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Crazy Donuts Marketing Professionals
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Research Project Proposal, October 22, 2014
Azmina Rahemanji, Jianlan Chen, Kaan Zaim, & Ramy El-Refai
The Johns Hopkins Carey Business School
Marketing Strategy
BU.450.710.82.FA14
Dr. Haiyang Yang
Abstract
Our research group, company profile, and team charter plans are written in the following proposal.

Dunkin Donuts

Considering the amount of competition in the coffee industry, it’s fascinating that Dunkin Donuts has served not only the United States but internationally for over 50 years and has continued to expand. Our team is interested in learning and researching their marketing strategies, expansion strategies, and vision to maintain their leading position in the coffee business. The team will look back to the historic rollouts of campaigns, the known ‘America runs on Dunkin’ advertising campaign, the recent use of innovative marketing practices like the inclusion of Vine videos in TV advertising, and current headlines that read plans by DD to market to Californians after an initial failure in the Starbucks dominated state.

As told by the company: “Dunkin' Donuts is the world's leading baked goods and coffee chain, serving more than 3 million customers per day. Dunkin' Donuts sells 52 varieties of donuts and more than a dozen coffee beverages as well as an array of bagels, breakfast sandwiches and other baked goods” (dunkindonuts.com, 2014).

Without having conducted extensive brand research, the team can speculate on the following: since Dunkin Donuts is a leading coffee chain throughout the world, and based on its awareness as well as its numerous location sites, the marketing strategy appears to have been successful, or at least in part. One evaluation method will be comparing its market share to large competitors such as Starbucks and Caribou. Dunkin Donuts positioning and the major sources of revenue will be examined and reflected on by our team, together with the examination of marketing promotions and ad campaigns. This way the team will look and form insights on both Dunkin Donuts’ current position in the market both as a direct result of and in spite of marketing efforts.

Market Research Plan

The majority of our research will be conducted via the internet, online databases and research, and information provisioned by Dunkin Brands, parent company to Dunkin Donuts and Baskin Robbins. We will search in Dunkin Donuts’ longstanding history of advertising, and compare this with a timeline on the rise of Starbucks and other coffee chains, as popular destinations to be a ‘third place’ home for many Americans. The team will also examine international advertising, market campaigns, consumer behavior, and positioning for Dunkin Donuts between foreign competitors in different markets. Team Charter

Our team’s plan is to divide the workload evenly as best as possible, with a scheduled weekly check-in meeting or web-conference via Google Hangouts when urgent or when pressing materials are needed. The team will try to identify each other’s strong suits and allot assignments accordingly, to ensure we are each capitalizing on our strengths and putting our best foot forward. The research will be divided after an initial Research Brainstorm Meeting on October 22nd, this way each individual team member is involved in gathering data and information that can be cross-referenced. Any missing items or additional research will be assigned in tasks for our team members to complete alongside each of our deliverables.

We plan to meet in-person when necessary, but have set-up a Google Drive folder to provide a central location for all of our files, research, and documents for deliverables where we can each edit documents in real time without saving over each other’s work.
References

Thorn, B. (2014). The Starbucksification of Dunkin' Donuts. Nation's Restaurant News, 48(19), 110.

Dunkin Brands. DD IP Holder LLC. Dunkindonuts.com. 2011.