College Students\u27 Energy Drink Consumption and Sponsor Recall

Energy drink companies like Red Bull, Monster, Bang, Reign and Celsius annually invest millions of dollars to sponsor a variety of athletes and events across numerous sports. These vast investments raise the question: Which partnerships, sponsorships or activities ultimately make an impact on society and attract new consumers? It is imperative to dissect the factors that impact consumer decisions to purchase specific products in order to more efficiently allocate resources. This research has the potential to aid companies in unearthing decision making patterns of college students regarding energy drink purchases and how these beverages are utilized. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the caffeine consumption habits of college students with relation to energy drink sponsorship/partnership in sport and to test their recall of energy drink sponsorships in sport. The current study adopts a self-administered online survey to collect data. The survey consists of 16 questions, measuring four dimensions of respondents. For the first part, the survey measures college students’ energy drinks consumption frequency and motivations. The second part includes asking for their free recall of the AMA Supercross Championship sponsor. The third part measures aided recall of the sponsor. To assess respondents’ aided sponsor recall, the researcher provides various images of energy drink brands. Lastly, the survey measures demographic information. The survey\u27s online platform is SurveyMonkey, and the survey link will be distributed to college students, mainly in Sport Management at Kennesaw State University. The data collection is scheduled for the last two weeks of March. Collected data will be analyzed on SPSS. Specifically, the respondents\u27 energy drink consumption patterns and sponsor recall rate will be secured