Boston Beer Company\'s Boston Lightship

Boston Beer Company's Boston Lightship case study provided relevant and significant information that led to the launch, success, and gradually-decreasing demand for the light beer offering of the Boston Beer brand. In the case study, BBC is faced with the challenge of deciding on continuing or discontinuing production of Boston Lightship, and if production will be continued, there is also the challenge in identifying the marketing strategies critical to the success of both the brand and beer variant in the alcoholic drinks industry.

Based on the history of BBC's Lightship problem, and strategies that management initially took to increase the sales of Lightship, it is important to enter the growing light beer market because of the expanding 'selection set' of regular, occasional, and even trial consumers, wherein the beer consumer is a multi-brand user (6). It is worthy to note that multi-brand usage among beer drinkers is an opportunity that BBC can tap, and it may target this multi-brand drinkers group as the potential market for the light beer variant Lightship.

BBC must also take note that apart from consumers' expanding set of beer brands that they drink, the beer market is also moving towards the 'healthier' aspect of beer drinking. This functional aspect of beer products can be achieved through the light beer offering of different beer brands. With BBC, its Lightship brand can be marketed as the 'healthier option' beer, targeting new and regular consumers: for the traditional or regular consumers, this 'healthier option' strategy must be marketed as an alternative BBC beer brand, especially for loyalists who can still taste the signature BBC beer taste with less calorie content. For the new consumers, BBC can market Lightship as a new product, a new reason for them to try (and perhaps eventually becoming loyal to) BBC. A possible strategy for this group is to market Lightship as 'the healthy beer,' its 'less calorie' function becoming the 'reason to believe' that indeed, Lightship is a healthy beer and is BBC's response to the increasing awareness on the health benefits of drinking a Boston Beer.

Results of the field study support these suggested improvements in the marketing strategy of Lightship. Assessment of the light beer segment and results from the customer analysis showed two important findings that put BBC's light beer sales problem in the proper perspective: (1) "Core craft drinkers" of beers such as Boston Beer are not light beer drinkers, and (2) "No one had ever heard of" Lightship -- that is, as summarized in the study, BBC has a "great product" but has "no brand awareness" (9).