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Methodology

          Staying ahead and consistently improving your business is critical for long-term success in the ever-changing and competitive coffee sector. A comprehensive and methodical approach is required to find and implement the best approaches to develop a coffee business. In this report we have researched how to best improve a coffee business through private databases, academic journals, and performing a local study. We have utilized these research and experimental methods to provide data that can be analyzed and put into recommendations. These recommendations are the best representation of our gathered data and the team’s collective input. 

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In Person Meeting With Our Client: Kelly Niiyama

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          Our team scheduled a meeting with our client owner of Nine Lives Cat Cafe Kelly Niiyama on September 29, 2023 at 4:30 pm. During this meeting the scope of challenge and past attempts of marketing for Nine Lives Cat Cafe was discussed. Kelly Niiyama named our task of increasing cafe sales, and attracting more college students to her coffee shop. This information allowed us to set our main recommendations to increase coffee sales and promote Nine Lives Cat Cafe through implementing loyalty programs, discounts, promotions, enhancing community engagement, using social media to advertise, and placing an internal focus on promotion of coffee. 

 

Digital Research: Using Private Academic Databases to Further Our Knowledge on Increasing Revenue

 

          The main focus of our research was how to increase a small businesses profits through advertisement. We gathered information through reliable academic sources from the IUPUI Library Databases (ProQuest Central, EBSCO Academic Search Premier) which are exclusive to IUPUI students and through Google Scholar. With this information we obtained a better understanding of how we can help Nine Lives Cat Cafe increase their monthly sales from $13,000 to $20,000. 

 

Research Terms: Boolean Phrases

 

  • Advertising for “small businesses” — ProQuest & EBSCOHost

  • Using “tik tok” as advertising — ProQuest & EBSCOHost

  • How to “increase profits” in the “food industry” — EBSCOHost

  • Increasing sales through “charity donations”— ProQuest

  • “Marketing Strategies” — ProQuest

  • How to expand a “coffee business” — EBSCOHost

  • “Nine Lives Cat Cafe” — Google

  • Marketing AND “Social Media” —  ProQuest

  • “Selling more product” AND “Coffee Shop” — ProQuest & EBSCOHost

  • Volunteers AND “Local Business”

  • “Loyalty Programs” 

  • “Customer Retention”

  • Atmosphere AND “Increased Sales”

  • “Kelley School of Business”

  • “Gen Z” AND “Social Media”

 

Local Study: Using Google Forms to Ask College Students about Coffee & Social Media

 

          Our next goal was to collect and quantify data from our local students at IUPUI so we could better correlate the social media platform that best grows the cat cafe’s coffee business, touch base with Kellys target audience, understand the importance of loyalty programs, and how feline welfare could be furthered.

Our survey was created using Google Forms which is free, easy to use, and provided us with graphs that will be shown later on in this report. Our survey consisted of 7 “yes” or “no” questions and 3 multiple choice questions. We determined this format was best for our respondents, the format made our questions easy to answer and provided us with the best form of acquiring data due to the multiple choice questions allowing us to see the platforms most used by the younger generation. The survey was shared to peers and our social media accounts via an electronic link. Our goal was to have 50 respondents and we received 57. 

          With the results of our survey, we were able to link the guaranteed return of customers with loyalty programs, promotions, knowledge of feline welfare, birthday gifts, and discounts. The 3 multiple choice questions determined what platforms could improve the connection with Kelly’s target audience of college students and help increase sales for Nine Lives Cat Cafe which we concluded were TikTok and Instagram. This data helped us focus our report on social media marketing and the implementation of loyalty programs, discounts, promotions.

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