As the social media manager for our coffee manufacturing company, I spent the last week discovering the best locations to open our drive-thru coffee shops. The three main factors I took into consideration were audience interest, geographic location, and competition. Due to my research, I recommend Montana as our main location while utilizing Oregon and Washington as well.
To conduct my research, I used search engine data analytics; these deal with analyzing “historical search data to gain valuable insight into trends analysis, keyword monitoring, and advertising spending statistics.” The real power of these analytics is that it allows us to better understand the mind of consumers. Conducting trends analysis demonstrates what consumers care about. A strong tool for conducting search engine analytics is Google Trends as it uses massive amounts of search engine data to predict trends and provide interests. Due to its large library of data, this tool that helped me choose the location.
Interest and Location
Google Trends allows users to enter a search term and discover key analytics for that keyword. I chose “coffee” as my main keyword since having an interest in the drink is essential for gaining customers. Within google trends, you can set how far back you want data to be shown. Using the longest time range of 2004-present, I was presented with a graph demonstrating the interest in coffee over time. This graph helped demonstrate that the demand for coffee has increased over the years. There tend to be spikes during the winter, however recently it is still popular year-round.
The following graph provided very helpful information for choosing the ideal location. It demonstrates interest by subregion and ranks the level of interest per state. Montana has the second highest interest in coffee at 85. Although Hawaii ranks higher than Montana, it is very isolated and would not be a strong contender for starting a chain. Meanwhile, Oregon and Washinton rank third and fourth and neighbor Montana and Idaho. Therefore the upper west region of the US is a strong place to start the drive-thrus.
Additionally, I wanted to ensure that coffee is still a common topic in Montana, and therefore changed the timeframe to the past 12 months. Montana still ranks second which demonstrates that there is still interest in coffee, even post-pandemic.
Competition
The next factor that I researched was the interest in major competition brands by region. The brands that I focused on were Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, and Dutch Bros. This was helpful because we don’t want to start a chain in a location where our competition already has a strong influence. Dunkin Donuts and Dutch Bros have very little search interest in Montana with a score of 2-3. Starbucks is significantly higher at 43, however that increase is due to the popularity of Starbucks throughout the United States. Once I dove deeper, I saw that Montana was in the bottom five states interested in Starbucks. This means the region has an interest in coffee but its market hasn’t been overrun by the major existing chains.
In Conclusion
Based on Montana’s interest in coffee and lack of interest in competing brands, the location is the ideal start for our coffee drive-thru chain. The market isn’t saturated but has a strong interest. Plus, the surrounding states are strong as well. Oregon and Washinton both have a strong interest in coffee. Additionally, Nevada, which is in the West region, is in the top 5 states interested in drive-thrus. Therefore starting the chain in the upper west will allow for success and further growth.
Sources:
Khan, Gohar F.. Creating Value With Social Media Analytics: Managing, Aligning, and Mining Social Media Text, Networks, Actions, Location, Aps, Hyperlinks, Multimedia, & Search Engines Data (p. 254). CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. Kindle Edition.