Danone Aqua | A Study on the Preferred Features of Bottled Water | What are the preferred features that consumers would consider in buying a certain bottled water brand? | | Maisha Chowdhury | 7/21/2014 |

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1 Introduction
Consumers often buy bottled water, but what exactly are they thinking when they pick one brand over the other? We aim to conduct a study, with the aid of a questionnaire in order to find out these preferred features in a bottle of water. We will be doing this on behalf of Aqua.
We have conducted a survey, by passing around a questionnaire in order to help answer our question.
Following are our Research question, research objectives, research plan, implementation and interpretations of our findings as well as our conclusion and recommendations.
1.1 Problem definition and Development of research objectives
On behalf of Aqua we would like to find out what are the preferred features that consumers would consider when buying bottled water. We would like to help Aqua find out what is liked by consumers so that the company can continue to improve upon their product and give the customers a better version of the product.
Research Question: What are the preferred features that consumers would consider in buying a certain bottled water brand?
The main objective in trying to find the preferred features that consumer would consider in buying a certain bottled water brand, is to recommend water company to focus and improve the features of their water bottle, that are preferred by most consumers, in order to increase sales. Moreover, since bottled water is the one of the most consumed products in daily life, its sales therefore would be greatly affected by the loyalty of any of its consumers. Thus, the purpose of this problem analysis is to provide the solution that would provide the most advantages to both the producer and consumer sides. In order to analyze the problem, a comparison among various bottled water brands with different yet distinctive features would be necessary, in order to increase the accuracy of the survey conducted for consumers.
1.2 Research objectives:
Exploratory research:
In order to search for the needed information, it is best to interview the manager or marketing department that directly works with the bottled water industry as the primary source, to gain more reliable information of the chosen brands. Bottled water brands with their own different yet distinctive features (e.g. high quality, cheaper price, brand recognition) are preferable as the survey material, so that it is easier for the consumers to recognize the chosen brands. Thus, to choose the right brands, surveying retail store or supermarket that sells various bottled water brands would be necessary to gain more accurate information. Researching from secondary source such as the website and brochure could also be done for the research and provides more convenience. For our research, we will be using mostly primary data gathered from the survey we will perform, by handing out questionnaires. We need to find out why it is that a consumer would choose one particular brand of bottled water over another brand.
Descriptive Research:
In addition, recommendation would be given to managers of bottled water industries, regarding the features preferred by consumers in buying bottled water brand, in order to increase sales and profit, and also satisfy the majority of consumers’ needs and wants. Thus, managers can focus in improving on the specific feature(s), in order to increase sales. Our aim would be to provide them with the analyzed data, and suggested ways of improvement based on our interpretations of the data.
2 Research Plan
The research we will be conducting will consist of both primary and secondary data.
Primary data will be collected by carrying out a survey in the form of a questionnaire in order to obtain the relevant information regarding our research question. We would like to know about the preferred features consumers could consider when buying bottled water. We will carry out the research by handing out the questionnaires we have made to those we consider to be potential customers.
In addition to primary data, our research will also consist of secondary data obtained from books, and the internet regarding the sale of bottled water. We will also gather secondary information, which is already available in regards to the sales of bottled water as well as customers in general.
2.1 Research Approaches:
Our main source of information will be our primary data in the form of the questionnaire. This will be our research approach. We will be gathering descriptive information through the use of our questionnaire.
2.2 Contact Methods:
We will contact people by handing out a questionnaire consisting of ten questions to fifteen different people at Inti College Indonesia. We will contact them by handing out our questionnaire to them at Inti College. The benefit of using this as the main method is that we can obtain information quickly and also directly from the respondents. We can directly contact the potential buyers of bottled water.
Our method will be to hand out each questionnaire to a different person, and then collect it back once they have filled out the questionnaire prepared by us. We will choose the student at random, not based on any specific characteristics. They can be male or female.
2.3 Sampling Plan:
This means that our sampling unit will be Inti students. Our sample size will be fifteen.
Our target audience will be anyone who is a buyer of bottled water. As a result the population can consist of anybody, male or female of varying ages. For our sample, we will be conducting our research out on Inti students who will be our sample population. There are no specific characteristics in the people we survey as the audience who would be likely to buy bottled water can be anybody.
2.4 Research Instruments:
The research instrument we will be using is a questionnaire. We will design a questionnaire of about 10 questions in total; this will include some questions on demographic data as well as questions relating to our study. We will gather information on the respondent’s demographics in addition to the preferred features they consider when buying a bottle of water. The main aim of our questionnaire will be to find out why people choose to buy a particular bottled water compared to others.

3 Action plan Date | Task | Status | 19/06/2014 | Problem Definition | Complete | 24/06/2014 | Research Objectives | Complete | 26/06/2014 | Research plan | Complete | 01/07/2014 | Create Questionnaire | Complete | 0/07/2014 | Distribute Questionnaire | Complete | 08/07/2014 | Implementation & Data Processing | Complete | 17/07/2014 | Interpretation & conclusion | In-progress | 21/07/2014 | Submission | |

4 Implementation
The questionnaire will be passed around to the students of Inti College Indonesia. We will be circulating 15 questionnaires at random. The circulation of the questionnaire will be done on Friday the 4th of July, during lunch time, so that we can get a variety of responses.
By passing around the questionnaire we will collect the responses, which is the raw data and process it, to look at the various trends, the majorities and also the minorities, which will help us to determine the answer to our research question. After the data has been processed, we will analyze the data in various ways as is explained below.
The data analysis techniques we will be using are frequency distributions, which will help us to determine the frequency as well as what most of the customers want. We will also use descriptive statistics, in particular, measures of central tendency such as mean and mode in determining what majority of the people chose. In addition, we will use cross tabulation to determine what the relations are between the different categories, if there are any existing. We will present our findings using bar graphs.
Frequency distributions will be made for price, packaging design, brand recognition, health benefits, accessibility, and taste which are features of the bottled water. In addition we also have the frequencies for preferred brand, size and place of purchase. This will be used to individually judge each category.
We will use SPSS to analyze our data. The tables as well as the raw data we have collected will be included in the appendix. Our final task will be to interpret the data, and reach some conclusions based on the information that we have gathered.
4.1 Frequency distribution analysis technique:
“A graph or data set organized to show the frequency of occurrence of each possible outcome of a repeatable event observed many times.” (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2013) This best explains the definition of frequency distribution, in terms of statistics. Percentiles are also used to represent the proportion of the frequencies, to show the concentration of the frequencies in certain parts. The results may then be presented through histogram; to show differences of the frequencies being concentrated through number of occurrences, and pie chart; to represent the proportion of the concentrated frequencies, showed through proportioned percentiles, in order to distinguish the proportion of the concentrated frequencies as a whole part. “A bar chart is often used to display frequencies; a pie chart graphically shows relative frequencies” (Keller, 2009, pp. 21-24). Through this data analysis technique, it is easier to analyze and see which parts of the features that is most favored by majority consumers, since frequencies are shown to be concentrated whether almost evenly or unevenly in some parts. Thus, an analysis and conclusion can be made, based on the results of the consumers.
4.2 Measures of central tendency analysis technique
One of the techniques we will be using will be measures of central tendency. “A measure of central tendency is a single value that attempts to describe a set of data by identifying the central position within that set of data. As such, measures of central tendency are sometimes called measures of central location. They are also classed as summary statistics.” (Lund Research ltd., 2013) There are two types of these that we will use in particular, the mean and the mode.
Mean refers to the average value, and “is computed by adding all the values in the data set divided by the number of observations in it” (Manikandan, 2009). We will be utilizing the mean to determine the average of all the statistics, for example, what was the average for each category, based on the 15 people that we have chosen as our sample.
The number which appears most times in a set of numbers is called the mode (Pierce, 2011). We will be utilizing the mode to determine which number appears the most times, or rather what was the most popular choice made by our sample selection.

4.3 Cross tabulations data analysis technique
‘Cross tabulations (also referred to as cross-tabs) analyze-survey-results are a quantitative research method appropriate for analyzing the relationship between two or more variables’ (Wyse, 2012). We will be using Cross tabulations to determine the relation between different features, to see if, at all there is any relationship between our chosen features and whether it directly or inversely affects other features.
4.2 Frequency data collection:
The rating of 1 to 5 indicates the rank of importance. 1 indicates as least important, while 5 indicates as very important. Some of the graphs’ numbers indicates options of answers instead of rating, which is going to be explained under this * sign.

*Amount paid (IDR) for the following numbers; 1=2,000-3,000, 2= 3,000-4,000, 3=4,000-5,000, 4=5,000-10,000, 5=10,000 and up
*Amount paid (IDR) for the following numbers; 1=2,000-3,000, 2= 3,000-4,000, 3=4,000-5,000, 4=5,000-10,000, 5=10,000 and up

*Preferred brand numbers indication; 1=Ades, 2=Nestle, 3=Aqua
*Preferred brand numbers indication; 1=Ades, 2=Nestle, 3=Aqua

*Place of purchase numbers indication; 1=vending machine, 2=supermarket, 3=convenience store, 4=restaurant/café, 5=others (stalls)
*Place of purchase numbers indication; 1=vending machine, 2=supermarket, 3=convenience store, 4=restaurant/café, 5=others (stalls)

4.2 Sample Consumers surveyed:

*Gender numbers indication: 1=male, 2=female
*Gender numbers indication: 1=male, 2=female

*Age numbers indication: 2=12-20, 3=21-49
*Age numbers indication: 2=12-20, 3=21-49

5 Interpretations
5.1 Interpretation of the data
5.1.1 Interpretation of the frequency data results
Here are the following results and analysis of the importance of bottled water’s features according to consumers: * Price: here the frequency concentrates mostly on the middle rating taking up to 46.7% of the frequencies’ proportion, which creates a drastically increasing curve in the middle of the graph. This indicates that price is only a moderate factor that consumer would consider as important in purchasing a bottled water. This indicates that consumers may consider the price to be only moderately important, depends on the benefits they receive relative to the price.

* Packaging design: as the frequencies concentrate on mostly rating 3 and 4, almost equally distributed, which indicates that this feature is being rated as fairly high in importance, maybe because the design is the most eye catching feature and differentiates bottled water brands, in order to avoid homogeneity in various bottled water brands.

* Brand recognition: as this frequency results excludes 1 and 2 being the lowest rank of importance, while a very high frequencies is being concentrated in rank 4, indicates that this feature is being is being rated as highly important by majority of consumers (takes up to 60% of the proportion). 26.7% of sample consumers rank 5 as very important, which takes a quite high proportion as well, followed by rank 3 being the last. Apparently brand recognition plays an import role in positioning themselves among consumers’ minds, as consumers choose water brand they recognize well, as it is more trusted.

* Health benefits: the majority of frequencies being concentrated and distributed almost equally on rank 4 and 5, which rates this feature as being highly important. Although some consumers rank 1 for the importance, which might indicates that they might not notice the differences of the health benefits made by the water brand, as the effect would be indirectly experienced and rather time consuming.

* Accessibility: majority of the frequencies are being highly concentrated equally on rank 4 and 5 (based on the sample population), which means that this factor is being considered as very important in purchasing a bottled water. This is one of the most important features preferred by sample consumers based on the overall frequency results, because bottled water is a daily-consumed product, which consumers tend to put minimal effort in purchasing it. Thus, consumers tend to purchase nearby water that are easy to access. “Because the majority of ground water in Jakarta has been contaminated, it is highly advised to use purchase bottled water for drinking and cooking. Because of the high temperatures in the tropics it is recommended that adults have at least 8 full glass of water daily to help your body cope with overheating.” (Expat Web Site Association Jakarta, 2014). As it has been mentioned by the following statement, living in tropical country as Indonesia requires a high daily intake of water, which also influences the high needs of consumers to easily access bottled water. Moreover, in order to cope with living with the bustling lifestyle in urban area as Jakarta, an easy access of bottled water highly influences consumers’ purchasing activities.

* Taste: frequencies concentrate highly on the median rank (3) and 4, which indicates that this feature is rated as fairly high in importance. Water’s flavor and smell being ranked as fairly important, because consumers want to enjoy daily-consumed products.
5.1.2 Most commonly purchased bottled water’s price:
According to the results, majority of frequencies that concentrate in number 1 and 2 indicates that consumers tend to purchase for lower to moderate price range. Since water in one of the most consumable daily products, it would sums up a huge amount of customer’s equity (lifetime costs of purchasing), which becomes the main reason why majority of customers prefer lower to average price range, in order to economize their lifetime spending, especially since water products are consumed in large quantities, which would make a huge difference in lifetime spending.
5.1.3 Importance of packaging design’s features:
Here are the following results and analysis of the importance of the features of bottled water’s packaging design: * Sustainability: here the frequencies concentrate very highly on the median rank, and also fairly high on rank 4, which indicates that this feature is rather of high importance. It indicates that consumers are fairly aware of nowadays-ecological issues, and the recycling ability of the water bottle packaging, in order to help conserve the ecological environment.

* Durability: with most frequencies being concentrated and almost equally distributed on rank 3 and 4, which means this feature is considered as rather important, especially since durable packaging plays an important role in maintaining the quality of the water packaged inside.

* Shape: the frequency concentrates highly on the median rank, which shows normal skewness. It means that the shape of the design considered as moderately important and quite eye catching, especially since on nowadays, bottled water industries started to improvise the shapes of their packaging design to show distinctiveness.

* Color: while majority of frequency concentrate on the median rank, it also highly concentrates on rank 1, which means while the color can be perceived as moderately important, many consumers also do not perceive the color as being an important feature of packaging design. This perception is caused by the majority of bottled water packaging design that usually shows transparency and lacks of colors, which then becomes the standard of packaging design.

* Size: here the frequencies concentrate mostly on the median rank, and rank 4, which means that this feature is being perceived as fairly important, as different sizes are provided to suit consumers’ needs, although most of the standardized size is 600 ml, which suits the average of customers’ needs.
5.1.4 Preferred bottled water brand:
Here, a very high concentration of frequency can found in number 2, which represents the AQUA brand. AQUA being the most preferred bottled water brand among the given 3 indicates the features favored by the loyal consumers of AQUA. Since AQUA is the most popular and common water brand in Indonesia with a quite decent quality and price, which suits the market here. Thus, with such popularity, people tend to involuntarily prefer to purchase this brand because they feel they have known well and trust this brand the most as compared to others. “...the brand is number one in the market 44% off-trade volume share in 2010. To insure the production water in the country, Aqua always must control the findings of new water resources. Furthermore, the brand is perceived by the population as a trust brand and high quality bottled water” (Benavent, 2012).
Accessibility also has been known as one of the strongest feature being favored in AQUA, since it is a huge industry; it also has an access to a huge widespread of areas, which enables customers to find this brand in many places. "As time went by, more and more Aqua bottling facilities were set up – not only in order to create new capacities but also to assure both more favorable logistics costs and a distribution network more closely focused on regional needs," says Budi Hartono Susilo, the director responsible for capacity building and projects at DANONE Aqua. After all, water is a business where profit margins are low. It's the quantity that counts.” (Ringier Trade Media Ltd., 2014). From the following statement, it can be concluded that Aqua has been trying to increase its production, and improves its accessibility to widespread areas in Indonesia, in order to gain higher profit. Knowing the fact of Aqua being one of the most well recognized and established water brands in Indonesia, is supported by the high accessibility of Aqua. The more accessible is the brand, influences the increasing popularity of the brand. Thus, many consumers tend to put their trust in Aqua brand, while Aqua also perseveres and keeps improving its quality, in order to maintain consumers’ trusts and to gain more consumers.
“DANONE Aqua has taken a step through the Clean Water Access and Environmental Health program, which is often referred as WASH (Water Access, Sanitation and Hygiene) program. WASH is a community based program to improve the health of thousands of Indonesian families. Together with local government and NGO, we work to improve the condition that is due to water shortage and poor water management,” (The Writerpreneur, 2009). Aqua has been taking a further step forward in getting involved with volunteering work to improve water accessibility and cleanliness problems in Indonesian remote areas. By promoting such social welfare events, would help to improve Aqua’s positive image of its health benefits, sustainability, and increasing popularity, which encourages consumers to purchase Aqua water brand.
5.1.5 Preferred bottled water’s size: 86.7% of the frequency is being concentrated on number 2 (600 ml) as the preferred size, which also indicates the real life market’s standardized size of bottled water. The standard size of 600 ml in general not only provides convenience to be carried around, but also because the size is big enough to be consumed, so that consumers do not need to keep buying another water.
5.1.6 Importance of features in brand recognition:
Here are the following results and analysis of the importance of features of brand recognition in bottled water: * Popularity: the frequencies are concentrated highly and almost equally distributed on rank 3 and 4, which indicates a fairly high importance of the brand’s popularity, as it creates a huge impact in impressing customers.

* Concept: the frequencies are also concentrated highly in rank 3 and 4, which indicates a fairly high rating of this feature’s importance. A brand with good concept, would easily persuade customers in purchasing it, and position itself on the customers’ minds.

* Brand imagery: 60% of the frequency, which is a very high concentration of the proportion, concentrated on rank 4, which indicates a rather high rank importance in this feature. Brand imagery creates a strong image on consumers’ minds, and it is one of the very first things that catch the attention of customers, as imagery gives a strong impression and depiction of a brand.
5.1.7 Most preferred place of purchase:
The following result of the most common place/access in purchasing bottled water is supermarket, followed by convenience store. Most of the frequencies are being concentrated on number 2 and 3 (supermarket and convenient store). This indicates that consumers are willing to go to supermarket to purchase their daily-consumed products, and that usually consumers buy bottled water in large quantities when purchasing in supermarket, in order to get a long lasting stock of water’s availability. While many also purchase bottled water from the convenience store, because convenience are easily accessed, and that usually consumers purchase water from convenience store only when it’s needed. Convenience stores also require less effort for purchasing, because it is more widely available and accessible than supermarket, although it may provide less options.
5.1.8 Sample Consumers:
Majority of the surveyed consumers are teenagers, ranged from age 12-19. Genders are almost evenly distributed between 60% males and 40% females.
5.2 Measures of Central Tendency:
Using the Mean (average) and mode (number that appears most times) we will analyze what general trends we saw in the answers to the questionnaire. The five highest average scores observed were, accessibility (4.20, brand recognition (4.13), popularity (3.73), health benefits (3.67) and brand imagery (3.67).
For price, the average outcome was 3.07, which is close to 3, the average option. This means that people do not consider the price a very important factor, it’s usually not their priority, but at the same time, it is also not insignificant, price does matter. If the price is too high compared to the competitors people will be unlikely to buy our particular brand of bottled water, but lowering the price wouldn’t really mean gaining more customers.
Out of all the available options, accessibility, with a mean or average score of 4.20 was rated the highest. Thus, based on this, we can say that the most important factor in people’s consumption of bottled water which affects their buying is actually how accessible the brand of bottled water is to them.
Popularity with an average or mean score of 3.73 was also quite high. This shows that how popular the brand is actually does matter, in fact even more than price, as we see it scored higher on average than price did. This indicates that more people are willing to buy a popular brand that they have already heard of, compared to an unknown or lesser known brand.
In fact, based on what we have seen, even in a good such as bottled water, brand recognition and popularity of the brand are important factors.
Health benefits also ended up being a factor people consider, getting an above average score, as well as a mode of ‘four’. This means, that most people gave health benefits a rank of four. We can therefore say that many people today consider health benefits an important factor when buying bottled water.

5.3 Cross tabulations
We also cross tabulated brand imagery and popularity as well as brand recognition and popularity to see if there was any links between these categories. According to our data, the two are directly proportional to each other. This means that high brand imagery means that there is high popularity. Also if there is high brand recognition, this also leads to high popularity.

6 Conclusion and Recommendations
Based on our results, there are two important factors which cause a consumer to buy one brand of bottled water over the other. These are accessibility and brand recognition. In order to increase or even retain sales, these two factors must be constantly kept in mind.
Convenience stores and supermarkets rated highest as the place where people buy bottled water. Since accessibility was most important factor, the company should make sure that they continue to distribute and supply their product to various different supermarkets as well as convenience stores. People will of course choose to buy the product that is available to them, so the Aqua needs to make sure that their product is available to the market.
Next is brand recognition which is how recognized the brand is. In general, we can say that the branding of the product is important when people choose to buy bottled water. According to our survey results, Aqua is currently the most popular brand of bottled water, but with other competitors coming up with a similar product, Aqua must strive to retain the popularity of the brand. This can be done through various forms of advertisements and promotions. The important thing is to retain the popularity, by making sure people don’t forget about the brand.
Health benefits, is also an important factor. When it comes to health benefits, the product must be advertised and promoted as being a good choice for the health-conscious people. In this situation, it is important to market both the brand and the product as being health conscious. One thing they can perhaps do is come up with a campaign that will show the people that their water is one of the healthier options available to the customers.

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Appendices