Design a Marketing Experiment-Coca-Cola Zero

Introduction

This report aims to design a marketing experiment for one of the strongest brands in the beverage industry, especially when it comes to diet soft drinks. This is none other than Coca-Cola Zero. This brand belongs Coca-ColaCompany, an, American multinational beverage corporation headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Incorporated and has annual global sales of $37.27 billion.1 The marketing experiment consists of a product promotion campaign for which will be applied to the before-after design experiment. Zero Calorie, which better says a healthy drink promotion is a tool to influence consumer purchase; but because a calorie is such a subject variable (i.e., different people make different judgments’ of the same – for instance, given a zero-calorie some people may think that it’s better alternative soft drinks for good health, while others may think it’s irrelevant) I’m using the before-after experiment (this kind of experiment takes into account the pre-existing differences between the control and the test groups).

Experiment Design

In this experiment, the independent variable is product promotion in 10 TV commercial & shopper initiative in the form of a message Zero calorie with 100% absolute in flavor and signature taste. The dependent variable observed here is the intention to buy. The experiment will be run in Delhi, India. The controlled market observed will be Mumbai, India. The test and control markets are so chosen that they resemble closely in terms of population demographics and other city attributes. Delhi and Mumbai are similarly sized cities with a population of around 18 million. Since the entire cities will be exposed to the experiment, the sample size would be big enough to be statistically significant. Since it is a before-after design experiment, sales will be recorded for both control and test markets for a 3 month average from March-May. The experiment will be run for the next three months from June to August. The change in sales during the experiment will be then used to calculate the lift in sales. The experiment certainly adheres to the first three rules of causality. However, the experiment has no control over the fourth rule, which deals with the presence of an external factor. Prima facie, there appears to be no external factor impacting the experiment, however, there might be a competitive response that shall be accounted for. Due multicultural environment of the city, and culturally diverse and big enough area coverage it will be statistically significant to draw conclusions of relevance for the Indian markets

https://www.statista.com/statistics/233371/net-operating-revenues-of-the-coca-cola

Anticipated Issues

Cold Drinks in soft beverages are a seasonal product. It is usually seen the cold drinks are of less sell or have less intention to buy in the winter season. Therefore, the results cannot be generalized without reservations.

Any other external factor during implementation such as the entry of a new brand/product or a competitive move by an existing competitor could adversely affect the test results. If a new brand is advertising really nice and proper diet cold drinks for a little price with a superior test and flavor, the consumer will anchor that price and might think that the reduction of the calorie wasn’t enough to make them want to buy it.

Nevertheless, we can compare the test group with the control group to calculate the sales lift.

The experiment will provide a fair guideline on whether to go ahead with the nationwide marketing campaign. The lift in sales would also provide a concrete idea of the appropriate amount of spending on the campaign.

Experiment adaptation

Another version of the experiment can be through web experimentation – full factorial design. In this case, e-commerce platforms would be better than modern trade.

The soft drinks giant has tied up with Gofers, a mobile app that specializes in grocery delivery, to enable consumers to order Coca-Cola Zero, a low-calorie version of its popular carbonated drink, and have it delivered to their door, for a two-week trial.

We will use the insights from on-demand sales on Gofers for Coke Zero to identify and track consumer preferences and post-purchase feedback.

This version of the experiment is generally cheaper and quicker to implement than the offline face-to-face questionnaires. However, if this experiment is to be done nationwide it may not be that cheap or simple since the questionnaires have to be translated into different languages and take into account the laws of the retail markets of each area (people in charge should know the “rules” of product promotions for each market).

Another concern with the web experiment is that it does not include the chunk of the audience that is not so active on the web/app. In the context of this particular product, that chunk of inactive users could be huge.

These pros and cons need to be taken into account when deciding which experiment to choose from. One thing is certain - this experiment adaptation would offer the optimal combination for each market.