Project parameters

7 days

1,800+ coffee machine users and espresso machine buyers

Qual and quant

US

The challenge

Espresso machine usage in-home is high in many markets across the world. However, penetration is notably low in the US, given the preference for filter coffee and out-of-home coffee. Facing strong competition from other players in the market, this leading coffee machine manufacturer needed to optimise its marketing and communications efforts in the US. 

To achieve this, the team needed a deeper understanding of the coffee machine market as a whole, as well as a clear picture of the purchase journey among existing and prospective buyers. As such, the team wanted to target a large nationally representative sample and a more niche audience group in the US, all while being cost effective. In addition to this, the team needed robust quantitative figures to determine the most effective strategy to win share in the US market and rich qualitative insights to feed into the messaging and positioning.

The action

To deliver insights on two distinct audience groups, Streetbees harnessed its community of bees (consumers) in the US. In less than a week, SBX captured conversations with over 1,800 coffee machine users, espresso machine buyers and prospective buyers (plan to buy within the next 12 months) using a two phase approach. The first phase spoke to coffee machine users more broadly to understand the penetration of different coffee machines, as well as attitudes and behaviours around coffee drinking. The second phase spoke to current and prospective espresso machine buyers to understand their purchase journey. Both phases were run in parallel. 

By conversing with these consumers through its WhatsApp-style mobile app, Streetbees was able to ask them a combination of closed-text and open-text questions to gather quantitative and qualitative data. 

In addition to this, the survey tool was also able to optimise its questions in real time to delve deeper into what they had shared, making it easier to uncover the nuance behind their coffee attitudes and behaviours, as well as the ‘why’ behind their purchase paths and decisions.

This resulted in thousands of rich verbatims that were then automatically cleaned, quantified and analysed and were delivered in a tailored, interactive dashboard, with a concise executive summary and the ability to cut and explore the data. From end to end, the project took 7 days to complete.

“There were no risks at all going with this solution. Based on the capabilities of the tool and the team, we were sure you would be able to deliver exactly what we needed.” shared the Senior Manager of Commercial Insights.

The outcome

The resulting insights confirmed and challenged a number of hypotheses the team had around choice drivers and purchase journeys. For example, sustainability was weaker than expected in driving preference and in-store experiences played a more important role in the purchase journey than previously thought. 

In addition to this, the insights uncovered that older consumers were the most likely to be in the market for an espresso machine in the next 12 months, giving the team a clear direction when it comes to targeting and further research. This was supported by rich insights into origin preferences, flavour profiles and preferred formats, allowing the team to create distinct strategies for marketing and comms to increase sales among prospective buyers and increase consideration among coffee machine users overall.

“The insights are top notch. I have already shared them across the business, so we can feed them into our strategy moving forward.”