MN319

Market Sector Digital

Review Reports:

Soft Drink Industry 04/09/2013

Market Sector Digital Review Reports 2013

Team Profile - GROUP 6

Names Student Numbers Social Media Used

Harry O’Reardon 11363496Twitter, LinkedIn and Klout

David Bellew 11310971Twitter, LinkedIn and Klout

Ryan Hickey 11515637Twitter, LinkedIn and Klout

Cian O’Dowd 11501447Twitter, LinkedIn and Klout

Branding Statements

Harry: Business and Management student, musician and an avid follower of the music

industry. Interested in pursuing a career in Marketing or Human Resource Management

Cian: I am a Second Year business and management student

I have a very big interest in Gaelic football as well as an interest in advertising and

marketing.

David: Second year Business and Management student at NUI Maynooth who also has a

great interest in music. Aims for a career in Marketing or Finance.

Ryan: I am a second year student at NUI Maynooth studying business management. I am a

dedicated and hard-working individual with a keen interest in business finance and sport.

Executive Summary and Market Background

In this report we have chosen to analyse the soft drink industry and five of its market leaders.

The industry itself is a highly competitive one with hundreds of different brands of

carbonated drinks. Soft drinks are typically comprised of carbonated water and a large

amount of sugar. The market however is a controversial one. As like anything else in the

world, too much of something is damaging to one’s health. According to The British Dental

Journal, four cans of fizzy drinks a day causes the danger of tooth erosion to raise by up to

252%. As students who indulge in a fizzy drink on almost a daily basis, we were keen to

learn more about the market and the companies who dominate it.

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Market Sector Digital Review Reports 2013

Profiled Organisations

Coca Cola: Coca Cola is the biggest brand in the soft drink industry. It currently owns 42.8%

of the market share in the US market, and has one of the most distinct brands in corporation

history; the brand is currently valued at $74 billion. Every day there are 1.7 billion servings

of Coca Cola worldwide, which accounts for 3.1% of all beverages consumed. Although

Coca Cola is the most successful and most recognised soft drink in the market, the company

also produces a range of other soft drinks including Sprite, Fanta, and the Diet Coke range.

Pepsi: Pepsi is the second largest brand in the Soft Drink Industry and currently holds 28% of

the US market. The Pepsi brand is estimated to be worth $22 billion and the company used

many celebrities to endorse the brand, including David Beckham and Britney Spears. Pepsi

have sales ranging from $250 million to $1 billion every year and have 700 manufacturing

plants worldwide. Some other products produced at PepsiCo include Gatorade, Mountain

Dew and Tropicana.

Dr Pepper: Dr Pepper is the third most popular soft drink in the US. At the end of 2012, it

was estimated that it had around 17% in the US soft drink industry. The company boasted

revenue of almost $6 billion in 2012 and is continuing to grow steadily. Other brands made

by Dr Pepper Snapple include 7up and Sunkist.

Irn-Bru: Irn-Bru is a Scottish carbonated soft drink company produced by AG Barr. The

soft drink currently outsells Pepsi and Coca Cola in its native Scotland, where it’s known as

“Scotland’s other national drink”. In 2009, Irn Bru had accounted for 24% of the soft drink

industry in the UK, and had where it even outsold Fanta. Irn Bru represents around 60% OF

AG Barr’s sales.

Club Orange: Club is one of Ireland’s most popular soft drink companies. The drink has a

very loyal Irish fan base at both home and abroad. It is ranked the no. 1 citrus soft drink with

66% of the market share. Recently, Club has tried to target new, younger consumers with

controversial ad campaigns that were subsequently banned from being aired in 2011. Many

different flavours are manufactured including Apple and Rock Shandy, and they diversified

into the energy drink market in recent years with Club Energise too.

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Market Sector Digital Review Reports 2013

Website Review

Coca Cola

http://www.coca-cola.ie/

The Coca Cola Website is a very easy to use Service. It provides the user with a simple to

navigate homepage making it easy to find what is required. The Website is coloured in the

traditional red of coca Cola but also presents a vast array of other colours and images to make

the site seem more fun and playful. The Links displayed make the site very easy to navigate.

The site provides all the information on the product itself as well as providing news and

recycling information. This Helps cater to all audiences and makes the site more appealing.

Having these additional features on the site will ensure that customers will be able to get

more than just information about coca cola and its promotions. In addition the coca cola .com

site also redirects you to the official site of the country your in. This gives the customer a

more personalised service and also makes them aware of any promotions in their respective

countries.

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Market Sector Digital Review Reports 2013

Pepsi

http://www.pepsi.com/en-us/d

Upon entering the Pepsi website the user is instantly bombarded by a vast range of Links to

twitter and other social media sites. It gives customers the chance to become involved in the

site and in the product being offered. It also highlights its competitions as well as facts about

Pepsi. Much Like the coca cola website, The Pepsi website is also coloured in its traditional

colouring, in this case red and blue .Similarly the site is very easy to navigate. One of the

main Positives of the site is a very clear link to its social media sites. This enables Pepsi to be

more interactive with its customers as it gives customers the chance to become involved.

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Dr Pepper

http://www.drpepper.com/

As would be expected the DR. Pepper Website is too very user friendly and simple to

navigate. It offers information on its Promotions, entertainment and products in a very simple

way. The Website also offers Customers a chance to personalise T-shirts and become

involved in Competitions. The Homepage adopts a slideshow style approach and allows the

user to view all the big news and information without having to search for it however it lacks

the same splash of colour that coca cola and Pepsi Possess and appears quite dull.

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Irn-Bru

http://www.irn-bru.co.uk/getsyouthrough

Irn-Bru is perhaps the least known beverage of all the Drinks being covered and to highlight

this, its website too is also the poorest of the ones being covered that currently have

operational websites. While it is easy to use and to navigate the user can’t help but be bored

by its dull appearance despite its traditional bright orange colour. Unlike the other sites it

offers the user little to no way of getting involved with the product be it through

competitions, promotions or otherwise.

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Market Sector Digital Review Reports 2013

Club Orange

http://www.club.ie/

The Club Orange website is currently under Construction. It does however give a link to its

Facebook page where all the information required can be viewed. The Display in the

background is bright and positive. The image makes the drink seem very appealing and

packed with flavour.

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Market Sector Digital Review Reports 2013

Social Media Review

Each company has become very proficient in using social media to help advertise their

product and to communicate with their customers. By using the BOSS Metrics competitor

analysis tool, we discovered a lot of information on each of the five companies and gained

valuable insights into the soft drink market.

Facebook Analysis

As we can see from the results of the BOSS Metrics analysis tool, Coca-Cola is the most

popular brand out of the competitors on Facebook. The brand has the highest amount of likes

with a staggering 65.5 million and is being talked about by almost 750,000 people (February

24th, 2013).

However, Coca-Cola has an average post of 0.35 posts per day and only an average of 121.7

likes per post per day. Dr Pepper on the other hand is by far the most engaging company with

its fans with an average of 2.12 posts per day. It also has an enormous average of 14,000 likes

per post. This shows that its customers listen to what the business is saying and respond to

posts made by them.

As we can see from the results, club orange is noticeably less popular than any of the other

brands on Facebook. The Irish company has not embraced the use of social media as

effectively its competitors due to the fact that the brand doesn’t sell to as many countries as

the other organisations.

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Market Sector Digital Review Reports 2013

Another interesting fact about these five companies is that posting photos attracts the most

amount of attention from the businesses’ fans, whether it’s a picture of a Coke can or a poster

about Dr Pepper advertising Andy Williams concerts. This is illustrated by the graphs above

and below. Photos also encourage fans to talk amongst themselves about the brand and

further advertise it which is of great benefit to the businesses.

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Market Sector Digital Review Reports 2013

Twitter Analysis

From the BOSS Metrics results we can instantly see that Pepsi is the most followed brand

implying that it is the most popular one according to Twitter. However it has an average of

12.5 tweets per day and an overage of 8.8 replies per day. This is far too little when compared

with Coca-Cola which has an average of 43.7 tweets per day and an average of 41.7 replies

per day. Coca-Cola is the most engaging with its fans according to Twitter which is

interesting because it contradicts the BOSS Metrics Facebook results.

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Market Sector Digital Review Reports 2013

What’s also interesting about the Twitter results is that the majority of the companies’ tweets

are between the hours of 10am and 10pm. Coca-Cola however tweets a large amount at 1am

which is unusual. This may be part of their social media campaign.

Club orange have very few followers and no tweets. On the brand’s Twitter page they give a

link to their Facebook page and encourage people check for updates there as opposed to

Twitter.

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Market Sector Digital Review Reports 2013

Mobile Review

Coca Cola: Coca Cola have a strong presence in the mobile market with many different apps

available to fans. Apps ranging from ‘Coke Studio’, ‘Happy App’, ‘Coca Cola Ambassador’,

‘M&I Coke Zero Wallpaper’ are made available from Coca Cola and can be downloaded

instantly by users. Coca Cola also have a mobile website, which makes surfing more

convenient for their mobile users.

Pepsi: Pepsi also recognise the importance of a presence on mobile technology and also offer

a variety of different apps. Apps such as ’Pepsi Now’, ‘Pepsi T20 Cricket’ and ‘Pepsi Sokket

Goal’ can be downloaded by smart phone users.

Dr Pepper: Dr Pepper has very small amounts of content available to mobile users

compared to both Coca Cola and Pepsi. There are no Dr Pepper apps attainable on the

Android market and it seems that Dr Pepper have chosen to neglect this side of the market.

However, Dr. Pepper does have a mobile website which makes scrolling easier while using a

phone.

Irn-Bru: Irn-Bru also chose not to create apps for mobile users. Instead, small amounts of

downloadable content such as their logo are available to download for its mobile users.

Club Orange: At the moment no mobile content is made available by Club at all to its users;

however this may change once their website has undergone its construction.

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Conclusion

From our research of the soft drink market our findings indicated the following:

Coca-Cola was the most popular of all the compared soft drinks on Facebook with over 62

million fans. However in terms of interaction with their following, Dr Pepper appear to be the

most engaging and energetic then the other 3 brands. When we investigated other social

media outlets such as Twitter, Pepsi appeared to be the most popular with over 1 million

followers. Although similar to the trend we saw on Facebook the brand with the biggest

following was not the one whom engaged with their fans the most. From our results, Coca-

Cola has dedicated the most time to interact and respond to their followers the most on

Twitter with Dr Pepper, Irn-Bru and Pepsi falling closely behind. Club orange is without

doubt the weakest of all the brands we have examined across both Twitter and Facebook.

There Twitter account is almost inactive with little to no interaction whatsoever with their

followers. This may be due to the fact that they do not sell they’re product to as many

countries as the other brands being reviewed.

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References

The Sun (2012) Is Britain going pop [online] Available at:

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/woman/health/health/4479149/Every-part-of-your-

body-wrecked-by-fizzy-drinks.html (Accessed on 25 April 2013)

Business Insider (2011) 15 Facts About Coca-Cola That Will Blow Your Mind [online].

Available at: http://www.businessinsider.com/facts-about-coca-cola-2011-6?

op=1#ixzz2RN3w122w (Accessed 22 April 2013)

CNN (2012) 417. Dr. Pepper Snapple Group (Fortune 500) [online]

Available at:

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2012/snapshots/11489.html (Accessed

22 April 2013)

Forbes (2012) Dr Pepper Snapple Slurps Up Market Share But Stock Full At $39.50 [online]

Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2012/04/11/dr-pepper-snapple-

slurps-up-market-share-but-stock-full-at-39-50/ (Accessed 22 April 2013)

Love Irish Food (2012) Club [online]

Available at: http://www.loveirishfood.ie/brands/club/ (Accessed 22 April 2013)

PepsiCo (2011) Quick Facts [online]

Available at: http://www.pepsico.com/Download/PepsiCo_Quick_Facts.pdf (Accessed 22

April 2013)

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The Scotsman (2009) Irn-Bru proves there’s fizz left yet in the soft drinks market [online]

http://www.scotsman.com/business/irn-bru-proves-there-s-fizz-left-yet-in-the-soft-drinks-

market-1-1032127

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