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Problems and solutions faced by starbucks
Problems and solutions faced by starbucks
Economic analysis for starbucks
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Business Analysis: Starbucks After evaluating (Exhibit A), Starbucks should invest $40 million per year to increase labor hours per store in order to solve the problem with the quality of service. Starbucks should also set up an internal strategic marketing team. This will allow Starbucks to have a proactive feedback of customer satisfaction and hence faster improvement. Labor cost is high for Starbucks' North American operations. To keep labor cost at reasonable level, Starbucks should reduce waste in making drinks, keep consistency in drinks, and improving productivity. The company needs to invest more money in automated espresso machines. Currently, sales of coffee beverages account for most of total sales, and therefore, Starbucks should increase its sales on food items and whole-bean coffees, and develop non-retail sale channels, which do not require as much special training as making coffee beverages.
Due to an increase in number of Starbucks' customers and highly customized drink demand, the workload per worker is very high. This fact results in a decrease in service time and conversation between Starbucks baristas and the customer, and more stress on baristas. Moreover, research found that a large number of customers emphasize that "treated as a valuable customer", "friendly staff" and "fast service" are the most important factors in creating customer satisfaction. Investing $40 million annually will help eliminate the problems of service time and customer satisfaction by reducing the blockage of labor time and help increase customer satisfaction at all levels.
The company’s founder and CEO, Howard Schultz, has been successful in creating Starbucks into something that we didn’t really know we needed until we had it. He has meticulously crafted a brand for the company that adds a psychological value to its offerings. Thereby, when you buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks, you buy an experience. The somewhat quiet, not-so-rushed atmosphere along with dimmed ambience and friendly staff found at Starbucks’ stores add a feel-good factor to your purchase. As a result, people are willing to pay a premium for coffee at Starbucks even if McDonald’s were running a promotion offering free coffee. The premium prices translate to superior margins for its investors.
Starbucks Corporation is one of the world's largest coffee roaster, marketer, and retailer of coffee. In 1971, three entrepreneurs, Jordan Bowker, Zev Siegel, and Jerry Baldwin opened first Starbucks store in Seattle, WA. In 1982, Howard Schultz joined Starbucks as a marketing director. He came up with the idea to make Starbucks a coffee house chain but Starbucks founders rejected the idea and he left the company in 1985. Later, Schultz started his own coffee bar named “Il Giornale”. In a couple of years, he was able to buy Starbucks Corp. from its original owners. He renamed his coffee bars "Il Giornale" as Starbucks. In 1987, Starbucks opened its first store outside the Seattle in Vancouver and Chicago. In 1996, Starbucks opened its first international store in Tokyo, Japan. [1,2]
Starbucks Financial Analysis Company Overview Starbucks is the world’s largest specialty coffee retailer, with more than 16,000 retail outlets in more than 35 countries. Starbucks owns more than 8,500 of its outlets, while licensees and franchisees operate more than 6,500 units worldwide, primarily in shopping centers and airports. The outlets offer coffee drinks and food items such as pastries and confections, as well as roasted beans, coffee accessories, teas and a line of compact discs. The company also owns the Seattle's Best Coffee and Torrefazione Italia coffee brands. In addition, Starbucks markets its coffee through grocery stores and licenses its brand for other food and beverage products.
“… if you don’t measure something, you can’t manage it. And if we’re failing to measure how well we’re doing with our most important assets we’re probably not managing them very well,” (Kaplan, 2011, 1:48).
If you had the chance to enjoy the Starbucks experience, then you will appreciate their mission statement, which is , According to starbucks.com, it states, that it is “To inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time”.
Christine Day's interpretation of the market research made her think that by shortening the service time for each customer to maximum 3 minutes, all the problems would be solved. However, this solution came with the price of $40 million per year, due to a significant increase in the labor. The proposed solution would most certainly lead to the result desired by Day, but would it be enough to restore Starbucks' damaged brand image? Are 20 seconds of customer service really time worth $40 million per year? This is the question we are trying to answer in this case, while seeking alternative purposes for this expenditure, in order to achieve higher benefits.
In regards to the corporation’s balance sheet, it is necessary to place an importance on liquidity ratios to demonstrate the company’s ability to pay its short term obligations such as accounts payable and notes that have a duration of less than one year. These commonly used liquidity ratios include the current ratio, quick ratio, and cash ratio. All three ratios are used to measure the liquidity of a company or business. The current ratio is used to indicate a business’s ability to meet maturing obligations. The quick ratio is used to indicate the company’s ability to pay off debt. Finally the cash ratio is used to measure the amount of capital as well short term counterparts a business has over its current liabilities.
Starbucks has many business-level strategies, such as cost leadership strategy. Starbucks focused on increasing its profits and compete with other competitors (Starbucks,n.d). According to Starbucks (n.d), “a cost leadership business strategy focuses on gaining advantage by reducing its economic costs below all of its competitors. Although Starbucks targets product differentiation as their main business strategy, they have also implemented cost savings strategies in an effort to maximize profitability. An example of Starbucks cost saving strategy can be identified between 2007 and 2008 when their operational expenses increased by more than $125 million while sales for the same time period were beginning to dip. As outsourcing for distribution contributed to 70% of Starbucks operational expenses, they began targeting these outsourcing agreements for renegotiations in an effort to bring down costs.” Starbucks intended to reduce their
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.
Overall, how satisfied are you , with [PRODUCT/SERVICE]? Please answer using the rating scale where (5) means "extremely satisfied" and (1) means "very unsatisfied."
In 2003, Starbucks was listed as one of the Fortune 500. Despite the ongoing recession, the company had managed a 31% increase in net revenues for the year. This was reasonable, considering they only spent about 1% of total sales on marketing. All of this, coupled with the fact that they were popular with customers and employees, was a sure recipe for success.
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).
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.
I would give Howard Schultz a grade of A for the job he has done as the CEO of Starbucks. He has successfully performed all the 5 tasks of strategic management discussed in Chapter 2.
When I saw this discussion, I couldn’t help but think of Starbucks and the impact they’ve made throughout their 45 years of establishment. I worked with them for about 7 years and saw how unique they were from your everyday coffee and latte spots. A retail company with thousands of coffee shops in the US as well as in other countries, this particular retailer has been able to catch the eyes of all ages as well as locations throughout the world. For example, today college students utilize Starbucks locations to study rather than go to a nearby library. Starbucks is also known for its best coffee and espresso drinks (Latte or Frappuccino) and with one of its delicious espresso 's any student or just a person stopping in to enjoy its lounge area where there is free Wi-Fi is awesome! Starbucks lifecycle has made a 360 turn around and been revamped twice to accommodated the growing market. Customizing their brand to fit more in with everything and not just one thing. By doing this they’ve created multiple product lifecycles within their own lifecycle as a corporate company.