Top 50 Bestselling Case Authors 2022/23: No. 12

Beyond Meat Inc (Beyond Meat), a manufacturer of plant-based protein products founded in 2009 and based in Los Angeles, California, had become a success, despite supply chain and manufacturing issues. Beyond Meat filed for an initial public offering in May 2019, and by the end of July 2019, the company's share price had increased by over 800 per cent, but analysts considered Beyond Meat stocks to be overvalued given that the company's increasing revenues and high-priced products had not prevented increasing losses. What should the CEO do to justify the valuation of Beyond Meat?

California-based Intel Corporation (Intel) was one of the world's leading semiconductor circuit firms. In July 2020, manufacturing delays with Intel's 10 nanometre (nm) and 7 nm chips were adversely affecting the company's customers at a time when demand for personal computers and laptops was at its peak. Geopolitical issues between Taiwan, the United States, and China meant that regulatory authorities in the United States were not in favour of outsourcing critical chip manufacturing, but should this still be the way to go for Intel when their in-house operation is failing to deliver?

In early 2020 Google Trends data revealed a surge in the use of the search terms 'Corona beer virus' and 'beer virus' by users of the Google search engine. A survey conducted around that time also seemed to suggest that consumers were less likely to buy Corona beer, which led various major media outlets to misrepresent the accuracy of the findings regarding consumer beliefs about the association between Corona beer and coronavirus. However, the chief executive officer of Constellation Brands Inc, the Corona brand's distributor, was confident about the brand's performance and did not change the company's plans for a US spring 2020 launch of Corona hard seltzer. Should the launch of Corona hard seltzer go on as planned during the coronavirus pandemic?