The Neuro-market researchers at Alpha-Diver, in partnership with Beverage Digest, have produced a “Sports and Energy Drinks Deep Dive” report extracted from The Bev50 study conducted and released earlier this summer. A companion webinar details the findings.

BACKGROUND. Earlier this summer, Alpha-Diver conducted a proprietary research study of almost 3,000 consumers to uncover the psychological factors driving beverage consumption behavior. The result was The Bev50. In this report and companion webinar, Alpha-Diver’s neuroscientists ranked 50 packaged beverage brands based on consumer perception as measured by three metrics:

— Trajectory: Measures whether a brand’s usage is increasing, stable, or decreasing.

— Routinization: Measures how routine a brand’s consumption has become.

— Attachment: Measures how difficult the brand would be to give up.

“This not only rates and ranks these power brands, but explains the ‘why’ behind their performance and reveals any challenges ahead,” said Alpha-Diver Director of Research and Principal Neuroscientist T. Sigi Hale. (Listen to Hale discuss his work during an episiode of Beverage Digest's The Breeze podcast HERE).

GOING DEEPER: SPORTS AND ENERGY CATEGORIES. Alpha-Diver has since gone back into those survey results to pull out specific insights for two of the most important, profitable, and competitive beverage categories today — Sports Drinks and Energy Drinks. In a market where sports drinks can be caffeinated and energy drinks are pitched for fitness, researchers wanted to know what consumer insight explains that category blurring.

To do that, the scientists measured how survey respondents associated popular or growing sports and energy drink brands with four subconscious drivers of decision making: Function, Experience, Conformity, and Impulse. From the data, researchers concluded that the sports and energy drink categories do essentially the same “emotional job” for consumers, which is to help them “feel good right now,” according to the report.

“These categories provide highly functional benefits, and yet, consumer decisions are driven by impulse, not function,” the researchers concluded.

The report goes on to evaluate how major sports drink brands such as Gatorade, Powerade, and Prime, as well as energy drink brands such as Monster, Red Bull, Celsius, and Bang are positioning themselves relative to the drivers identified by Alpha-Diver. The report also breaks out various Bev50-ranked brands across demographic groups.