The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company
Moat Score — The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company
Total Moat Score
12 / 30
| Moat Factor | Score | Analysis |
|---|---|---|
| Intangible Assets Patents, trademarks, brand strength, or regulatory licenses that protect a company's products or services from being freely copied by competitors. | 3 / 5 | The Goodyear brand is one of the most recognized names in tires globally, built over more than a century, and the company holds substantial tire-compound and manufacturing process IP, though brand strength alone has not prevented a $1.7 billion GAAP net loss in 2025. |
| Cost Advantage A durable ability to produce goods or services more cheaply than competitors — through scale, unique access to cheap inputs, location, or process — that lets a company undercut rivals or out-earn them at the same price. | 2 / 5 | 49 manufacturing facilities across 19 countries provide real scale, and the Goodyear Forward program has delivered $1.25 billion in cumulative operating income benefit, but Goodyear still faces persistent cost pressure from lower-cost Asian tire manufacturers in the value tier. |
| Pricing Power The ability to raise prices without losing meaningful business, because the product or service is differentiated, mission-critical, or has few good substitutes. | 2 / 5 | The flagship Goodyear brand commands premium pricing in OE and replacement channels, but the broader multi-brand portfolio exists precisely because Goodyear must compete on price in the value tier, and 2025 margin compression in its largest segment (Americas, down to 6.8%) shows real limits to pricing power. |
| Network Effect The product or service becomes more valuable to every user as more people or organizations use it, making an established leader harder to displace. | 0 / 5 | Tire manufacturing and sales exhibit no meaningful network effect — a customer's tires do not become more valuable because other customers also bought Goodyear tires. |
| Switching Costs The money, time, or operational disruption a customer would face switching to a competitor, which locks in existing customers and supports renewals. | 2 / 5 | OE relationships with automakers involve multi-year qualification and engineering integration that create some switching friction, and commercial truck fleets using Goodyear's retreading network have an ongoing service relationship, but individual replacement-tire consumers face essentially no switching costs. |
| Efficient Scale A market that can only profitably support a small number of players, so incumbents face limited threat from new entrants even without other defenses. | 3 / 5 | Only Bridgestone and Michelin match Goodyear's global manufacturing and distribution scale; the capital intensity of 49 facilities across 19 countries is a real barrier that prevents all but a handful of competitors from operating at comparable global scale, even though regional and Asian manufacturers can still compete in specific niches. |