Marketing_Research_on_Red_Bull

Running head: MARKETING RESEARCH ON RED BULL Marketing Research on Red Bull Products Gina Hernandez Herzing University Marketing Research on Red Bull Products Red Bull wants to conduct research on how consumers would react to a proposed new vitamin-enriched water drink sold under the Red Bull name. Red Bull currently dominates the worldwide energy drink water. The proposed research might call for the following specific information: • The demographic, economic, and lifestyle characteristics of current Red Bull customers. Do current customers also consume enhanced-water products' Are such products consistent with their lifestyles' Or would Red Bull need to target a new segment of consumers' • Research the characteristics and usage patterns of the broader population of enhanced-water users: What do they need and expect from such products, where do they buy them, when and how do they use them, and what existing brands and price points are most popular' (The new Red Bull product would need strong, relevant positioning in the large enhanced-water market.) • Research retailer reactions to the proposed new product line. Would they stock and support it' Where would they display it' (Failure to get retailer support would hurt sales of the new drink.) • Research forecasts of sales of both the new and current Red Bull products. Will the new enhanced waters create new sales or simply take sales away from current Red Bull products' Will the new product increase Red Bull’s overall profits' • Red Bull’s marketers will need these and many other types of information to decide whether and how to introduce the new product. I would start by gathering secondary data. For example, Nielsen sells shopper insight data from a consumer panel or more than 260,000 households in 27 countries worldwide, with measures of trial and repeat purchasing, brand loyalty, and buyer demographics. Experian Consumer Research sells information consumer panel data on more than 8,000 brands in 450 product categories, including detailed consumer profiles that assess everything from the products consumers buy and the brands they prefer to their lifestyles, attitudes, and media preferences. MONITOR service by Yankelovich sells information on important social and lifestyle trends. These and other firms supply high-data to suit a wide variety of marketing information needs. Using commercial online databases, marketing researchers can conduct their own searches of secondary data sources. General database services such as Dialog, ProQuest, and LexisNexis put an incredible wealth of information at the keyboards of marketing decision makers. Beyond commercial Web sites offering information for a fee, almost every industry association, government agency, business publication, and news medium offers free information for researchers. For example, a Red Bull marketer Googling “enhanced water products” would come up with some 200,000 hits! Still, well-structured, well-designed Web searches can be a good starting point to any marketing research project. Secondary data can usually be obtained more quickly and at a lower cost than primary data. Also, secondary sources can sometimes provide data an individual company cannot collect on its own –information that either is not directly available or would be too expensive to collect. For example, it would be too expensive for Red Bull’s marketers to conduct a continuing retail store audit to find out about the market shares, prices, and displays of competitors’ brands. My research plan would be presented in a written proposal. A written proposal is especially important when the research project is large and complex or when an outside firm carries it out. My proposal would cover the management problems addressed, the research objectives, the information to be obtained, and how the results will help management decision making. The proposal would also include estimated research costs. To meet the manager’s information needs, the research plan can call for gathering secondary data, primary data, or both. References The Nielsen Company (http://nielsen.com) Experian Consumer Research (Simmons) (http://smrb.com) Symphony IRI Group (www.symphonyiri.com)