Starbucks Cups Survey: New Cups Unlikely to Really Impact Sales

Starbucks made headlines recently by unveiling a new plain red cup design for the holiday season, rather than one with Christmas themed symbols like the company has used in past years. This move has elicited strong opinions, both positive and negative. So what do people think about the Starbucks cups and about holiday marketing and branding in general?

Starbucks Customers

In Ask Your Target Market’s latest survey, 6% of respondents said they buy drinks from Starbucks every day. 7% do so a few times per week. 7% go there about once a week. 8% said they buy drinks from Starbucks a few times per month. Another 8% do so about once per month. 23% rarely ever buy drinks from Starbucks. And 42% never do.

Starbucks Cups

When it comes to the new cups, 32% said they have a positive opinion of them. 17% have a negative opinion of Starbucks’ new red cups. And 51% are neutral or haven’t seen the new cups yet.Overall, it seems unlikely that the new cups will impact sales of Starbucks drinks in any significant way. 5% said that they will likely go to Starbucks more often because of the new cups. 8% said they’ll probably go less often. 9% said they plan to stop going altogether, though many said they already never go to Starbucks. And 78% said that the new cups won’t impact how often they go to Starbucks.

Holiday Branding

But Starbucks isn’t the first company to make waves with holiday themed branding (or lacktherof). Generally, 49% of respondents said they have a positive opinion of companies that include Christmas themed symbols in their branding over the holiday season. Just 9% have a negative opinion of companies that use Christmas symbols in their branding. And 42% are neutral or have no opinion. You can view the complete survey results in the widget below and be sure to click “Open Full Report” to take advantage of all the chart and filter options.Photo Credit: RedCup from FlickrWhat do you want to know? If you need some consumer insights on a particular topic, let us know in the comments below and we’ll consider it for an upcoming survey post.

Results were collected on November 10 via AYTM’s online survey panel.