Craft brewing has seen a remarkable growth, from the first steps in the late 1960s in the USA until today. Breweries in the USA and Western Europe saw a long period of brewery fusions, concentration and closings from after the 2nd world war until roughly late 1990s/early 2000s. This trend also affected Sweden, where a market with smaller breweries in almost every town or municipality ended up in a situation with a dominating giant. The emerging craft breweries have totally changed this picture. Previous research has shown that craft brewing often starts as a hobby and evolves over time to a commercial business. The process for how these breweries fund themselves at the time of establishment has been researched in several papers, but how breweries that get past the initial step, start to grow and need additional capital to remove some of the bottlenecks that occur is considerably less examined. Since craft brewing is a unique business and the research in Sweden is scarce, theories and practises from small and medium enterprise (SME) financing have been applied. By using semi‐structured interviews and a thematical analysis, six craft beer brewery representatives were interviewed about their own perceptions of the methods they chose to overcome their financial obstacles, both initially but also when experiencing growth and needs for expansion. The breweries were chosen from a combination of size and geographical position in Sweden. Some of the breweries are situated in rural and some in urban areas. All the breweries fulfil certain financial criteria, and experienced production bottlenecks that needed to be solved financially. The thesis arrives at the conclusion that each microbrewery had its unique set of circumstances. The chosen financial solutions were affected by the owner’s perceptions and previous experiences. This supports previous research where new business establishment is highly depending upon the owner or the owner’s own money, which can partly also be explained by how the owners initially looked at their business (hobby/part hobby versus the intention to immediately start a commercial business). Raising capital for further expansion gives a diversified picture meaning that classical financing theory is only partially applicable on the craft brewing industry.

A thesis on analysis media communication of selected microbreweries explores the relationship between small brewing companies and media. The work focuses on selected small businesses, offering to consume their own beer on-site production, ie., breweries whose part is the restaurant operation. The thesis depicts the first principles of marketing and media communications and a brief history of beer brewing in the Czech Republic. It also discusses the particular selected Prague microbreweries and evaluates elements of their presentation and promotion in traditional and new media. Chapters are dedicated to quantitative and qualitative research, which familiarize readers with theoretical knowledge of these surveys, the design of the questionnaire survey and its results. Similarly, also provide information regarding the implementation and results stemming from interviews with representatives of selected microbreweries within qualitative research. In conclusion, based on the acquired knowledge and research, a set of recommendations are provided for the improvement of marketing communication media for each of the microbreweries.

Purpose – The purpose of this thesis is to understand how specialist firms develop in a concentrated industry by analyzing how microbreweries develop and operate on the Belgian market. Then, the literature reviewed used to build the theoretical foundation of this work is centered around the Resource Partitioning Theory and Niche Marketing Theory to explain this phenomenon. Design/methodology/approach – A cross-case analysis was undertaken. Five Belgian Microbreweries were examined. The data were gathered through interviews conducted with owners of microbreweries based on a structured questionnaire, as well as through secondary data. In addition, an analysis of the Belgian beer industry was conducted, using as secondary data, such as the existing literature on the beer industry, as well annual reports from Beers Associations. Findings – In opposition to the big companies that dominates the center of the market leveraging on economies of scales, the microbreweries strived to create unique products that have a high quality in term of taste. Moreover, they focused their efforts in their region, creating value first for local consumers and not all have an ambition to sell in the whole country or to internationalize the product. Thus, the microbreweries managed to create both functional and symbolic value to the consumers. However, the authors found that the symbolic value created by the breweries had more component than cultural heritage, local and specialist identity. Then, relationship was of importance for the microbreweries as they sought personal contact with their consumer and tried to be involved in their community as well as cooperated with other breweries (coopetition).   Overall, the microbreweries practices followed what is described in niche-marketing and entrepreneurial literature. Originality/value – First, this research participates to the resource partitioning literature by contributing to the limited knowledge on how specialist firms are operating, Then, this exploratory study is focused on an understudied area that is how microbreweries runs, that is especially true on the Belgian market as it was barely explored before. Thereafter, this thesis can be used as inspiration for new researches in different countries or with different approaches and/or theories.

The microbrewery industry is the fastest growing industry in Sweden. In seven years, the industry has grown by 832 percent. The dramatic increase of microbreweries has led to a highly competitive business environment for these entrepreneurs. This calls for microbreweries to develop strategies for how to stand out in this increasingly competitive environment, i.e., create competitive advantages. However, previous studies have shown that craft entrepreneurs do not strive to achieve traditional economic objectives as the competitive strategy research field suggest that companies have. Hence, traditional competitive strategies may not be applicable for these entrepreneurs. The purpose of this study was therefore to develop an understanding how motivational factors affect craft entrepreneurs’ competitive strategy. To fulfill the purpose, we conducted a case study on microbrewers within the northern region of Sweden. We used a qualitative research methodology where we conducted semi-structured interviews. Seven microbreweries participated in the study. We found that craft entrepreneurs’ motivations for why they started and maintained their microbreweries were mainly because of their passion and interest for the craft and therefore this was their primary objective. However, they perceived profit as a necessity that would enable them to achieve their primary objective. Therefore, we found that these entrepreneurs have dual objectives. We also found that entrepreneurs’ motivations affected their competitive strategies. These entrepreneur’s dual objectives caused some dilemmas when the two objectives contrasted each other. We saw tendencies that this created tension among these entrepreneurs when they had to balance the two objectives of generating profit and achieving objectives related to their passion and interest for the craft. Further, we found that these tensions caused implications on the entrepreneurs’ perception of competitive strategy.  Their perception of competitive strategy differed from traditional theory in three areas. Firstly, they had a resistance to grow their businesses. Secondly, they had a resistance for product/market development. And lastly, they experienced a low level of ambiguity when competing and cooperating simultaneously. In this study, we have been able to deepen the knowledge of craft entrepreneurs and how their motivations affect their competitive strategy. This is a first step in developing an understanding of how additional objectives to profit can cause implications for competitiveness.