INTRODUCTION
Starbucks portray a number of issues that may affect the company’s’ growth in the near future. To clearly understand these issues, they will be analysed in order to understand and create recommendations to assist in the growth of a successfully company.
STRATEGIC ISSUES
INTERNALISATION
Starbucks’ strives on expanding its name and reputation globally. It has opened outlets internationally, but with poor management and understanding of its global market, expectations were not achieved and resulted in outlet closures. Stores closures of most of Australia’s outlets and some US outlets resulted in “almost 6,000 job losses; n addition 700 positions were cute in corporate and support positions”. (Grant, 2012)
THE STARBUCK’S EXPERIENCE
The Starbuck’s experience is a tactic that has hoped to assist in differentiating Starbuck’s from other competitors. As noted by Grant (2012) this experience “centered on the creating of a third place- somewhere other than home and work where people could engage socially while enjoying the shared experience of drinking good coffee”. Unfortunately without understanding the market within different cultures, Starbucks has lacked providing the experience that reflects upon the purchase styles of consumers.
DIECONOMY OF SCALE
Starbuck’s stocks a large quantity of products for in-outlet purchase and retail purchase. It has once again come down to understanding the expectations of the market the outlet is located in. Numerous products are available for sale, but not all products are suitable for the consumers in that target market. Therefore, production costs for Starbuck’s for all products remains quite high, whereas unfortunately the retail sales aren’t as expected.
EMPLOYEES
Employees are wh...
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.... It will need to understand cultural differences in order to bring customers what they. Starbucks needs to adapt to appropriate employee ethics providing appropriate work hours and conditions. Learning from past mistakes and strategically avoiding the same mistakes occurring, is the main key to global success of a company that is already globally renown.
If Starbucks does not resolve the underlying issues, it risks to more outlet closures and less global expansion; therefore only becoming a successful company within its home-market; America. Failure to expand globally can also result in no future investor or franchise opportunities.
In order for Starbucks to successfully run outlets globally, it will need to analyse the issues and risks and plan ways to minimise them in the most efficient way possible, so that Starbucks can grow as a well-known global company.
In 2002, unexpected findings of a market research showed problems regarding customer satisfaction and brand meaning for Starbucks customers. The situation was unacceptable for a company whose overall objective is to build the most recognized and respected brand in the world. Starbucks was supposed to represent a new and different place where any man would relax and enjoy quality time, alone or with others. But the market research showed that in the mind of the consumers, Starbucks brand is viewed as corporative, trying to expand endlessly and looking to make lots of money. This huge gap between customers' perception and Starbucks' values and goals called for immediate action.
Shah, A. J., Hawk, T. F., & A, T. A. (2011). Starbucks' Global Quest in 2006: Is the Best Yet to Come. In A. A. Marcus, Management Strategy: Achieving Sustained Competitive Advantage (pp. c468-c495). New York: McGraw-Hill.
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...
In addition to being best-known supplier of the finest coffee and promising only the highest quality products, Starbucks emphasizes firm values, provides guidelines to enhance employee self-esteem. This is to ensure continued customer satisfaction. Moreover, diversity has become a priority to providing an inviting environment to all consumers. Starbucks continues to abide by a strict, slow growth policy in which they set out to dominate a market before moving on to expand, thus history has shown this strategy to be successful for Starbucks, making them one the fastest growing companies nationwide.
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.
At first only yuppies went to Starbucks, but now it attracts a much wider demographic of customers including people of different ethnic backgrounds and ages. Today, Starbucks has the striking number of 25 million people visitors in its stores each week . This success is due to the combination of high quality drinks and friendly environment with good music, comfortable chairs, and good services. This creates the “Starbucks experience” which customers can relate to that lead to brand loyalty. In addition, Starbucks needs to deal with customers’ cultural preferences in all its worldwide locations to maintain customers’ loyalty. (See Figure 2) Also see Figure 3 for influences on the consumer purchase decision process.
Starbucks did not escape the common practice of adapting and integrating the business to different geographic regions, but they did stick to their guns when it came to their standard product line-up and their no-smoking policy. Surprisingly, these conditions were met with wide acceptance. Analysts felt the real challenge would be in the European marketplace, what with coffeehouses on every corner to compete with. Again, the stores did very well, mainly because of the newer, cleaner environment they provided compared to the older locations of established houses.
Coffee shops were nearing the saturation point in United States and Europe Starbucks decided to enter the lucrative emerging markets of India and China. India is traditional tea drinking nation which is proven as 69.9 % hot beverages industry is dominated by tea industry. In India coffee is now a day’s coffee is becoming a style statement. Due to influence of western culture it is becoming popular amongst youngsters as well as young professionals. Going to a coffee house for socializing and networking this culture is slowly building up in India and hence it’s an emerging market for companies like Starbucks where they promote the overall coffee house experience. In addition to this due to industrial growth the spending capacity of youth in India has increased over the years and there by the popularity of this specialized coffee shop has increased. Currently in India Café Coffee day, Baris...
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).
Preliminary Starbucks – one of the fastest growing companies in the US and in the world - has built its position on the market by connecting with its customers, and creating a “third place” beside home and work, where people can relax and enjoy themselves. It was the motto of Starbucks’ owner Howard Schultz and, mostly thanks to his philosophy, the company has become the biggest coffee drink retailer in the world. However, within the new customer satisfaction report, there are shown some concerns, that the company has lost the connection with customers and it must be taken some steps to help Starbucks to go back on the right path regarding customer satisfaction. I will briefly summarize and examine issues facing Starbucks. Starting from there, I will pick the most important issue and study it from different positions.
It is often argued that they need to look for a portfolio of countries, in order to spread business risk. The organisation is dependant on a main competitive advantage, the retail of coffee. This could make them slow to diversify into other sectors should the need arise. Opportunities Starbucks are very good at taking advantage of opportunities. In 2004 the company created a CD-burning service in their Santa Monica (California USA) cafe with Hewlett Packard, where customers create their own music CD.
Product &Portfolio Management: Starbucks have to review their product offering and determine if the Indian sociocultural society would accept their product offerings. They will have to decide if they will offer an existing product in the new market or diversify in terms of adding Indian variation to the product line. To determine this, Starbucks would have to do some market research to see how appealing their products would be to the Indian culture and would it be better to add Indian variation to thei
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,
Actual value determined by the production and delivery of the company’s goods and services. The middle class citizens of mainland China consider Starbucks coffee a luxury. China is a fast changing market and it has paid off for Starbucks. The client is eager to disburse a top value immediately for the consumer experience. The success of this approach is due in part to the in-store training and people improvement reproduction functional in China.
Starbucks has identified high value opportunity in China, India, Brazil and Japan. The large expansion opportunity of twelve billion in China alone is enough to drive Starbucks to expand globally. The organization has planned to double its footprint to 3000 stores in China by 2019 ("Starbucks Details Five-Year Plan to Accelerate Profitable Growth", 2014). Starbucks realizes that eventually there will be a diminishing return on their existing market within the US due to market maturity and there are only two ways to expand through diversification in their offerings and entering new markets. Given the international opportunity for growth and expansive tea market in Asia, the company will enjoy the benefits of the growth opportunity. Management’s decision to continue to grow globally is a driving force that has yielded