Soda Science – Marketing Your Soda

Opening Discussion

Have a conversation with your students about test marketing. What sort of work goes into a product before a company sells it? Companies test market products (try them out on a few people before they sell them to lots of people) in order to decide if any changes need to be made. This marketing includes trying out different names and packaging, and also tries to find out if changes need to be made to the recipe.

The Challenge

Try your recipes out on your classmates and see if they like it as much as you do.

Doing the Activity

1. Have teams brainstorm some different names for their sodas. They might think about what it is that makes their soda unique and build their ideas around that.
2. Each team should make a batch or two of their soda—people will need to taste the soda in order to comment on it. Make sure you remind your students to use Dixie cups when they are tasting the soda.
3. Next, have each team survey their other classmates. The people who have created the soda being tested will be called the “marketers”, and the people trying the soda out will be called the “tasters”. There are a few different kinds of surveys you can do—you can decide which to try or have your students pick after you describe each type of survey to them. The first two surveys take less time and can have every student tasting and commenting on every other team’s sodas. The last two surveys take more time and might be best done with only a few “tasters” per team:
   • Simple Survey – in this survey, the “tasters” simply say whether they like the soda or not. This kind of survey does not give much information that will help in making changes to a product but can still be helpful.
   • Attribute Survey – In this survey, the “marketers” ask the “tasters” whether they like or don’t like each of the different characteristics of their soda – the flavor, the sweetness, the color, the fizziness and the name of the soda. This survey yields much more useful information.
   • Scaled Survey – This survey will give even more information. The “marketers” ask the “tasters” how much they like each of the different characteristics, on a scale of 1 to 10. A rating of 2 on “flavor” would mean they really didn’t like the taste of the soda; a rating of 10 on “sweetness” would mean they thought the amount of sugar was perfect.
   • Opinion Survey – This survey will collect the most information, but also takes a lot of time to conduct. In this survey, the “marketers” not only ask the “tasters” whether they like or don’t like a characteristic, but what it is that they like or don’t like. For instance, rating “sweetness” as 2 out of 10 doesn’t tell the marketers if the taster thought the soda was too sweet or not sweet enough. Asking the taster directly will get that information.

Let’s Talk About It

After conducting the surveys, bring your students together to talk about the process. Were the surveys helpful? Are there any changes they would like to make to their recipes or their soda name based on the survey feedback? Once they make those changes, how will they let the world know about their great new creations?

Build On What They Talked About

After the discussion, have your students go back to their teams and discuss any changes that they might make. Have them make a batch of their new soda using the suggestions from the surveys. If you have time, you can move on to session 4 creating advertisements for their new sodas.