Introduction
Starbuck’s strategy focused on three components; high-quality coffee, intimate service, and ambient atmosphere. Starbucks worked closely with growers in Africa, South and Central America, and Asia-Pacific regions to insure the quality of its product. Starbucks called all employees' "partners" and worked hard to train them with the skills necessary to best serve the customer. The atmosphere at Starbucks was crafted after the European-style espresso bar. The company goal was to create ambience through the Starbucks "experience" and by making the area comfortable, yet upscale.
Its primary objective was, simply put, to become the “most recognized and respected brand in the world.” This objective required most of the company’s strategic goals to be based on company growth and product innovation. There were many opportunities that made expansion plausible, such as a rise in coffee consumption and untapped metropolitan areas. Starbucks had reached all of its success without spending a large amount of money on advertising. Point-of-sale materials were primarily used and their local-store marketing was far less than the industry average.
Background
Starbucks originally opened in 1971. The Seattle based store began by selling whole Arabic coffee beans to consumers. In 1987 it was purchased by Howard Schultz and he made the company what it is today. The company started selling coffee by the cup and opened new stores in various locations. There were 140 stores in the Northwest and Chicago by 1992, and it was at that time that Schultz decided to take the company public. This allowed him to raise $25 million and open stores across the nation. Starbucks was the dominant specialty-coffee chain in North America by ...
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... with their customers. The program will be free, however; customers will have to provide their name, physical address, email address, select an age and income range, as well as identify their favorite Starbucks beverage in order to participant. This will allow Starbucks to gather valuable information about their clientele. It will track consumer spending, number of visits, and number of locations that members frequent. The company will also have demographic information such as age, income, geographic location, and drink preference of each member. This ongoing research will be able to track trends, the success of new product introductions, and keep the company in constant contact with their valued consumers. The new marketing department will have the tools necessary to measure and tie customer service and bottom line performance into the future decision making process.
To achieve the quest of improving the customer experience, they are providing the customers with extraordinary service, a friendly environment, and high-quality products. The customer’s experience with Starbucks has defined their visits with the saying, “one cup at a time, every day” to indulge their visits. This statement led the company to adopt their mission statement of, “To inspire and nurture the human spirit - one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time” (Starbucks Corporation,
Starbucks is a coffee company that began in 1971 in Seattle, Washington. They own more than 24,000 retail stores in 70 countries (“Starbucks Company”). They offer an array of products from coffee to handcrafted beverages to fresh food. Starbucks believes in being a responsible company while participating in ethical sourcing and environmental stewardship. The company is an active user with sharing information on social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. They are on Twitter with 11.8 million followers and also on Instagram with 12.5 million followers. Starbucks is doing exceptional with their marketing strategies when compared to the followers of other known coffee companies. For example, Dunkin’ Donuts has 57.8K followers on
The company started its activity in 1971 as small coffee shop located in Seattle specialized in selling whole arabica coffee beans. After being taken over by Howard Schultz in 1982, following a rapid and impressive growth, by mid 2002 the company was the dominant specialty-coffee brand in North America, running about 4,500 stores, 400 international stores and 930 licenses.
The structure of Starbucks business communication is exceptional. Rather you are in their store buying a Caramel Frappuccino®, visiting their website or watching one of their advertisements on television; as the consumer, the message is loud and clear. Pick up any newspaper and you are likely to find an article about the coffee giant. Starbucks pledges a commitment to their over 172,000 partners (employees) and the community. “We realize our people are the cornerstone of our success, and we know that their ideas, commitment and connection to our customers are truly the essential elements in the Starbucks Experience” (Starbucks, 2008).
Starbucks Coffee, Tea, and Spice opened its first store in April 1971 in the Pike Place Market in Seattle, by owners who had a passion for dark-roasted coffee that was popular in Europe, but hard to find in the U.S. (Harrison et al., 2005; Venkatraman & Nelson, 2008). The company’s mission was to provide Seattle with the best access to dark-roasted coffee, and sought to educated customers about the product. As a matter of customer education and acceptance of the product, Starbucks grew and expanded into the successful domestic market it is today. Much of this success can be attributed to a focus on the total customer experience and s...
Starbucks is currently the industry leader in specialty coffee. They purchased more high quality coffee beans than anyone else in the world and keep in good standings with the producers to ensure they get the best beans. Getting the best beans is only the first part, Starbucks also has a “closed loop system” that protects the beans from oxygen immediately after roasting to the time of packaging. They did this through their invention of a one-way valve which let the natural gasses escape but keeping oxygen out. This gave them the unique ability to ensure freshness and extended the shelf life to 26 weeks. Starbucks isn’t only about the coffee, it’s also about a place where people can escape to enjoy music, reflect, read, or just chat. It is a total coffee experience. The retail outlet has been responsible for much of Starbucks growth and has contributed substantially to their brand equity.
Gordon Bowker, Jerry Baldwin and Ziv Siegl founded Starbucks in 1971. Their goal was to sell the finest quality whole beans and ground coffees (Starbucks timeline and history, 2004). In 1982, Starbucks had grown to five stores and started serving coffee to restaurants and espresso bars. Harold Schultz was employed as the director of retail operations and marketing. Harold Schultz convinced the founders of Starbucks to open a downtown Seattle coffee bar, which opened in 1984. With the success of Seattle coffee bar, Schultz left Starbucks to start his own company named Il Giornale. In 1987, Il Giornale acquired Starbucks retail operations for 4 million dollars. In addition, Il Giornale changed its name to Starbucks Corporation and opened locations in Chicago and Vancouver, B.C. (Starbucks timeline and history, 2004).
Starbuck is a market leader in Malaysia and built the brand image in the market that can expand the product extension by offer some lunch and dinner meal to target more customers in the market. In the other hands, employee trained by the Starbuck that has helped Starbucks to create a good image in the market (Starbuck, 2014). Starbucks also maintain a...
Starbucks is a worldwide company, known for is delicious brews of coffee and seasonal varieties of tasty drinks for any occasion. Starbucks opened with two main goals, sharing great coffee with friends and to help make the world a little better. It originated in the historic Pike Place Market of Seattle, Washington in 1971 by Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl and Gordon Bowker. The creation of Starbucks’ name came from the seafaring tradition of early coffee traders and the romance evoked from Moby Dick. At the time, this individual shop specialized in the towering quality of coffee over competitors and other brewing services enabling its growth to becoming the largest coffee chain in Washington with numerous locations. In the early 1980s, the current CEO Schultz saw an opportunity for growth in the niche market. After a trip to Italy he brought back the idea of a café style environment of leisure and social meetings to the United States we now see in Starbucks locations today. Schultz ultimately left Starbucks to open his own coffee shop, Il Giornale which turned out to be a tremendous success. Fast forward a year later, Schultz got wind that Starbucks was going to sell all their components of Starbucks including their stores and factories, he immediately acquired the funds to buy Starbucks and linked both operations. Within five years he was able to open more than 125 stores starting in New England, Boston, Chicago, and gradually entered California. He wanted Starbucks to be a franchise system based on the mission of telling the truth and emphasize the quality,
Nithin Geereddy. 2013. Strategic Analysis of Starbucks Corporation. [ONLINE] Available at:http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/nithingeereddy/files/starbucks_case_analysis.pdf. [Accessed 18 April 14]
One could argue that this could be imitated by competitors but it also is very costly. Another strategy is their strategic alliances and acquisitions such as Teavana (Tea), Bay Breads, Evolution Fresh, and many more. Their acquisition strategy has known to be very horizontal. This gives Starbucks the ability to effectively leverage their cornerstone product differentiation strategies by offering a premium product mix of the highest quality beverages and snacks. Starbucks’ goal is to provide each and every customer with a unique “Starbucks Experience” excellent customer service, and well maintained stores which in turn translates to a high degree of customer loyalty. Its HRM value-based approach is for building strong internal and external relationships with suppliers which helps its deployment to international markets, horizontal integration, and organic expansion across the world. Starbucks is known for its high knowledge employees. Human capital is the main asset for most companies and they are provided with great benefits, stock options, retirement accounts, and competitive pay. Good human capital translates into great customer service. I talked to my friends about working at Starbucks and they both said it
Starbucks is an international coffee house and it was created in 1971 when they opened the first store in Seattle, Newcastle. Currently, they own 21,000 stores in 65 different countries of the world, and their passion for the great coffee, excellent service and community interaction exceeds cultures and languages (Starbucks, 2014). This company is the number 1 brand coffeehouse chain in the world due to the best roaster, marketer and seller of speciality coffee. Its main slogan: “Our mission: to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighbourhood at a time” (Jurevicius, 2013).
In 1971, three young entrepreneurs began the Starbucks Corporation in Seattle Washington. Their key goal was to sell whole coffee beans. Soon after, Starbucks began experiencing huge growth, opening five stores all of which had roasting facilities, sold coffee beans and room for local restaurants. In 1987, Howard Schultz bought Starbucks from its original owners for $4 million after expanding Starbucks by opening three coffee bars. These coffee bars were based on an idea that was originally proposed to the owner who recruited him into the corporation as manager of retail and marketing. Overall, Schultz strategy for Starbucks was to grow slow. Starbucks went on to suffer financial losses and overhead operating expenses rose as Starbucks continued its slow expansion process. Despite the initial financial troubles, Starbucks went on to expand to 870 stores by 1996. Sales increased 84%, which brought the corporation out of debt. With the growing success, Starbucks planned to open 2000 stores by year 2000.
With clear core values towards providing quality coffee, the best service, and atmosphere, Starbucks has enjoyed great success since it was founded 30 years ago. The company has being doing very well for last 11 years with 5% or more store sales increase, even with the rest economy still reeling from the post-9/11 recession. However recent research, conducted to Starbucks, have showed some concerns regarding company’s problem meeting customers’ expectations.
The strategic vision that Howard Schultz had for Starbucks was "Establish Starbucks as the premier purveyor of the finest coffee in the world while maintaining our uncompromising principles while we grow". This s...