Public Relations Research Final Project

By Natalya Melian

We want to thank Lazydaze Counterculture for

allowing us to utilize their website data for our
research project!

https://www.lazydazeco.com
Introduction:

Our client is Lazydaze Coffee and Counterculture. Lazydaze was founded in 2004 and

opened its San Marcos location in November of 2018. The theme of their store is to allow

customers to have a space to “live and think freely” as well as take a step back from the norms of

society and break out of the stereotypes. Lazydaze has created their own version of what life

should be like, and pride their business upon it. The business sells and produces coffee and teas

with cannabidiol as well as glassware and other CBD paraphernalia such as lotions, candies and

oils. This CBD is a popular seller and certainly catches customers attention as they drive past the

store. Their website is primarily used to allow customers and those passing by to see what the

store has to offer such as the drinks and other products Lazydaze sells. Lazydaze also hosts small

events like comedy shows. The main population of the store consists of adults between the ages

of 40-60. The goal for their website is to attract more foot traffic into the store, especially a

younger demographic considering this location is in the middle of a college town. Lazydaze

would like for a way the website could appeal to those aged 18-24 for clientele diversity. But

because Lazydaze is a franchise, they have locations all around Texas.

Clients Website:

Their website represents all locations, not just the one in San Marcos. Their website

represents the brand as a whole, and is not used to promote an individual store. It includes

products which you can find at your local Lazydaze outlet. The website has descriptions of their

CBD infused beverages allowing for the passer by to better understand the companies

foundation. The website is a simple layout, making it easy for the customer to navigate through.

Customers can easily buy products you would find at any other brick and mortar Lazydaze store.
These products can be shipped directly to the customer's house, or their nearest Lazydaze outlet.

The ease in shopping allows for the company to harbor repeat customers. We were unable to get

age demographic analytics from their website. As that is not a question asked during the

checkout process. This also presents an issue since we are specifically wanting the age

demographics for the San Marcos location. We do have analytics for returning customers

showing that for the week of October 7th- October 14th 13.1% of customers in their loyalty

program visited the San Marcos location 2-3 times that week.

Sources:

An important construct we are measuring as it relates to increased foot traffic is the user

engagement of the Lazydaze website. If the website is successfully able to generate increased

viewership of the age demographic 18-24, in theory, this should increase this specific age

demographic that are also frequenting in-store. The idea of user engagement has ​[HJVD1] ​various

important aspects that should be considered when assessing the main objective of our project.

The significant characteristics of user engagement is discussed in detail in the academic paper

entitled “Towards a Science of User Engagement.” Some of the characteristics discussed

include: focused attention, positive affect, aesthetics, and user context. A main focus of the paper

is a simplification of the intricate task of creating a website which appeals to a targeted audience,

which will translate to either increased sales, or in our case, increased foot traffic.

A big part of our study is researching how community involvement can affect a resident’s

desire to branch out and visit new places. Lazydaze is trying to understand what makes people

visit their store and how to create that same level of interest in a younger community within the

larger community of San Marcos. Offering an environment that appeals to both coffee lovers and
CBD users should attract more college aged customers, in theory. The discussion of customer

engagement and the value of a customer is discussed in “A Theory of Customer Valuation:

Concepts, Metrics, Strategy, and Implementation.” Some of the details they focused on were:

customer retention, valuing customers as assets, and nurturing already profitable customers.

White creating an environment that appeals to the younger community of San Marcos, Lazydaze

has to continue to nurture and value the already loyal customers.

Since we are trying to increase foot-traffic of college aged students for Lazydaze it is

important that we understand how college students understand money spending. Most students in

San Marcos are on some sort of financial aid or are gaining money from employment or their

parents. Understanding how these students are spending the money they have can help us better

help Lazydaze target this demographic. James A. Roberts discusses “​Money Attitudes, Credit

Card Use, and Compulsive Buying among American College Students” finding that students

spend money for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons is anxiety, buying products to help

combat it. I see this working in our favor considering CBD is a non-psychoactive chemical that

combats anxiety. Understanding this knowledge of how students spend money gives us an idea

of how to better engage them into spending what they have.

Creating a diverse customer base is the main concern for Lazydaze. Tying together the

increase in website traffic and community involvement, Lazydaze wants to ensure that the

customer base becomes more diverse in age. In diversifying the customer base and gaining more

loyal customers with a different demographic, Lazydaze can increase their revenue and their

engagement on social platforms. In the article, “Growing Pains” writer Nitasha Tiku discusses
the importance of being diverse in your small business and ensuring that no one client type

controls more than 25% of your income. With that, being flexible and working with the

resources you have in order to change the target audience.

Since Lazydaze is a retail store, it is important to understand “The Future of Retailing” by

Dhruv Grewal, Anne L. Roggeveen, Jens Nordfält. Understanding where the industry is heading

will help us reach our goal of consumer engagement via 18-24 year-olds. The paper focuses on

five key areas that is moving retail forward. One of those areas is consumption and engagement,

if we can engage the consumer via social media campaigns and promotions, theoretically the

consumption of their products would grow. This could also work in our benefit because the

primary demographic of most social media is 18-24 year olds. We can target them and help drive

foot traffic to the business.

Goal and Research Question:

Our goal for Lazydaze is to increase foot traffic of 18-24 year-olds at the San Marcos

location. By quantifying the user demographics of the website as it compares to the general age

demographic of the customers of San Marcos Lazydaze, how can we diversify the company’s

customer base and attract more people of the age demographic 18-24?

Methods Section

Time Frame:

Our rewards program data is over a span of a six month period. The date ranges from July

to early December of 2019. We believe that this is a good span of time as it shows traffic from

warmer months when students are on summer break to the winter months when students are in
school and coming up on finals. It would have been interesting to see the early months of the

year from January to June to see how things change when you get to cold weather to warm and

the change in semesters at school.

Measures:

An operational definition allows us to see concepts that can be measured and ways we

can see and find the information. The concepts we decided to use for our research question and

our hypothesis were engagement, promotion and loyalty. We measured engagement by the

amount of new opt-ins there were following a broadcast. We measured promotion by how many

people came to us from these opt-ins and how many stayed following. We measured loyalty by

how many people continued to come back to Lazydaze time and time again.

For the main traffic sources, we are looking at the amount of people who come to us

following the broadcast. Most new opt-ins came in after the broadcast where it was at 1 new

opt-in, it would jump up to five or six instead. This is because of the individuals listening to the

broadcast message and then forwarding it to their friends or seeing it through social media which

has attracted many people to them. Over the span of six months, the most popular month was

September with it slowly going down all the other months. It also shows their peak time of

business during the day being from 3 to 5 p.m.. During this time is often when many students are

either done with class or heading to class so they often need a little pick me up. At a constant

rate, very few people opt-out. Over the span of months, the amount of people who opt-out is

always below five and usually never goes above three except for a few spikes. Often times, the

more text messages that were sent out, the more people that decided to opt-out. Based on the

amount of loyalty Kiosk check-ins, you see an occasional spike happen every couple of days.
These spikes are when the broadcasting happens. Everytime they broadcast, their numbers go

from five all the way to about 15 and then go right back down the next day. It is obvious those

broadcasts help their company a large amount. While it is not something they should advertise

every day, it is something they should advertise on a regular basis to keep their customers

regularly. The more they do this the more likely they could keep their return customers to high.

Right now, customers only visiting once is high with the amount of customers visiting six times

or more is at the lowest. Continually advertising their company could help keep their numbers

up.

Analysis/ Results:

Although Lazydaze does not have access to a system of Google Analytics, we were able

to study the company’s rewards program check-ins, as well as research the age demographics of

the San Marcos area. This allows us to better understand the barriers which the company would

come across in their efforts of increasing foot traffic of people within the age demographic of

18-24. Below, you will find some of the results of the company’s rewards program check-ins:
 Because of the limitations of this data, as it relates to our research question, we mostly

had to rely on outside sources of information and outside research to conduct our report. While

the in-store check-ins could be valuable in certain cases for data studies, their lack of information

in regard to the age of the customer makes the information limited for our research question.

Relying on outside data, for instance census information and specific studies of San Marcos

general population, lends itself more in this scenario.

 In our research we found that as of 2017, the median age of the general population of San

Marcos was 23.8 and the overall population of the city was roughly 60,000 (Data USA). This

information is valuable for Lazydaze to understand because it shows that their goal of increasing

customers between the ages of 18-24 is completely attainable. As shown in the graph above,

residents within the age demographic of 18-24 comprise a total of 37.8% of the total population,

which amounts to about 22,642 people. Through our research we also took a look at the

household incomes of San Marcos, to possibly better understand the amount of disposable

income of residents of the community. In our studies, we found that the median household

income of San Marcos in 2017 was about $34,748, which was a 12.1% increase from the

previous year (Data USA).

Conclusion:

As said before, our goal is to increase foot traffic among 18-24-year-olds in San Marcos.

Unfortunately we do not have access to the Google Analytics but, we were able to see from the

in-store check in service that Lazydaze uses in combination with the age demographics that we

researched, that Lazydaze has set an attainable goal of growing their customer base in the

college-aged population. Because of the general college-aged demographic, we suggest

Lazydaze begins to launch social media campaigns promoting their products and get the word

out about their business. With the online check in application that they have in stores, Lazydaze

is able to keep up with customers through a texting service and notify them about different sales

and events happening within the store. Using both social media and texting service will inform

customers that were one-time visitors about things they might find interesting and that would

entice them to come back into the store. In comparison to other retail stores in the area
attempting to reach the same demographic, Lazydaze has a smaller following on their social

media platform (Instagram). They offer similar posts such as sales, product information, and

general information about their store but they lack a cohesive brand image. Retail shops like

Uptown Cheapskate and stellar coffee co. have a very defined sense of branding that makes them

memorable and encourages customers to return. Lazydaze San Marcos needs to define the way

they want to look to customers and begin to build up off of that.

Overall I would recommend that Lazydaze uses their platforms to the fullest and begin to build

themselves as a brand that targets the college-aged demographic. By using social media, they

will reach a wide range of college students looking for a place to shop at. For example, by

posting an IGTV or Instagram story of how they make some of their drinks they show customers

that they sell a variety of things other than packaged CBD products. Another suggestion would

be to further promote the outside activities that Lazydaze offers such as yoga and comedy nights;

rather than just posting a picture of it, post short videos of the sessions, interview the comedians

and instructors, and overall just create a sense of community by personalizing this specific

Lazydaze location. In regard to the pictures used to promote things on the social pages, using less

graphics and more high quality images encourage people to stop and take a look at what the post

is.

Lazydaze is a store that will thrive in San Marcos with the right kind of promotion. It offers

products that college students want and a sense of community that the city of San Marcos loves

to have. This team is excited to see the future of Lazydaze Counterculutre and all it has to offer!
 References

Attfield, Simon, Kazai, Gabriella, Lalmas, Mounia, and Piwowarski, Benjamin. “Towards a Science of

User Engagement.” ​Research Gate,​ Jan. 2011.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228542640_Towards_a_science_of_user_engagement_

Position_Paper​. Accessed 20 Oct. 2019.

Grewal, Dhurv, Anne L. Roggeveen and Jens Nordfalt “The Future of Retailing.” ​Science Direct

​ ar 2017.
Elsevier M

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022435916300872​ Accessed 5 Dec

2019.

Kumar, V., “A Theory of Customer Valuation: Concepts, Metrics, Strategy, and Implementation.”

Journal of Marketing, J​ an. 2018.

http://libproxy.txstate.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com.libproxy.txstate.edu/login.aspx?

direct=true&db=bsu&AN=127019658&site=eds-live&scope=site​. Accessed 20 Oct. 2019.

Roberts, John., “​Money Attitudes, Credit Card Use, and Compulsive Buying among American

​ ar. 2005.
College Students” ​Wiley Online Library. M

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1745-6606.2001.tb00111.x​ Accessed 5

Dec. 2019
“San Marcos, TX Demographics.” ​Data USA,​

https://datausa.io/profile/geo/san-marcos-tx/#demographics​. Accessed 6 Dec. 2019.

Tiku, Nitasha. “Growing Pains.” ​EBSCOhost​, ​Mar. 2010.

http://libproxy.txstate.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com.libproxy.txstate.edu/logi

n.aspx?direct=true&db=bft&AN=510988440&site=eds-live&scope=site​ Accessed 20 Oct.

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