McI Inc.

UST Inc. is a smokeless tobacco company with a long tradition and a recognizable brand name. A strong brand name can have lots of associations with high quality, revenues, soundness, growth, etc. But, this is one of the characteristics that can be like two edged sward. On one side, company with long tradition is expected to to operate in a stable and prosperous way as it always did, but on the other side, company itself can get too self confident and fail to see the newcomers and other threats. UST has ignored newcomers, and now they all have a growing market shares, while only UST Inc. total share, consequently, decreases. Smaller players are expanding their market share primarily by cutting prices, something that UST ignored. UST Inc. decided to fight competition not by decreasing prices, but with overstretching it product lines. However, this might not be the best solution. As the main player in the market, they had the better position