Promotion campaigns cannot be successful without market research.
Such research usually has four broad aims:
- To determine
demographic and psychological characteristics of current consumers and
non-consumers of coffee, together with insights into why they consume
coffee or why they do not.
- To estimate the
size of both the total market for coffee and its individual components,
and to set objectives for the overall campaign.
- To test the
proposed promotional message or messages to ensure effectiveness before
conducting the full campaign.
- To monitor the
results of the campaign after it is under way and also to assess its
impact after the campaign has finished.
Who are the customers? It is
helpful in developing a generic promotion campaign to understand the primary
characteristics of the people who drink coffee as well as to discover what benefits
they derive from coffee consumption. With this information, promotional
messages are more likely to be relevant and believable.
One purpose of generic promotion is to keep existing customers satisfied and
perhaps to encourage them to consume more coffee. The other purpose of generic
promotion is to encourage people who do not drink coffee to try the product and
also to create a positive attitude towards coffee in order to improve the
chances of their liking their first tastes of the beverage. To that end,
promoters should know why non-drinkers do not drink coffee. This was very
important in the campaigns run by the ICO in China. Market research had
determined that many potential Chinese consumers saw coffee as bad for the
stomach and something more akin to a medicine. This enabled the organizers of
the campaign to tailor the message so that it directly tackled these issues.
People have different reasons for choosing to drink or not to drink coffee. It
may therefore be necessary to divide the total potential market into broad
segments, called target markets each requiring a different promotional message
or even a differentiated product or distribution channel.
How large is the
potential market? With a reasonably accurate idea of how many
people drink coffee and how much they currently consume, it can be estimated
how much more (if any) they can be induced to consume. Before investing in a
full-blown campaign it is essential to test the promotional message to make
certain that it will convince the consumers to take some type of action or to
change their attitude in line with the message’s objectives. The promotion is
therefore tested on a sample number of people and if a sufficient proportion is
favourably influenced, a full campaign is initiated.
What is progress like?
If the campaign is continued, results must be monitored. Techniques exist to
determine whether adequate progress is being made. Note that if no clearly
defined goals are set, it will be difficult to assess whether progress warrants
continuation. The annual United States Winter Coffee Drinking Study is a good
example of a survey on coffee consumption – go to www.ncausa.org for details.
How to promote coffee
consumption in new markets: The ICO have commissioned “A
Step-by-step Guide to Promote Coffee Consumption in Producing Countries” which
uses the Brazilian experience (see 02.07) and that of a few other countries to
create a methodology to promote consumption, not only in producing countries
but also in any emerging coffee market. This comprehensive guide can be
downloaded from www.ico.org.