Nescafe and Its Enterprise Type
Nescafe, one of the top ten most valuable brands in the world, has over 50% instant coffee market share of the world, followed by General Food, Maxwell House and Brooke Bond. It’s so successful that some people in some of the Asian country such as China think that instant coffee is the whole world of coffee in 1990s. Such impressive influences come from Nescafe’s insight on the market situation and its own capability, fast response and feasible strategies.
On this analysis, we will try to define instant coffee’s market as a standard cycle market. Giving its characteristic, we will see what strategy Nescafe created to maintain the sustainable growth and continue generating rents. We will give example on what Nescafe did in China to analyze the entry barrier, convergence, oligopolistic scale orchestration, etc.
We consider instant coffee market as the standard cycle based on the following concerns: 1. Convergence:
Both Nescafe and Maxwell were the earliest two instant coffee providers in China. They entered the market in late 1970s. For a decade from 1980 to 1990, coffee could be only found in Hotel and high-end restaurants, but not in stores or supermarkets. Those 10 years seems a conflict with the convergence of standard cycle which normally took around 4 years. However, because the demand on coffee was so low at that moment, I would not consider those 10 years as part of the convergence of standard cycle. Instead, I would say the convergence of instant coffee market started from 1990. At that moment, Chinese people was getting rich thanks to the reform and opening-up policy. Nevertheless, the price of a cup of Nescafe coffee is around 30 times of that of apples. In 1992, Nescafe started its production in China and making Nescafe cheaper and more accessible. Nescafe did exceptionally well in 1990s when it made “Nestle” a symbol of coffee. However, it didn’t take much long that the price of Nescafe dropped rapidly to the same as several apples. This time
On this analysis, we will try to define instant coffee’s market as a standard cycle market. Giving its characteristic, we will see what strategy Nescafe created to maintain the sustainable growth and continue generating rents. We will give example on what Nescafe did in China to analyze the entry barrier, convergence, oligopolistic scale orchestration, etc.
We consider instant coffee market as the standard cycle based on the following concerns: 1. Convergence:
Both Nescafe and Maxwell were the earliest two instant coffee providers in China. They entered the market in late 1970s. For a decade from 1980 to 1990, coffee could be only found in Hotel and high-end restaurants, but not in stores or supermarkets. Those 10 years seems a conflict with the convergence of standard cycle which normally took around 4 years. However, because the demand on coffee was so low at that moment, I would not consider those 10 years as part of the convergence of standard cycle. Instead, I would say the convergence of instant coffee market started from 1990. At that moment, Chinese people was getting rich thanks to the reform and opening-up policy. Nevertheless, the price of a cup of Nescafe coffee is around 30 times of that of apples. In 1992, Nescafe started its production in China and making Nescafe cheaper and more accessible. Nescafe did exceptionally well in 1990s when it made “Nestle” a symbol of coffee. However, it didn’t take much long that the price of Nescafe dropped rapidly to the same as several apples. This time