Decline in Soft Drink Sales Accelerates Despite Big Marketing Investments

Coca-Cola, PepsiCo Continue to Spend in Still-Massive Category

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Consumers have been shunning soft drinks in favor of tea, energy drinks and bottled waters for years, but defected from the category at an even faster rate in 2013, according to new figures from Beverage Digest. That’s despite the efforts of Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Dr Pepper Snapple Group to market lower-calorie sodas, like Pepsi Next and Dr Pepper Ten, as well as a variety of packaging options such as smaller cans.

In the last year, Coca-Cola has also responded to the obesity debate with a series of ads meant to encourage consumers to be active.

Carbonated soft drink volume declined 3% in 2013, compared to a 1.2% decline in 2012 and a 1% decline in 2011, according to Beverage Digest. The category has seen declines for the last nine years, despite the industry’s massive advertising and marketing outlays. Two years ago, PepsiCo committed to spend an additional $500 million to $600 million on its core brands, of which Pepsi is one. More recently, Coca-Cola committed to spending an additional $1 billion on media and brand-building efforts by 2016.

“The industry’s headwinds are not abating, and results are worsening,” said John Sicher, editor and publisher at Beverage Digest. “This puts a premium on sweetener innovation.”

The major beverage players have all been working to develop natural, low-calorie sweeteners as consumers shy away from the artificial sweeteners in diet sodas and the calories in traditional sodas.

Still, soft drinks remain the largest single beverage category, controlling about 43% of the market, according to Beverage Marketing Corporation. Categories that did see growth in 2013 include ready-to-drink coffee, energy drinks, bottled water, sports drinks and ready-to-drink tea. In addition to soft drinks, fruit beverages and enhanced waters saw declines.

“Beverages endured a transitional year in 2013,” said Michael Bellas, chairman-CEO at Beverage Marketing Corporation. “Even in the face of economic challenges, healthier products thrived and even formerly floundering segments like ready-to-drink coffee demonstrated their potential. Certainly the state of the economy is crucial for overall beverage category success, but so are products that connect with the evolving American consumer.”

Source: http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/soft-drink-sales-decline-accelerates/292409/

Mothers Day on December 22

Indonesians celebrate Mother’s Day on 22 December which will be on this Sunday. How close are you with your mom? Our data shows that Indonesians are very close to their moms – cut across genders, ages and SES. However when it comes to sharing secrets with our mothers, females are more likely to share secrets with their mothers than males.

Let’s find out how tomorrow many percent of Indonesians are actually celebrating Mother’s Day.

Video Game Consoles – Global Retail Sales by Generation

World of Internet

Global MR Turnover Climbs 3.2% to $39 Billion

Global MR industry turnover grew by 3.2% to $39.1 billion in 2012, according to ESOMAR’s latest Global Market Research Report. During the year, strong performance was seen in Asia Pacific, Africa and Latin America, countering ‘sluggish’ performances elsewhere.

Europe saw 21 markets decline in 2012, as turnover for the region dropped 1.4% to $15.6 billion. The exception was Germany, which bucked the trend with growth of 5.8%.

The North American research sector recorded a third successive year of growth, with turnover increasing to $14.5 billion. In Latin America, growth surged 5.6% to $1.9 billion, making it the best performing region in 2012 – last year’s top performer Asia Pacific saw turnover up 4.8% to $6.3 billion.

For the first time, Africa and the Middle East are reported as distinct regions, with 2012 revenues rising 4.8% to $399m in the former, and turnover dropping 4.3% to $265m in the latter.

With regard to MR industry confidence in 2013, just 60% of those companies that provided forecasts expect the market research industry to grow, compared with 82% last year.

As an expansion to ESOMAR’s annual industry study, this year estimated revenues for the ‘advisory services’ sector have been incorporated, to include figures from consultancies such as Gartner, Forrester Research, International Data Corporation, Mintel and Euromonitor.

Finn Raben (pictured), ESOMAR Director General, comments: ‘This report marks another important milestone in the evolution of this study, as it now includes the first ‘hard data’ using an expanded market definition. The inclusion of ‘advisory services’ adds an additional 15% to the previously measured market size, and now values our global industry at just short of US $40 billion.’

Web site: www.esomar.org .

http://www.mrweb.com/drno/printable/pn17900.htm

How people argue with research they don’t like

We at Wonkblog watch (and participate) in a lot of debates about new research. And we’d like to say all those debates adhere to the highest standards of rigor and are motivated by nothing more than a search for truth. In reality, it tends to go more like this:

Obviously, these arguments are often correct. Experimental studies really are better than quasi-experimental studies which really are better than regression analyses which are certainly better than nothing. Big, broadly representative samples really are better than narrow ones and it is important to have multiple studies back up a conclusion. But given that people tend to read what they want to read in research, these points tend to be used more as bludgeons than as good faith critiques.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/12/how-to-argue-with-research-you-dont-like/