Executive summary
“Glaceau Vitaminwater”, the vitamin enhanced water, spreads globally with record-breaking sales once it was launched. Vitaminwater stepped into Hong Kong market in 2009. However, the sales are not that good. The research was conducted to investigate into the existing problems that led to the unsatisfactory sales in Hong Kong and provide suggested solutions.
It was mainly focusing on the universities students. After conducting this research, we have come up with the potential ways to rectify the current situation.
Vitaminwater has been enjoying a positive brand image. But with lots of sponsors provided to universities, there is still a poor word-of-mouth effect. The positioning of Vitaminwater is ambiguous. In general, the main reasons are the inappropriate promotion strategies, lack of promotion coverage, unattractive tastes, no choices considering the volume and the high selling price.
Positioning should be clearer as healthy drinks. More intense promotion strategies are suggested to increase the coverage, particularly on magazines, newspapers, bus advertisements and leaflets. Invite celebrities with energetic and healthy images as spokesmen. Some gimmicks like free samples distribution and random home visits are suggested to be included in the promotion strategies. Besides, providing Vitaminwater with localized flavors is a sound choice. Students are quite interested in Citrus maxima and Lemon and Honey flavors.
Apart from that, for the level of sweetness, it should be increased a little bit. 400mL bottle size should be introduced as well to gain attractiveness and a fresh image. As Vitaminwater is positioned as a high-ended drink, the selling price should not be reduced without much consideration.
Introduction
‘Glaceau Vitaminwater’ (Vitaminwater) was originated in US in 2000 with the aim to help people on the go feel better, perform better, and live healthy lives. It is composed of filtered water with mineral and vitamin and provides more than ten flavors with colourful package.
It began its global expansion starting from 2008 and stepped into Hong Kong market in October 2009. Despite its variety of promotion mix and healthy image as a high-nutrition drink with vitamin, it is unable to win a good mouth in local market and results in a relatively low market sales compared to US market which created a record-breaking sales of 700 million USD in 2010. Purpose of Research Since Vitaminwater has a very satisfactory performance in US, we believe the product itself has potentials to be sold in Hong Kong.
However, due to the very different taste and culture between US and Hong Kong market, the same promotion strategies may not be appropriate in Hong Kong. Looking at the performance of Vitaminwater in Hong Kong after its launch in 2009, we believe there are rooms to improvement. And a very essential first step is to understand the customers of the product so that we can provide what customers want and design promotion strategies that fit to their interests and needs. What’s more, only by conducting a research on customers who have tried Vitaminwater help figure out the existing problems of the product, taste, promotion and other attributes.
After this research, a clearer direction of how to target on local market can be obtained and improvements of the product itself and marketing strategies can also be made in order to increase the sales of Vitaminwater in Hong Kong. In this research, we aim to find out the perception of customers to Vitaminwater and the concrete reasons of low market sales of Vitaminwater in Hong Kong, so as to provide suggestions to help boost the sales of Vitaminwater in Hong Kong. Decision Problem The youth is one of its large target markets and university students are a subset of the youth population.
The university students are a subset with a great potential as they have a higher purchasing power and a higher growth of income relative to the youth. If they like Vitaminwater, they would certainly buy it when they have an even higher purchasing power in the future. Therefore we have specified the target research market and samples as university students in Hong Kong. Decision Problem: “How to Increase the Sales of Vitaminwater among University Students in Hong Kong? ” Research Questions
To help solve the decision problem, a set of questions was designed in the questionnaire in order to understand university students’ perception on Vitaminwater in the first phase, after that, more focused questions will be asked to evaluate along major attributes of Vitaminwater such as branding, taste, price and package to help figure out the inadequacy of each attribute that lead to low sales of Vitaminwater, in the last phase proposed changes of different attributes will be asked in the questionnaire to oversee their likeliness to purchase Vitaminwater due to potential changes, so recommendations can be generated based on the responses.
By implementing these recommendations on these attributes which require improvements, presumably it would increase the likeliness of university students purchasing Vitaminwater, which is positively correlated to the sales of Vitaminwater, in turns solving the decision problem.
Research Design
Before going deeply into the descriptive researches, we conducted the exploratory researches in order to gain insights and to narrow down the causes of the problems, so that we could zero-in into the existing problems effectively.
Followed by the descriptive researches, we investigated further into these attributes and evaluated the potential changes needed. We then collected the data as a spreadsheet and carried out the data processing to analyze the results. To do so, we fixed the data problems to filter out the unrepresentative responds before the analysis to ensure precise results.
The majority of rating scales of the questionnaire was 1 to 7, so the estimated standard deviation was approximately 1 ((Max-Min)/6= (7-1)/6 = 1) as we predicted that the Maximum value rated would be 7 and minimum would be 1.
In order to obtain an accurate result, we set the confidence level as 95% and took a confidence interval of around 0. 15 (We set the confidence interval by allowing a 2% of the rating as +/- error). According to the formula for the: The estimated sample size for the research was 171 respondents. Exploratory Research We carried out 5 focus groups with 5-7 university students per group. We judgmentally selected the students who had tried Vitaminwater so that they could communicate with each other and be contributable.
Generally, students tended to think that Vitaminwater needed improvements in areas like the price, tastes and promotion strategies. We first designed the questionnaire and carried out the pretest to see whether respondents understood the questions and did we need to modify it. After that, we distributed the questionnaire to the students through the online facebook platform, inviting them to fill in the forms. The details about the design of questionnaire were included in the later part of this report. Population We defined the population of our research as all university students in Hong Kong.
We noticed that in the past few years, the company had done a lot of promotion among the university students, such as free sponsors for Orientation Camps, including Vitaminwater in vending machines on school campuses etc. Youths are more willing to try new things and experience new stuff when compared with people in other age group. Among the youths, university students have a higher purchasing power than youth in the same age group. It would be beneficial to the company if we could attract the university students as they have a higher potential to afford the drink in the future and become our long term customers.
Our sampling frame was the university students in our team member’s Facebook network. We chose this as our sampling frame because of the low cost and high efficiency. By inviting students through the Facebook event, we got enough number of respondents easily.
We had chosen the convenience sampling which is one of the non-probability sampling methods. We judgmentally selected students from our networks using facebook to be our samples and invited them to fill out our questionnaire, who we believed to be appropriate. We chose this way to collect data because of our limitation of time and cost in this research.
There were some limitations concerning our samples. Our own social networks were limited that a majority of the students were from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. The opinions of students, who came from other Universities, might not be greatly included. On the other hand, only those university students who were Facebook users could be our respondents. Nonetheless, we believed that our samples were representative as these limitations were quite minor.
The questionnaire was designed into 4 parts, demographics, behavioral, perception and attribution.
- Part 1. Demographics: The gender, age and class of respondents can be gathered. These data can help for both data processing and data analysis. Due to the target being university students, the entries with age group other than 16-25 or class in officer will be eliminated during the data processing.
- Part 2. Behavioral: The behavior of respondent can be gathered in this part and used for both data processing and analysis. (e. g. eekly purchasing frequency, if heard and tried Vitaminwater)
- Part 3: Perception Perception among brand, ingredient, taste, package, price, media and event promotion were collected Main attraction of Vitaminwater is also collected.
- Part 4: Attribution The customers perceived sweetness of Vitaminwater, use of promotion channels, attraction of localized flavor to them. We evaluate the likeliness of purchasing Vitaminwater with the changing of different attributes (e. g. implementing different new flavors, increasing the sweetness) and also their expectations on the use of promotion channel of Vitaminwater.
Apart from questionnaire 1, there is questionnaire 2 specifying on the effect of changing in volume and sweetness of Vitaminwater. After the 1st questionnaire, we discovered that changing the sweetness has quite a big impact to the likeliness. To have a further study on impact of it, we carried 2nd phase of survey. We then collect the likeliness of respondent toward 12 different models (with volume having 400, 500, 591 mL and sweetness with 0, +1, +2, +3 where 0 is the sweetness of water while +5 is the sweetness of coke). Pretest After the design of questionnaire, we carried pretest with 10 respondents.
Data Analysis
After the data collection, we filtered out the data which were found to be invalid and fixed the problems. The data were collected in the form of excel spreadsheet that we could use excel to analyze the data and generate the results.
First of all, we found out the sample means of some of the questions like those asking about their buying behaviors and their perceptions to Vitaminwater along different attributes. We then conducted the hypothesis tests on the sample means to see whether they were able to estimate the population means so as to generalize the results to the population. For example, for the question asking them about how many bottles of Vitaminwater did they buy a week, we set smaller or equal to 1 as the hypothesized value as we believed that generally buying one or even fewer bottle of Vitaminwater per week was unsatisfactory.
For their perceptions along different attributes, we used smaller or equal to the rating of 4 as the hypothesized value because we used a scale of 1 to 7 for those questions and believed that for the attributes having a mean value of lower or equal to 4, there were rooms for improvement in these areas. Knowing about the attributes which required improvements, we conducted the analysis specifically on these areas. We plotted some bar charts on the promotion, flavors and level of sweetness which allowed us to have a clearer picture of the situations and found out the aspects needed to be improved.
Apart from that, we used some powerful analytical tools to assist on our findings. We applied the cross-tabulation on students’ perceptions to the main attraction of Vitaminwater against their gender in order to see if there were any relationships between each other. Followed by the Chi-square test on it, we could then tell whether the main attractions to them were dependent on their gender. Furthermore, after the collection of data from the second questionnaire on the new products we were to be offering, we conducted a conjoint analysis on different profiles of Vitaminwater with the combinations of different volumes and levels of sweetness.
Using the SAS software, we run a regression on the likeliness of them to purchase the products(under the scale of 1-7) against the volume sizes and the levels of sweetness and the utility ratings were calculated afterwards to see which one was the optimal one to be offered. These were the outlines of our data analysis strategies. In the following section we were introducing the results.
The data we collected in the research were analyzed to find out what marketing strategic decisions should be made in order to increase the sales of Vitaminwater among university students in Hong Kong. Before looking into how these attributes could be changed to increase the sales, we first had a look on students’ buying behaviors of Vitaminwater. How many bottles of Vitaminwater do the respondents purchase a week? To have a clearer picture of the present sales situation among students, we measured the mean value of the number of bottles of Vitaminwater that university students generally purchase a week. We found out that out of 192 students, university students on average purchase 0. 2396 bottles per week, which was believed to be quite unsatisfactory.
The measured sample standard deviation was 0. 5557. To estimate the true population mean using the sample mean of 0. 2396 bottles per week, we carried out the hypothesis test on it setting smaller than or equal to one as the hypothesized value under the confidence level of 95%. That is Ho: 1 (hypothesized value) whereas Ha: > 1 (alternative hypothesis). The z-score was calculated as follows: z=(0. 2396-1)/(0. 5557/(192^1/2))= -18. 961 .
As the observed z was far smaller than the critical value of 1. 45, we accepted the null hypothesis that in the population of university students, they on average purchase equal or fewer than 1 bottle of Vitaminwater per week, so that we could conclude that the sales were not that good, which needed further improvements. Using the same method on their perceptions to Vitaminwater along the attributes, we obtained the following results to see whether in the population the true mean value of rating rated by students could be estimated by the sample means.
Under the rating scale of 1-7 measuring their satisfaction along these attributes(95% confidence level as well), this time we set the hypothesized value to be equal or smaller than 4 in the hypothesis tests. In other words, when we accepted the null hypothesis, there were rooms for improvements.
From the table, tastes, promotion and price were aspects that needed to be improved. Despite of these, Vitaminwater performed quite well in terms of branding and promotion. Having a general picture of which areas to improve, we further investigated into the potential changes on the marketing strategies on price, promotion and tastes. Price A decrease in price may be needed as students tended to think that the current price was relatively high, which was around $15 HKD per bottle.
Respondents were expecting a selling price of around $9 HKD for the original 591mL volume size. We arrived at this price by calculating the mean value, which was $9. 2 HKD with a standard deviation of $3. 8 HKD. We could interpret the result in a way that respondents thought that the value of Vitaminwater did not match with the selling price that they expected it to be sold at a lower price. In other words, dissatisfactions existed because they thought there was a mismatch of price with its value. However, it was not suggested to reduce the price without careful consideration. Vitaminwater was positioned as a high-end healthy drink.
Reducing the price inappropriately might contradict with the brand image. If really wanted to do so, it would be better to carry out another marketing research on setting the appropriate price. It might be around $12 HKD, but without another research we could not tell the exact amount. The following results mainly focus on the other attributes. Promotion In the research, we asked students about their expectations on the promotion coverage of Vitaminwater, and compared it with the current coverage. (Appendix P. 18) The results revealed that most of the present coverage of promotion channels was less than what they expected.
The channels with the greatest difference were the magazines, newspapers, bus advertisements and leaflets. Therefore, a more intense promotion plan should be implemented, especially on these channels. On the other hand, we applied the cross-tabulation on the main attractions of Vitaminwater to respondents according to their gender to see if there was any relationship between males and females. From the result (Appendix P. 18), a majority of both males and females perceived that ‘healthy drink with rich vitamin’ was the main attraction to them.
Meanwhile, a large proportion of females also perceived that ‘attractive and colourful appearance’ was the main attraction to them, while males did not have that kind of thought. To test whether the result was valid, we used the hypothesis testing again, setting Ho: main attraction is independent on gender; Ha: main attraction is dependent on gender. After calculating the Chi-square statistic value, we could reject the null hypothesis to conclude that the perceived main attraction is dependent on gender as the chi-square statistic was larger than the critical value.
We believed that Vitaminwater lacked an attractive taste which could entertain the consumers so in the research, we tried to find out if offering localized flavors could attract our targets. To allow for a clear comparison, we plotted sets of bar charts of students’ rating on their likeliness to buy localized-flavored Vitaminwater, which was again on a 1-7 scale. The horizontal axis was their degree of likeliness and the vertical axis was the frequency of students. From the graph (Appendix P. 19), we saw that most respondents were willing to purchase the localized flavors.
Limitations
First of all, we conducted research mainly on university students. It was due to the budget and time constraints we had. The focus might be a little bit narrow as Vitaminwater was not only targeting at the university students. Moreover, in some of the questions in our questionnaires, we asked our respondents about their perceptions to Vitaminwater. Respondents were answering based on their memories. Also, the R-square from the regression analysis was only about 10%, which meant that there were still other factors explaining their willingness to purchase.
Improvements of the Research Changing and widening the sampling frame is needed as the current focus is narrowed to university students. With more budget and time, carrying out the research focusing on the youth may improve the representativeness. In addition, offering free samples of Vitaminwater for them to drink right before doing the surveys will improve the accuracy of their answers. To obtain a larger R-square from the regression, it will be better to figure out other attributes and include them in those profiles as well. For example, price and flavors.
Conclusion
To increase the sales of Vitaminwater among university students, promotion strategies needed to be changed to a more extensive one with careful planning. It was suggested to increase the coverage, particularly on magazines, newspapers, bus advertisements and leaflets. From the cross-tabulation of ‘main attractions’ against gender, promoting by taking the difference of perceptions between males and females into account was a sound choice. For instance, invite celebrities with energetic and healthy images as spokesmen.
Typical examples were to invite Alex Fong and GEM to be the spokesmen and spokeswomen, as they possess images of being healthy, sporty, colourful and energetic. Some gimmicks like free samples distribution and random home visits were suggested to be included in the promotion strategies as well. As for the flavors, providing Vitaminwater with localized flavors was a sound choice, particularly Citrus maxima and Lemon and Honey. Furthermore, concerning about the degree of sweetness, it would be good to increase the level a little bit.
Offering a fresh new product with a bottle size of 400mL and increased level of sweetness was recommended as well, which we believed would increase their likeliness to buy it. Vitaminwater was a high-ended drink. The selling price should not be reduced without much consideration.
