Understanding Multicultural Beverage Consumption in Canada

A leading global beverage company came to Decision Point Research with a question that most brands only guess at: how do beverage habits change once someone settles in a new country?

Rather than treating newcomers to Canada as a single audience, the client wanted to understand what consumers bring with them from their home countries, how those habits shift over time, and the role culture, age, income and length of time in Canada play in shaping beverage choices.

The goal was to turn a broad, high-level question about multicultural growth into practical insights the client’s brand, marketing, retail and growth teams could act on directly.

The Challenge

The client needed a clear, evidence-based picture of the multicultural consumer journey, not just a snapshot of current habits. The research had to explore:

• Changes in beverage consumption after arriving in Canada
• Brand and category preferences
• At-home, social, and dining-out behaviour
• Purchase channels and shopping behaviour
• The influence of taste, price, availability, habit and family preferences
• How all of the above differ by culture, age, income and tenure in Canada

The added complexity was that multicultural consumers aren’t one audience.

Four distinct communities can share broad similarities while differing sharply from each other on the details that drive brand and retail decisions, and the research design had to be built to surface both.

Our Approach

Decision Point Research managed the project end to end. We developed the questionnaire with the client, targeted participants through our proprietary multicultural panel, programmed and launched the survey on our own research platform, and managed fieldwork and data quality from soft launch through completion. Once fielding closed, our team analyzed the results and built a full presentation with strategic recommendations for the client’s senior leadership.

In total, we completed over 1000 surveys across four of Canada’s largest multicultural communities, giving the client a sample large enough to support meaningful comparisons both across and within communities.

Project Challenges

• Complex sample quotas. Building a large sample across four distinct cultural communities meant controlling for geography and length of time in Canada at the same time, not just recruiting people who fit a single demographic box.
• Layered analytical requirements. The client didn’t just want overall consumption patterns. They needed to see how behaviours changed after immigration and how findings differed by community, tenure and other demographics, while keeping subgroup sample sizes reliable enough to trust.
• A large, unwieldy dataset. With that many crosscuts in play, there was a risk of findings staying descriptive instead of becoming a usable strategic story.

Solutions

Targeted Panel Sampling: We drew directly from our proprietary Canadian and multicultural panels to reach immigrants across the four target communities, rather than relying on generic outreach that would have struggled to hit the required mix.

Active Quota Management: Our team monitored quotas throughout fieldwork in real time, tracking progress by community, geography and tenure in Canada, so we could adjust outreach before any single cell fell behind. This is what allowed us to hit over 1000 completes while still preserving the balance the analysis depended on.

Balanced Subgroup Analysis: Rather than defaulting to top-line results, we structured the analysis to hold multiple demographic cuts at once- culture, age, income and tenure- while keeping each subgroup large enough to support confident conclusions.

Insight-Led Storytelling: Once fieldwork closed, our team went beyond reporting the numbers. We identified the patterns with the most commercial relevance and built those into a presentation focused on what the client’s teams could do with the findings.

Results at a Glance

• 1000+ completed surveys across four of Canada’s largest multicultural communities
• Full-service delivery, from questionnaire design through senior-level presentation
• Findings analyzed by culture, age, income and tenure in Canada
• Insights covering consumption shifts, brand and category preferences, purchase occasions, shopping channels and the drivers behind them
• Presentation delivered directly to the client’s senior leadership team
• Research is actively informing the client’s 2026 strategic planning

Outcome

The findings and strategic recommendations were presented directly to the client’s senior leadership team and were well received. The research is being used to inform the company’s 2026 strategic planning, having taken a broad question about multicultural growth and turned it into clear priorities for audience strategy, marketing, retail and future growth.

The project reflects Decision Point Research’s ability to manage the full research process without handing off any piece of it: questionnaire development, multicultural and general population recruitment, fieldwork, analysis, reporting and senior-level strategic presentation, all under one roof.

If your brand needs a clearer picture of how multicultural consumers engage with your category, Decision Point Research can help. We work with food and beverage clients across Canada, the U.S. and Europe to turn complex consumer questions into research programs their teams can act on. Request a bid to start your next project, or contact us to talk through your research goals.