Powerade is a sports drink product offered by Coca-Cola. In Australia, it is the top choice for consumers. Powerade occupies about 58% of the Australian market, way ahead of the second and third position players Gatorade (33%) and Maximus (7%) (Roy Morgan Research, 2015). What are reasons behind the popularity of Powerade within Australia?
(Source: Roy Morgan Research, 2015)
The core benefit offered by Powerade is its so clamed performance enhancing feature. Powerade marketed its new version called Ion4 the only available sports drink in Australia that offers all the four essential electrolytes in one bottle. Their amount is also 95% higher than those of its competitors(Adnews, 2015).While this is an important reason why consumers chose Powerade over other products, it is not the only one.
(Source from PowerAde’s official homepage)
One important non-core benefit Powerade has to offer is its awards winning bottle design. Powerade used a sqeeze bottle with a sipper cap. This bottle has a slim figure and is slightly concave in the middle. Such a design both makes it easier for consumers to grab during sports. It also resembles an ideal shape desired by many people. This bottle can also be used with one hand. There is no need for consumers touse both hands to drink from Powerade. The bottle was also designed in a special way to make more squeezable and environmentally friendlier. These features while are non-essential for consumers, they could still add significant value to them.
Another important benefit offered by the product of Powerade is the association between its products and some highly talented sports players. According to a research done by Obesity Policy Coalition, the product of Powerade could only be useful in promoting the performance of people taking a large amount of exercises. Therefore, Powerade is very likely to be only beneficial to professional sports players (Gillette, 2014). The performance enhancing benefit of Powerade is unlikely to be felt by amateur players. In this regard, the association established between the product of Powerade and highly talented sports players could deliver the message the Powerade could truly enhance performanceTherefore, it is not the core benefit of Powerade that attracts consumers, the extended product of Powerade is also important reasons why Powerade could be the best sold sports drink in Australia.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9w0Wu3fuBo
Under the criticism that Powerade could actually has negative health impacts on consumers due to its sugar content similar to the level of many carbonated soft drinks, Powerade offered a new product Powerade Zero. Powerade Zero has no sugar content but offers a similar content of electrolytes and with four flavours. Such a strategy taken by Powerade is called brand umbrella which means put multiple products under the same brand. The clear benefit of this strategy is that the well-recognized benefits of the brand established through prior products can easily be conveyed to the new product. Therefore, there is no need for Powerade to spend a large amount of money to persuade consumers that its new product can also provide similar benefits to enhance their performance. However, the clear disadvantage of such a strategy could also convey the weaknesses of the existing products to the new product. Therefore, there is also a risk that the weaknesses of existing products can also be conveyed to the new product. Giving that Powerade has intentionally named its new product as Powerade Zero which can send strong information that this new version contains zero sugar content, such a negative impacts can be effectively controlled. Therefore, this new product can be very appealing to those consumers who expect to enhance their performance without worrying about their sugar intake.
References :
Adnews. (2015). New Powerade receives multi-million dollar push. Adnews, retrieved on Apr 19th, 2016 from: http://www.adnews.com.au/campaigns/new-powerade-receives-multi-million-dollar-push
Gillette, R. (2014). Sports drinks help athletic performance and nothing else. The Conversation, retrieved on Apr 2016 from: http://theconversation.com/sports-drinks-help-athletic-performance-and-nothing-else-32041
Roy Morgan Research. (2015). Go hard or go home: sports drinks in Australia. Retrieved on Apr 19th, 2016 from: http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/6382-sports-drinks-in-australia-201508102306
Student Name: Qianwen Jiang
Student ID:216007129
