Case study portfolio

Overview The new millennium has ushered in a wave of synthetic, caffeinated high -energy drinks targeted at the youth market. Over the past 10 years, the consumption of caffeinated beverages intended to "energise" has increased significantly. Energy drinks were recently shown to comprise 20% of the total convenience store beverage market, with "Red Bull" and "V" accounting for over 97% of sales in this multimillion - dollar industry. Increasingly, toxicity from caffeine overdose is being reported to hospitals and poisons centers (Gunja and Brown 2012).

The aim of this assessment task is to identify and report on the quantitative measures and content of messages related to energy drinks on Twitter.

Preparatory task

1 Familiarise your self with Twitter by creating your own account

2. Identify, download and skim - read: Burton, Dadich and Soboleva (2013)

3 Choose any energy drink brand

4. The chosen brand/company must have an official (corporate) Twitter account in USA or Australia

5. The chosen brand's Twitter accounts must have a minimum level of activity -that is, on average one tweet a day in the past three months

6. Download and save the first 100 English - language tweets generated from the search

In line with the measures used by Burton, Dadich and Soboleva (2013) analyse your chose n brand's Twitter account on the basis of:
- Account Activity and Connectedness
- Efficiency of Communication
- Influence
- Interactivity

Note: You need to define these measures based on existing literature and report the extent of these activities by your chosen company analysing their contents.

This may involve categorising

Tweets in terms of these variables, analysing information and describing Twitter activities of your chosen company based on your analy sis. Is there any other form of quantitative analysis which can be undertaken to analyse the Twitter accounts? (You may wish to refer to some other journal articles to see if any further type of quantitative analysis needs to be undertaken).

Burton, Dadich and Soboleva (2013), 'Competing Voices: Marketing and Counter - Marketing Alcohol on Twitter': Journal of Nonprofit & Public Sector Marketing , vol. 25, pp. 186 - 209.

Additional Reading: Burton, Soboleva and Khan (2014) Smoke spots: promoting smoking w ith social media: Tobacco Control.

Guidelines - Case Study Part A

Introduction: 100- word
- What is happening in the industry? (Number of companies operating; age of the industry; profitability of this industry etc.)
- What are the profiles of the market that have been targeted by different companies? (Demographic; psychographic profile etc.)
- Why do people perceive this product positively? What are the possible reasons for buying such product?
- Are there any criticisms of this product and companies that are selling this product?
- To what extent companies are carrying out promotional activities to promote this product? How social media platforms are being used and how do they influence consumer's perception of this product?
- Are there any criticisms against the use of social media platforms to promote such controversial product?
- Broad definition of the problems that may arise due to the extensive use of social media platform s to promote such product.
- What this report is trying to do?

Objectives:400 word

- What is the purpose for doing this research? -
- Are you trying to solve a problem?
- What is this problem all about? ---Problem is: we would like to know how companies are using twitter platform to do they marketing communication in terms of Account activity and connectivity , Efficiency , influence , interactivity.
- Broadly describe the problems and then narrow them down based on the variables mentioned in the nominated article (e.g., are people highly engaged with Twitter activities which may contribute to the success of the marketing campaign launched through this platform)
- Narrow down the objective of this research focusing on the variables that the article suggests as potential causes for problems (e.g., to find out the extent to which people are engaged with this type of activities to understand their potential impact on the human behaviour).

Literature Review:150-200word
- Maintain separate heading and paragraph for each variable.(variables are :Account activity and connectivity , Efficiency , influence , interactivity )
- How active this company?
- How well connected this company in terms of using the twitter ?
- How does Twitter platform work-define basic terms that you will use in the report (e.g., what is twitter platform, tweet, re-tweet etc.)
- Define each variable using information from the base article - you may define further adding information from other relevant articles to add to the credibility of your work.
- Explain how each variable may contribute to the overall influence of consumption behaviour.
- Discuss potential impact of this variable on consumption behaviour.
- Discuss the importance of studying this variable to understand consumer responses to such marketing activities.
(Claims should be supported by the literatures from the relevant field and referenced. Students are not only required to read Burton, Dadich and Sobelove (2013) article, but also encouraged to find and read other relevant articles to support their arguments - articles may be relevant even if they are not directly associated with ‘energy drinks' but instead describe the role of Twitter or other social media platforms to promote other controversial products like cigarette or alcohol).
Note: Reference of other relevant articles may be found in the base article

Methods:150-200
- How did you identify these variables (mention that you reviewed literature - in general base article is mentioned)
- Are there other articles that measured these same variables?
- How each variable is measured? (students should read and understand the formula from the base article and discuss how they will measure the same variables for their research)
- Did other articles use different formula to measure these variables?
- Why would you consider using the definition of the base article to do the measurement?
- How many tweets are being used in your analysis?
- How did you extract data from the platform - the procedure involved

(Claims should be supported by the literatures from the relevant field and referenced. Students are not only required to read Burton, Dadich and Sobelove (2013) article, but also encouraged to find and read other relevant articles to support their arguments - articles may be relevant even if they are not directly associated with ‘energy drinks' but instead describe the role of Twitter or other social media platforms to promote other controversial products like cigarette or alcohol).
Note: Reference of other relevant articles may be found in the base article

Findings:150-200
- Findings should be reported based on the measurement of the identified variables (e.g. report should indicate whether people are connected with this platform)
- Use table, graph etc. to report findings
- Findings from this study can be supported using results from other studies if there are any (e.g. other studies may found Twitter platform or other social media platform to play a very active role in connecting people to reach their marketing communications - you can refer to these studies even if they are not focused on energy drinks but uses other controversial products as subjects of interest)

Conclusion:100-150 word

- Summarise different sections of the report to draw conclusion
- This is not the section to make recommendations
- You will take a position based on the findings and draw conclusions accordingly
- You may briefly discuss background, objectives, method of this research and make closing remarks based on the findings

Case - Competing Voices: Marketing and Counter-Marketing Alcohol on Twitter by SUZAN BURTON, ANN DADICH, and ALENA SOBOLEVA