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Global Marketing

Beyond Meat shares tumble after jerky launch leads to wider- than- expected loss

By: Bianca and Mimi

Beyond Meat, a US based producer of meat substitutes has nationally found great success, reporting its full year revenue forecast of $560 million to $620 million. However, the company came recently ran into trouble outside of its home market after trying to sell a new product launch at a discounted price internationally.

After setting up a large-scale launch of plant-based jerky in 56,000 locations, Beyond Meat found that their production was expensive and inefficient. The company hoped that by offering increased discounts to international consumers and reduced prices in the European Union, that the product would fare well. However, their revenue ended up shrinking 6.2% outside the US. 

Something Beyond Meat failed to pay close enough attention to was their global pricing, and specifically their price to market (PTM). This method refers to “adjusting prices to the prevailing prices in export markets.” (Warmedinger, 2004). Since they were rolling out a new product, Beyond Meat should have probably waited to add in heavy discounts, and instead done some more market research on each area, adjusting as needed. If Beyond Meat would have also taken some additional time to get to know their target market and understand how to market their new product, perhaps things would have gone a bit differently.

Beyond Meat did also state that foreign exchange rates had hit its international sales. Therefore, it would have also been helpful to research local currency price stability to identify some of the sources there, allowing them to pinpoint an ideal price. 

Sources:

Lucas, A. (2022, May 11). Beyond Meat shares tumble after jerky launch leads to wider-than-expected loss. CNBC. Retrieved May 16, 2022, from https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/11/beyond-meat-bynd-q1-2022-earnings.html

Warmedinger, T. (2004, January). Working Paper Series – European Central Bank. European Central Bank. Retrieved May 16, 2022, from https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/scpwps/ecb.wp2135.en.pdf