Table of Contents

Executive Summary ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ 1

Quantitative Research ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ 2

Introduction ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ 2

Problem Statement ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ 3

Research Objectives ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ 4

Concepts of Interest ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ 4

Research Method ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ 5

Findings ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ 8

Research Conclusions ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ 10

References­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­12

Appendices ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ 13

Appendix A: Survey Questionnaire ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ 13

Appendix B: Results (Tables and Graphs) ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ 13

Appendix C: Other Materials ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­15

1

Executive Summary

We began our research with the same problem statement as both our secondary and qualitative

research. This problem statement being:

“Red Bull must expand its target audience beyond what they currently use in order to capitalize on brand promotion and marketing strategy.”

For this area of research, we decided to expand on some of the topics that were

discovered in the focus group. We wanted to further learn how consumers used the

product, how they used social media, and what their reasons were for their behaviors. In

qualitative research, our objectives were to gather in­depth responses for what the target

audience felt about Red Bull and other caffeinated beverages. It also looked at

consumption habits and societal views on these drinks. Our secondary research objectives

were to learn more about the Red Bull brand in general, the current caffeinated beverage

market, a SWOT analysis on Red Bull, and to see what our target audience wants, needs,

and already thinks about our brand and other caffeinated beverages.

For our secondary research, we broke down the different aspects of situational

analysis to get a more in depth look at the Red Bull brand. We looked at the industry,

company, product/brand, competitive, and consumer analyses when conducting secondary

research. We also completed a SWOT analysis.

For our qualitative study, we conducted a focus group with our target audience

(college students aged 17­24) that focused on their views and consumption habits. This

method allowed us to get a more detailed and personal look at this topic, that was low

budget, in a relaxed safe atmosphere. This focus group was led by a moderator who used a

2

pre­made moderator guide that covered our objectives along with a series of projective

techniques that was focused on how our target sees and attributes the Red Bull brand to

various lifestyles and characteristics.

Our research showed us that our target consumes caffeinated beverages regularly,

using them for a variety of purposes from staying awake to alcoholic drink mixers, and

values quality over the price. This target uses social media, but is only somewhat swayed

by spokespersons and advertisements targeted to them. They also value the health and

social characteristics of a drink.

Overall, we found that energy drinks and other caffeinated beverages, are a staple

in the college target audience’s life. Red Bull, is consumed and is seen as a luxury brand

no matter the possible health risk. Even though it’s marketing presence is focused on

males who enjoy an adventurous lifestyle, Red Bull would benefit by expanding to the

female audience. In future studies, Red Bull should look at how their other ventures (e.g.

Red Bull Academy music) could possibly influence this market. They should also look

into the possible health effects of Red Bull and possibly adding/substituting ingredients

for more natural ingredients. This would be a more long term, preventative measure in the

event that this product does have any negative outcomes. Right now, this area has very

incomplete findings and by conducting more research before other companies, Red Bull

can take more steps to ensure the brand is not damaged.

Introduction

3

Before we conducted our quantitative study, we conducted both secondary and

qualitative research. In our secondary research, we looked at multiple analyses of the Red

Bull brand that spanned from industry analyses to consumer analyses. We also took an in

depth look at our direct and indirect competitors and their influence on the market.

Finally, we conducted a SWOT analysis of the Red Bull brand.

In this research, we found that one of our largest competitors was the Coca­Cola

company. Coca­Cola not only creates one of the most recognizable and widely available

caffeinated soft drinks on the market, but it also owns energy drink brand, Monster

Energy. This company and brand is something that Red Bull needed to keep on its radar.

Also, we further learned that coffee, especially brands like Starbucks and Dunkin

Doughnuts were our biggest competitors.

For our qualitative analysis, we conducted a moderated focus group with our target

audience. We mainly focused on how learning how this target uses caffeinated beverages

and their thoughts and feelings on Red Bull. In this study, we learned that this target uses

caffeinated beverages for many various reasons and at any time in the day. They do value

the taste and quality of the drink over the price.

In all of our studies (secondary, quantitative, and qualitative) we focused on a

target demographic of college students, aged 17­24. We did this because this in our

secondary research, we noticed that Red Bull spent a large majority of their marketing

towards this demo. Also, they are the demo that actively consumes these types of

beverages.

Problem Statement

4

Our overall problem statement for all of our research is:

“Red Bull must expand its target audience beyond what they currently use in order to capitalize on brand promotion and marketing strategy.” As noted before, Red Bull caters its marketing to males in our target demo (17­24)

as a drink for adventurous lifestyles that like to live outside the norm. For this project, we

identified further in our other research that Red Bull was consistently leaving out females

in this demo of college students aged 17­24. We also wanted more data on this audience’s

consumption habits, as well as social media preferences.

Research Objectives

Due to the need of more information and to continue looking into our problem

statement, we determined the following to be our objectives.

a. What are the consumption habits and relationships between our target audience and caffeinated beverages?

b. What views does our target audience have on our product?

c. How does our target use social media? How does their social

media habits influence their buying and consumption habits?

These, paired with previous research and our new quantitative research

study, should be able to provide us with a larger picture of the brand.

Concepts of Interest

The concepts of interest examined in the quantitative research included our target

demographic’s consumption habits, brand perceptions, social media use, and behavior.

These concepts were identified through our qualitative research survey in which

we first observed wariness amongst our target demographic in regards to ill health effects

5

of energy drink consumption. We then discerned that Brand perception may be affected by

celebrity spokesperson endorsements and peer behavior. Detecting that both celebrity

endorsement and peer behavior could possibly have an effect on consumer perception and

behavior, we wanted to analyze the outlets through which this can occur; we hypothesized

that social media might have a large amount of influence in this regard.

Due to our initial qualitative research findings, we decided that the aforementioned

concepts were important topics of research as they would help us to understand and

achieve our research objectives; specifically, evaluating our target demographic’s

consumption habits will allow us to better understand the relationship between our

demographic’s overall caffeinated beverage consumption and Red Bull consumption.

Tying that research to the evaluation of consumer brand perceptions will directly relate to

better understanding our consumer’s health concerns, and both peer and celebrity

influence on behavior and perception. Lastly, evaluation of our target demographic’s

social media use will directly correlate to understanding how social media use affects

consumer perception of both Red Bull as a brand and a product, and understanding of

consumer behaviors influenced by social media.

Research Method Qualitative research is used to gain an understanding of underlying reasons and motivations

while also providing insights into generating ideas or hypotheses for later research. Earlier in this

study we used qualitative research to gain an in­depth explanation for why our target market has the

beliefs, ideas, and values that they do about Red Bull. We followed our qualitative research with

quantitative research in order to quantify data and generalize results from a sample to the population

6

of interest. The data we obtained focused on health effect of energy drink consumption, social media

usage, and association of the brand Red Bull.

We used a web survey to attain respondents answers. Web surveys are more beneficial than

other surveys such as personal interviews, telephone interviews, and mail surveys for many different

reasons. There are six factors that should be considered when determining which survey method is the

best for a particular study. These factors are cost, timing requirements, sample, interview and

administrative control, informational needs, complexity of the topic and questionnaire, and interview

length.

We chose an online survey because they cost little to no money to make. There are a variety of

different websites that allow users to create their own surveys and collect data efficiently. We created

our online survey using Qualtrics, an online survey software and insight platform. Online surveys also

require the least amount of time to collect required data. There is a very small lag between time of

respondent contact and survey administration. Online surveys lack in the area of sample, interview,

and administrative control. Online surveys lack control due to the fact that there is no personal contact.

There is no assurance that the person responding to the questionnaire is providing truthful answers

when regarding to personal or demographic characteristics. There is also no immediate nature where if

there is any confusion about a question a respondent can speak with the interviewer to clarify any

misunderstandings. Due to the absence of personal contact, respondents feel more comfortable

responding to more sensitive and personal questions. Allowing researchers to collect more in­depth

data and to understand the respondent's reasoning. Online surveys are more appropriate for relatively

simple topics with less complexity. The lack of personal contact does not allow probing to occur.

7

Online surveys are suitable for shorter lengths of time. If respondents see the amount of questions

listed online, respondents can become overwhelmed and unwilling to answer.

The survey was administered on flagler.qualtrics.com on December 1st, 2015 and was kept

open until December 3rd. During that time we had 41 responses per day on average, leading to a total

of 123 responses total. Our median question response rate is 82.26 all together, which is also our

mode. Those findings differ from our mean question response rate which is 71.89 all together. Of the

123, there were 108 surveys completed. We suspect some people might have opened and seen it was

too long or difficult for them to complete. With that said, our completion mean is 71% and our

average duration time that the survey took to complete was 6 minutes. We closed the survey on

December 3rd, 2015 with 124 surveys administered, 108 completed.

Our survey utilized a total of 24 questions, featuring various question types, that allowed us to

receive a vast amount of feedback. The survey began with simple questions that would allow us to

disqualify respondents that are outside of our respondent demographic, followed by more in depth

questions for us to obtain the information we were seeking. We used skip patterns to allow better flow

within the survey and to skip any irrelevant questions for our participants. Although we started our

survey with the need for disguise to prevent biased responses, it later became undisguised in order to

allow personal views and and beliefs regarding our brand and its products.

The questions started very general and then became more specific, first asking about

caffeinated beverages in general then moving into questions specifically about Red Bull. We asked a

block of questions asking about spokespeople and celebrities to see the impact of influences on our

respondents, followed that by asking questions specific to the Red Bull brand including brand

8

consumption and consumer habits, and closed the survey with questions about social media usage and

influence.

Examples of some of our questions and question types would be:

Dichotomous Questions: ex­ Are you within the age range of 18 to 24?..... Yes or No

Multiple Choice Questions: ex­ When was the last time you consumed a caffeinated

beverage? (caffeinated beverage being energy drink, coffee, or soda)..... Within the last

24 hours, Within the last week, within the last month, I have never consumed a

caffeinated beverage

Checklist: ex­ Which of these brands do you currently drink? Check all that apply...

Red Bull, Gatorade, Coca­Cola, Monster, Starbucks Coffee, Dunkin Doughnuts,

Rockstar, Amp, I drink all of these brands, I drink a brand that isn’t listed

Constant Sum: ex­ Out of all of these brands, which do you drink the most. For each

brand, assign a numeric value between 0 and 100. The total cannot exceed 100.... Red

Bull, Gatorade, Coca­Cola, Monster, Starbucks Coffee, Dunkin Doughnuts, Rockstar,

Amp.

We recruited our respondents through different social media platforms by posting our survey

link in facebook as well as by personally messaging people to take the survey, and through e­mail to

classmates. We utilized skip logic when it came to the question of age in order to keep our participants

in our target audience, college students and respondents ages 18­24 years old.

We had a total of 124 people participate in the survey, 36 of which were males, 53 females,

and 4 gender neutrals. That number does not reflect the total amount of respondents due to the fact that

some dropped the survey before being asked the question of their gender due to the fact that it was the

9

last question in our survey. We found that 27% of males drank red bull and 23% of females drank red

bull, where as on average 35% of males drink caffeinated beverages and 39% of females drink

caffeinated beverages.

Findings The objective of this quantitative research was to offer an in­depth explanation for the numbers

and statistical data that represent Red Bulls target audience. It is important to conduct primary research

when gathering this data because of the authenticity and accuracy of responses that pairs with the

research methods.

To begin our quantitative research, a Qualtrics survey was created. The survey started with a

screener that asked the respondent to select what age group they were a part of. The targeted age group

was 18­24; if a respondent was over or under that age we used skip logic to send them to the end of the

survey. The body of the survey was made up of twenty­ three questions that assessed usage habits, and

brand competitors, spokesperson influence and social media impact. There were many types of

questions used to determine the data; from the nominal level multiple choice, checklist, and

dichotomous questions were used. From the ordinal level rank order questions were used, from the

interval level rating scale questions were used, and finally from the ratio level constant sum questions

were used.

Using these questionnaire techniques, the respondents were asked a variety of questions

relating to their usage of caffeinated beverages to find how much a part of their life style these brands

and beverages. The specific purpose of this survey was to find where Red Bull stood among the many

other caffeinated beverage options. We chose to assess the data we collected using means and standard

deviations. We had a wide variety of questions that went into varying amounts of detail therefore we

10

decided to only display the numerical values of the questions that explicitly had to do with Red Bull.

The following data tables are displayed in our appendices.

How does the research support our objectives?

1. What are the consumption habits and relationships between our target audience and

caffeinated beverages?

After cross­tabulation was used to analyze the questions regarding this concept of

interest, we decided to use the mode of the data to better understand the results of this

nominal measurement (see figure 3). Our results showed that the majority of our target

demographic drink caffeinated beverages more than once a day. This statistic is in Red

Bull’s favor because it shows that the target audience is already dependent on caffeinated

beverages therefore if RedBull uses good marketing techniques they could attract this

target audience easily.

2. How does our target demographic perceive RedBull as both a brand and product?

From examining our data we found that the majority of our respondents associate

RedBull with “extreme sports” (see figure 4.) In many ways this is a plus because RedBull

has put a lot of emphasis on extreme sports in their marketing plan. The second

characteristic that respondents associated RedBull with is “energizing” which is of course

a good sign for a energy drink brand. The characteristic that respondents related RedBull

to least was “healthy”. This may become a problem for redbull in the future because in

this day and age people are becoming more aware of what they are putting in their bodies

and are striving for healthy alternatives.

11

3. How does our target use social media? How does their social media habits influence

their buying and consumption habits?

We used cross tabulation to display the results for this objective (see figure 2.) The

results were best analyzed in regards of the mode due to the question being of the ordinal

level of measurement; consequently, we established that Facebook is the most popular

social media platform among RedBull drinkers and non RedBull drinkers alike. From

these results we can hypothesize that Facebook would be the best social platform for

RedBull to focus its advertising. The second most popular platform was instagram and the

least popular was Myspace.

Research Conclusion:

We have come to several interesting conclusions through our research on the Red

Bull Brand. Through qualitative research we found that our target audience enjoys

caffeinated beverages but does not always reach for Red Bull because of factors like cost,

lack of nutritional value, and it’s side effects. Our quantitative research had the same

results. Again, the audience enjoys and uses caffeinated beverages daily, however they

choose them based off of social contexts, monetary value, and health concerns.

Based on these outcomes we have several strategic suggestions for how Red Bull

could improve their brand image within the 18­24 target audience. The first strategic

suggestion we have is for Red Bull to strive to create a product free of artificial chemicals.

Respondents widely acknowledged that energy drinks are not very healthy, however they

still choose them. This shows us that it is only a small concern, but one they are taking

12

more into account. The next suggestion we have has to do with the price of the Red Bull

product. Some respondents said they do not buy Red Bull because of the price, however,

the brand is considered a premium drink and therefore the price was justifiable in

comparison to similar lifestyle brands. To compromise, Red Bull should create strategic

marketing promotions.

To conclude, Red Bull is still a strong brand in the wide market of caffeinated

beverages. Even though Red Bull has a strong marketing base towards the male audience

of ages 18­30, we have noted that females in this age range go unnoticed. We believe that

Red Bull should address this issue as well as possible health concerns and pricing to keep

their already successful target loyal and recruit new customers. By conducting this survey,

we found that college students aged 18­24 have a variety of uses and habits when

consuming these beverages. Participants noted that they have consumed Red Bull, but

listed price, lack of natural ingredients, and taste as reasons for not consuming it again. By

taking all of the data from the last three projects into account, Red Bull could further

expand their consumer reach.

13

References Auer, Michael et al. 'It Gives You Wings: A Qualitative Study'. 2015. Presentation. Auer, Michael et al. 'It Gives You Wings: A Secondary Research Study'. 2015. Presentation. Hammick, Jinhyon. 'Quantitative Research'. 2015. Presentation.

14

Appendices

Appendix A: See Questionnaire Appendix B: Tables and Graphs

15

Figure 1. What characteristics do you associate with RedBull

Figure.2 Cross Tabulation for social media and RedBull Drinkers

Figure 3. Target audience and caffeinated beverage consumption frequency

16

Figure 4. What are your views on RedBull as a brand

Appendix C: See electronic copy submitted to LMS. File was too large to print.

17