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Dunkin’ Donuts Research Methods
April 8th, 2006There was an article in the Wall Street Journal the other day regarding Dunkin’ Donuts and their latest marketing push to move more towards the Starbucks coffee shop model. What struck me most was the research methods they used — they paid a group of die-hard DnD customers and paid them $100 to switch to Starbucks for a month, then also paid some ‘Bucks regulars to frequent DnD at the same time. At the end of the project they conducted interviews with everyone to find out each customer’s impressions.
The data showed two distinct groups — which DnD refers to as “tribes” — of people. The ‘Bucks regulars felt DnD was unoriginal and boring, while the DnD tribe felt Starbucks was pretentious and snooty.
As a result of all this, DnD is moving towards a more “coffee shop” model, completing their transformation from purely a donut shop in the 80’s to a coffee-first destination with food today. Newely remodeled shops include granite countertops, curved espresso bars, constant music, yogurt parfaits and open pastry shelves. Because their customers, however, are not quite ready for the Starbucks schtick, they are trying to keep this model more down to earth, more straight up coffee and bite to eat and less coffee, cd and witty magnet set. In fact, they recently changed the name of their new “paninis” to “stuffed melts”, since customer feedback suggested that “panini” was too snobby. (One step at a time…)
It will be interesting to see how the remodeling, along with some new marketing campaigns that we should see shortly, will change the perception of DnD over the next year or so. At the very least, their creative research should be applauded.
April 10th, 2006 at 7:00 am
I’m a big Dunkin’ Donuts fan. I eat there way more than I should. I don’t know if I’m ready for changes! I like things as they are. I’d skip making DnD pretty and focus on making service faster. The lines in DnD are crazy!
And do we really need companies cloning Starbucks. There’s a Starbucks on every corner as it is!
I’m going to look up that wall street journal article.
Thanks for the tip!
May 12th, 2006 at 4:07 am
I agree.
DnD serves a different purpose than Starbucks. A fan of both, I go to each for different reasons. I “stop-by” DnD when I am in a hurry, need a quick caffeine fix, and rush off to work. I stop in Starbucks when I have time to kill, am waiting for someone, or want to chill out.
I think that it would be disasterous for DnD to change their customer service model. They survived the Krispy Kream demise because they served a great product(other than doughnuts), and they did it quickly! They are obviously trying to keep the customer in the store longer so that they consider purchasing more than just coffee.
It would have been better to conduct market research to understand the motivations of DnD customers nationwide. What reasons did they go to DnD. Did any DnD customers ever go to Starbucks? Why or why not? If the researchers could distill the benefits of each, they could optimize a better experience for DnD.
March 6th, 2007 at 6:18 am
[…] I wanted to blog about this tribal behavior between the Starbucks tribe and the Dunkin Donuts tribe a while back but didn’t snag it fast enough. Each one is looking to the other to understand what the experience of coffee brings to people’s lives. I don’t know if there’s any ethnography, to observe the customer in their habitat, that they can fall back on that can improve the experience, but it seems that they can use it to start uncovering the problems. […]