Negative Media Exposure for Red Bull Energy Drink

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Executive Summary:

From conducting this report it was found that Red Bull energy drink is facing some problems, the main one of which is the negative media that it has been receiving. However both primary and secondary research shown that negative publicity does not affect buyer behaviour to a great extent.

Secondary research clearly states that Red Bull contains excessive amount of chemicals, some publications even compare it to highly addictive drugs as well as blaming the product for some deaths. Secondary data also helped us identify a growing number of competitors that Red Bull has, the number exceeds a hundred. However, surprisingly to most, secondary research reports show that the sales of the product are increasing each year rather than decreasing as could be expected.

Quantitative part of primary research identified that 25 out of 30 participants have bought Red Bull before. Other five participants however stated that the main reasons why they have never bought Red Bull before are the fact that it id damaging for health as well as they do not like the taste of the product. Our questionnaire also found that most of the participants buy Red Bull at least ones a week, which shows that product's popularity is growing. However the majority of participants do not agree with the retail price of the product, twelve (majority) participants stated that the price that they would be happy with is in the range of 70-90 pence.

Our research followed on with qualitative part of primary research which was made up of two focus groups of six people. Here we found that majority of participants still buy Red Bull, however some do not buy it as often as before because of the negative publicity that the drink has been receiving. Others suggested that negative publicity did not affect their buying behaviour in any way, mentioning that there are many other products which are claimed to cause damage to your health however people still buy them. Finally both focus groups brought up a topic of high price for the Red Bull drink, arguing that ‘you do not get enough for what you pay'.

After analysing our findings and looking at some marketing models and theories, we came to the conclusion that Red Bull should try to decrease its price in order to maintain the ‘rising star' position of the Boston Matrix which it occupies at the moment. Otherwise an increasing competition might push the product out of its ‘prestige' position in the market.

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