Marketing Research for Costa Cafe in order to identify who are the typical customers of coffee outlets and ascertain their needs, expectations and buying behaviour.

Essay by kkaragiannaUniversity, Bachelor'sA-, October 2003

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Costa Coffee is one of the most famous coffee chains in the UK. It was founded in 1971 in Italy by two Italian brothers: Sergio and Bruno Costa. Costa company which introduced the first Costa coffee shops in the UK in the early 1980`s, had as a main objective to create and serve the finest authentic Italian coffee. Costa became part of Whitbread PLC in 1995 and has followed an expansion program, so to become recognized nationally. Despite that figures, Costa faces some problems, related to their competitors.

A recent survey conducted by Allegra Strategies indicated that Starbucks Coffee (one of the main competitors of Costa), has the highest consumer brand recognition of all the chains, being recognized by a staggering 77% of coffee shop visitors followed by Costa Coffee with 72%. Naturally the management of Costa is very concerned.

As Marketing research agency, we are about to conduct a marketing research to identify who are the typical customers of coffee outlets and ascertain their needs, expectations and buying behaviour.

The decision problem that Costa Coffee management is facing is why Costa is losing customers from its main competitors.

An appropriate research design has been conducted. Justifications will be given in order to prove why specific approaches were used. Background research in order to fully understand the problem at hand has also been conducted. Furthermore, a questionnaire has been designed so as to help us identify the typical customers of branded coffee shops and view their opinions and perceptions concerning the coffee market. In addition to the questionnaire, an observation technique has been followed in order to have a better perspective of customers' buying behaviour and compare the efficiency of different coffee shops. Moreover, in order to fully address the components of the research a focus group has...