The Persuasion of Watching Coffee

Experiment Design and Methodology

The Persuasion of Watching Coffee

We decided on showing people an advertisement for a coffee shop other than Starbucks and seeing if people would break their routine of going to Starbucks for their coffee or keep it. Our variables include age, gender and a likeness for coffee. We used a random design of sampling 20 different adults and asking them to watch the short 57-second advertisement video (Mitch, 2018). This is a qualitative experiment because we are trying to see if we can influence the subjects to choose PJ’s Coffee of New Orleans over another coffee café. The survey questions included “What is your age and gender and do you like coffee?” “Would you be willing to watch a 57 second coffee advertisement video?” and “After having watched the video, will you buy coffee from PJ’s Coffee of New Orleans?”

In the working environment, it has been observed that most people opt to get Starbucks almost every day as a part of their daily routine. Although, there are other coffee shops, Starbucks, despite it being costly, is one of the most visited by Americans. According to statistics from Business Insider, Starbucks stores have an average of just over 750 customers a day in 2020 (Lutz, 2013). According to an article written by Goodwin, the prices of Starbucks drinks in the U.S. average to about $ 2.75. Even if the prices are quite high for a cup of coffee, the business is not projected to fall since the brand just keeps expanding and its popularity. Even with its expense, the researchers believe that there are still people who prefer getting Starbucks instead of cheaper alternatives that are not as prominent.

In our qualitative experiment we are going to play an advertisement in YouTube of a smaller coffee chain, PJ’s coffee of New Orleans. In the said advertisement, we will show that PJ’s coffee is as great tasting as Starbucks but cheaper. We will have 20 random subjects of adult from ages 18 and up.  We will be asking each subject to watch the advertisement and ask them if they are willing to drive to PJ’s coffee to get a drink or if they will continue to buy their coffee from Starbucks. This research would benefit the community by recognizing and promoting the presence of alternative coffee places. This experiment wishes to find out if people are willing to switch Starbucks with any other coffee shop.

We started this study with the intention of attempting to see who would be willing to change their coffee routine after seeing a certain advertisement for it. We thought that half of the subjects surveyed would stay the course and continue to buy Starbucks and the other half would at least try PJ’s coffee one time. We split up the survey locations and asked a random 10 adults from walking around HEB and a random 10 adults from Wal-Mart. Most everyone approached were willing to participate in the survey happily and a couple was coaxed by their family members to participate.

We didn’t account for the possibility of people not knowing that PJ’s Coffee of New Orleans existed. The average age surveyed was 27.5 years of age. We had 8 females and 12 males. 12 subjects did not know that a PJ’s Coffee of New Orleans had a location within driving distance of both Wal-Mart and HEB. Of those 12, seven stated they would be willing to go now that they knew the location. The lowest age surveyed was 18 years of age and the oldest was 47. Surprisingly the younger half of the group ages 18 through 29 were not willing to change their routine of going to Starbucks daily and the older half 29 through 47 were willing to try something new like PJ’s Coffee of New Orleans.