News & Insights
It’s not 1870 and prices won’t win the long game.
The main storyline — regardless of the commodity — is gaining market share by competing on price. That is the path to empire building. Or at least it was back then. But it’s not 1870. You are not John Rockefeller. And in the modern meat industry, you have far more profit...
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Passive Price Taker or Active Price Strategist – You Choose
Setting aside your willingness to accept the premise that your product is undifferentiated from your competitors (topic for another day), let’s look at the two pricing postures you could have when selling product in a commodity market: 1) Surrender to the market, be victim to volatility, blindly trust The Market...
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Will Amazon Enter the Meat Industry? Spoiler Alert: They Already Have.
If Amazon’s approach to other sectors is indicative of the approach they will take to grocery, they will force competing retailers to ask much more of their suppliers. We can expect Amazon, “Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company,” to leverage their analytics capabilities to personalize each customer’s shopping experience. Competing in this...
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People Need the Bacon: 4 Questions to Consider in Market Uncertainty.
For companies whose profit margins are impacted in some way by the pork belly market (processors, further processors, retailers, distributors, foodservice) that 80% price increase is likely leading some folks to either a Tums addiction or some sweet bonuses, depending on the company’s position in the market. Significant price movements...
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Whether You Call It Trading or Not, Your Company is Taking Market Positions
Introduction: Market Risk at Commodities-Driven Companies When an investor buys a stock, she is taking a position, placing a bet on the stock’s value going up so that she can sell it later for a profit. In commodities industries like food processing and mining, many executives see their companies solely...
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