Heineken N.V.

Heineken N.V.

What are Heineken's strengths and weaknesses? Is a Heineken global brand? Strengths:

Nowadays Heineken is the world's second largest beer manufacturer after Anheuser-Busch, an American brewing company. In some markets, such as USA and Hong Kong the Heineken is perceived as a premium brand.

It has wholly owned subsidiaries in Netherlands, France and Ireland whereas they held majority stake in 15 other breweries all over the world. This gives Heineken economies of scale and global brand image.

Through mergers and acquisitions Heineken created strong distribution channel and managed to make Heineken available in more than 170 countries.

Weaknesses:

In different countries Heineken has different image. For example in U.S. it was seen as appropriate for special occasions only. In Latin America Heineken was just another imported European Beer. As for Netherlands, it was viewed as a mainstream brand.

The local Heineken brand managers had the resources to develop own commercials which were not always aligned to the Heineken brand image that the managers at headquarters wanted to project. So this is due to lack of integrated marketing communications.

As for second Question, I think that yes, Heineken is global brand, because it is treaded almost all over the world and has one of the high brand awareness.

Evaluate the research. What has been learned? Two research projects were commissioned to clarify Heineken's brand identity and the implications for television advertising. First was Comet, which aimed to define five components of Heineken's global brand identity and how these components should be expressed in Heineken's brand communications and second was Mosa. This project identified the expressions of taste and friendship that had the most appeal and explored how they should be expressed in Heineken TV advertising.

Consumer tastes for beer vary across the globe in markets that have strong brand preferences and are in diverse stages of development. Heineken must maintain a consistent branding strategy with central control from headquarters and build brand equity by utilizing market research to design advertising specific to local markets.

Heineken should include sponsorship of various events such as sports events and so on. Also it must inspire international confidence while maintaining local appeal.

According to research, the company must not only focus on the developed markets, or the