Wonder

Research Outline

Prepared for Jill O. | Delivered April 9, 2020

Starbucks Brand Versus Their Competitors in Canada

Goals

To evaluate the Starbucks brand in Canada and compare it to their key competitors that will include any brand rankings among Canadians in terms of brand affinity or strength of the brands, any descriptive learnings of what Canadians associate with Starbucks, and what drives its strength as a brand in order to inform a client of the strength of the Starbucks brand vs. other well-known brands.

Early Findings

Our initial research on the Starbucks brand versus their key competitors in Canada revealed insights. Here are the key pieces of information we found:
Starbucks Brand Versus Their Competitors in CanadaAccording to a recent study conducted in November of last year, Canadians prefer the Starbucks brand over all other key competitors with the exception of the McDonald's McCafe brand that had a slight edge over the Starbucks brand. 
 65% of Canadians felt positive about the McDonald's McCafe brand because of its good taste and low price versus 63% of Canadians who felt positive about the Starbucks brand because of its good taste, suggesting that the McDonald's McCafe brand only had a slight edge over the Starbucks brand because of its lower price.
The other key competitors of the Starbucks brand that were included in this study were Tim Hortons, Van Houtte, and Second Cup.
Although the Canadian icon Tim Hortons brand has more than twice the number of locations in Canada as the Starbucks brand, the Tim Hortons brand was ranked last for the brand that Canadians prefer, with only 49% who felt positive about this brand and 30% who felt negatively about this brand because of its lesser quality and not tasting as good as other brands.
 60% of Canadians felt positively about the Van Houtte brand, although 30% of these Canadians still remained neutral or undecided about their preferred coffee brand, and 53% of Canadians felt positively about the Second Cup brand.
A less recent survey from 2018 of top brands that Canadians prefer for home brewing coffee found that 30% of Canadians preferred Tim Hortons, 19.4% preferred Folgers, 16% preferred Starbucks, 9.6% preferred Nespresso, 8.8% preferred McCafe, and 7.4% preferred Van Houtte. Second Cup was not ranked as being preferred by Canadians in this survey.