BUSINESS MATTERS

For data-collection firm, tracking Super Bowl game is all business

Made your Super Bowl picks yet?

Not the teams, rather what snacks and drinks you plan to buy. Where you buy them. Your plans to watch the game with whom and where.

These are the sorts of details that determine winners and losers among retailers and consumer packaged-goods companies leading up to the game on Feb. 7.

Field Agent, the Fayetteville mobile research and retail data collection firm, is for a second year putting together a scoreboard tracking the game day decisions of at least 500 smartphone users across the country.

Last year's survey -- conducted in real time -- quizzed 529 of the 850,000 who have downloaded the company's mobile application. Surveys often center on shopping habits and where certain products can be found, but also gather other information that is used to help clients better understand customers.

Research on shoppers between the ages of 18 and 56-plus revealed that 74 percent of participants watched the 2015 game in their own homes. Only about 1 percent watched in restaurants or bars, which means retailers were handling the bulk of food and drinks for shoppers.

Field Agent will again be tracking that information, and what products and retailers most shoppers used. Users also are being asked to reveal their level of social media interaction during the game and how they plan to spend halftime. Will they be glued to the TV for Coldplay's performance? Napping during Coldplay's performance? Eating?

As entertaining as the results might be to peruse as a member of the general public, this is business for Field Agent. It is interested in more than just quirky facts people can share at their Super Bowl parties.

Their scoreboard represents a chance to show off Field Agent's abilities to capture and analyze real-time data.

"It's a capability presentation," Field Agent's Cory Nelson said. "People tuning in for a live event [all] at the same time is increasingly rare. The Super Bowl is a great event for capturing real-time data on one of the rare times that most Americans are sitting down watching the same show."

Those 500 respondents -- who report their shopping habits by submitting photos via the app -- represent just a fraction of the 114.4 million viewers who tuned in for the Super Bowl in 2015, but its enough of a sample size that Field Agent feels confident in sharing its results with the public and clients. A 30-second commercial, by the way, will cost advertisers $5 million this year.

How do your game day habits compare with respondents? Here's a look at some of the data collected:

• Wal-Mart emerged as the preferred place to shop with 57 percent of survey participants, ranking above competitors Kroger, Target, Whole Foods and others.

• About 64 percent of shoppers, regardless of where they shopped, spent at least $25 on food and drinks.

• Coca-Cola was the top soft drink among participants at 26 percent. Pepsi came in second at 13.6 percent and, believe it or not, there were people drinking Fanta (1.6 percent).

• Prefer something a little stronger? Bud Light was the top beer at 13 percent, and vodka was the top liquor consumed by about 25.8 percent of respondents.

• Nearly 76 percent of folks surveyed named "salty snacks" among their list of must-haves to enhance their parties, followed by soft drinks (65 percent), alcohol (53 percent) and "meat products" (46 percent).

• All those salty snacks, meat products and sugary drinks led 76 percent of those surveyed to eat more frequently on Super Bowl Sunday, and 85 percent admitted they consume more calories than they ordinarily do.

No word on what percentage join me in thinking the Monday after the Super Bowl should be a federal holiday.


While we're talking quirky Super Bowl data, the following was shared by Fayetteville communications firm Mitchell Communications on behalf of Wal-Mart:

Take all the chicken wings sold by the retailer in the week leading up to the game, and the weight would be equivalent to five fully-fueled 747 jets. The Internet tells me a fully-fueled 747 weighs 735,000 pounds at takeoff. So that's, what, about 3.7 million pounds of wings?

Consumers will purchase about 35.2 million pounds of potato chips at Wal-Mart. That's the equivalent of 440 fully-loaded 18-wheeler trucks, which weigh about 80,000 pounds each.

Those chips will be dipped into 90 million ounces of dip, or the equivalent weight of more than 6 million footballs.

If you have a tip, call Chris Bahn at (479) 365-2972 or email him at [email protected]

SundayMonday Business on 01/31/2016

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