companies to target customers based on unique characteristics such as: geographic, demographic, psychographic and behavioral classes. Beyond Meat's goal is to change the definition of meat. The company currently offer products that are similar in taste and appearance to beef, pork and poultry. Beyond Meat should focus on both psychographic and behavioral segmentation with regards to their Business-to-Consumer (B2C) marketing and geographic segmentation for its Business-to-Business (B2B) marketing.

Geographic segmentation is a marketing strategy in which companies serve customers incertain locations. Beyond Meat offers products mainly in North America, but also in Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom (Mattone 2019). The company should grow their distribution networks in these regions, where deman for their product is high.

Psychographics categorize audiences and customers by factors that relate to their personalities and characteristics. In this case, Beyond Meat should segmenting customers who are meat reducers, not necessarily vegans or vegetarians. Perhaps they are simply health-conscious or just curious eaters. The brand's research shows that 70% of the their buyers are meat-eaters. According to recent research by The NPD Group, 86 percent of consumers who purchase vegan products are omnivores (Pevreall 2019).

Behavioral segmentation focuses on how customers act in regards to: purchasing habits, spending habits and brand interactions. According to a study by Beyond Meat, a plant-based burger generates 90% less greenhouse gas emissions, requires 45% less energy, has 99% less impact on water scarcity, and 93% less impact on land use than aquarter pound of traditional U.S. beef (Scipioni 2019). Customers who are conscious of the environmental impacts of traditional beef products will likely find Beyond Burger to be a high quality substitute.

Which targeting strategy(ies) make the most sense for Beyond Meat in the short-term (next 24 months) and why? (see slide 11, Topic 5)

Targeting

The different targeting strategies include: differentiated, micro or one-to-one marketing, undifferentiated or mass marketing, and concentrated or niche marketing. Beyond Meat has a high quality product that is developing a strong position in the market.

When looking at the short term (next 24 months) Beyond Meat should include a mass marketing strategy. Growing environmental, health and ethical concerns will ultimately drive consumer behavior regarding protein consumption. Beyond Meat discovered that, in the first half of 2018,93% of customers at Kroger, that bought a Beyond Meat product also purchased regular meat. This lends to the idea that the company can convert customers with more traditional tastes, and not just vegans, to their products (Fast Company 2019). When looking at the percent of vegetarians and vegans in the U.S., the population in only a fraction of the meat buying customers.

Positioning is typically based on value, salient attributes, brand, etc.

Positioning

Product positioning is how consumers perceive a product or a brand on attributes that are important to the them. The positioning is determined by the marketing mix which consists of: the product offered, the price charged, the distribution implemented and the message communicated.

Ethan Brown, founder of Beyond Meat, says turning traditional meat lovers into Beyond Meat disciples is their mission (Fast Company 2019). One of Ethan's key strategies is to market to meat-loving consumers. In doing so, Ethan requests that Beyond Meat be sold in the meat section at grocery stores. However, Natural Grocers and several other grocery chains place Beyond Meat in a refrigerated section with other alternative proteins to avoid confusion among shoppers, its co-president, Kemper Isely, said (Bellon 2019).

Barron's found that at the local Amazon owned Whole Foods, the Beyond Burger sells for $12 a pound (two 4-ounce patties retail for $5.99). The Whole Foods 365 brand vegetable burger patties sell for at a competitive $6.40 a pound and ground beef sells for roughly $5 a pound at the same store. (Root 2019). Beyond Meat has positioned it's pricing to be very competitive in the market. Customers can easily substitute meat products with Beyond Meat in their grocery store, local restaurants and more.

Impossible Foods is the most comparable competitor to Beyond Meat. Impossible Foods is currently working on replicating entire cuts of meat. The company was also founded because of environmental concerns (Ketabchi 2019). The largest U.S. meat processor, Tyson Foods, is working on its own line of alternative protein products. (Bellon 2019).