The first Starbucks location opened in 1971 with the original location in Seattle Washington, the heart of Pike Place Market. Starting as a single shop specializing in high quality coffee and brewing products, the company grew to be the largest roaster in Washington with multiple locations until the early 1980’s. CEO Howard Schultz, recognized a great opportunity and began working with the founder Jerry Baldwin. After a trip to Italy to find new products, Schultz realized an opportunity to bring the café community environment he found in Italy to the United States and the Starbuck’s brand we all know today began to take form.
The company experienced rapid growth in 1992 by going public, and growing tenfold by 1997, with locations around the United States, Europe and Japan. Starbucks also began expanding its brand. With such a rapid expansion, Starbucks soon began facing its own struggles as sales started slipping in light of the recession. According to Melissa Allison, Starbucks’s started a new growth strategy: more revenue, lower costs. Starbucks closed 900 stores, eliminating 34,000 jobs. With this new strategy, Starbucks focus was on some of the areas that decreased risk with up-front investment.
Starbucks core competencies can be defined as high quality coffee and products at accessible locations and affordable prices, providing a community to share in the coffee drinking experience, and variety of choices. They also value ethics and good business practices and is a consistent leader, being voted number one of 2012’s most ethical businesses by Ethisphere magazine for the 4th year running (“Starbucks”). The business strategy of Starbucks' is a single business company, focusing on only coffee-related products and retail store...
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...ets that may be tempting. To avoid competitors such as McDonalds and other coffee chains, they will need to create new value innovation by enhancing the customer experience by investing in online content and interactivity. Rather than creating more new products, I think their strength lies in their brand and they should continue to grow that brand loyalty.
Works Cited
Starbucks. “Our Heritage.” Starbucks, 2010. Web. March 20 2014. http://www.starbucks.com/about-us/our-heritage
Allison, Michelle. “Starbucks has a new growth strategy — more revenue with lower costs.” Seattle Times. Seattle Times, 15 May 2010. Web. March 19 2014. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2011861321_starbucksstrategy16.html
CNBC Business. (2011). How One Brand Changed the World.
Retrieved from CNBC Magazine website: http://www.cnbcmagazine.com/story
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.
The new concept worked out and Il Giornale was a success. But Schulz aimed higher. He found local investors and bought Starbucks in 1987 for $3.8 million. That gave way for expansion and in the same year he opened new cafes in Chicago and even Vancouver, Canada. The original 17 Starbucks Cafes were established. In 1992 the company went public and stocks were now publicly traded at the NASDAQ (SBUX). At this time Starbucks counts approx. 165 cafes. On March 7th, 2001 Starbucks eventually moved to Europe and opened their first cafe in the Old World: Zurich, Switzerland. Today the company has more than 16,000 cafes in more than 35 countries. (Wilson)
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”.
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.
The importance of economic indicators to the strategic planning process in any organization is the ability to benchmark economic conditions that contribute to improve profitability, business growth and market size. Leadership sets up the mission “to establish Starbucks as the most recognized and respected brand in the world.” In doing so, they have created a set of industry-leading, comprehensive coffee-buying guidelines addressing coffee quality, financial transparency, social and environmental responsibility. Starbucks strategy is also expanding market in globally to provide high quality coffee in convenient and visibility locations. They are continuing to innovate and extend the business with imaginative new ready-to-drink beverages and expanded packaged coffee offerings (Starbucks Corporation, 2007).
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.
Emphasis on quality, Starbucks Experience, brand image, and important suppliers to dispute lower price contributions to competitors hence increasing profits
Howard Shultz and the senior management at Starbucks have to decide how to react to the opportunities that are being made available because of their rapid growth. The decision for a strategic growth plan has to be made in the near future. This will prove to be key for Starbucks reaching their long-term goal of becoming the most recognized and respected brand of coffee in the world.
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).
There is speculation that the company was pouring too much capital into its complex system of joint ventures and licensing agreements, and could not get a hold of its operational costs. They decided to source some of their merchandise and disposables to less expensive suppliers as an immediate cost-cutting measure. They also decided to cut back on the number of new stores and shut down unprofitable ones. Starbucks has had to learn the hard way that external forces go far beyond a society's taste in coffee, and that too much growth can have negative effects.
Bruss (2001) argues that the company hopes as well to make new investments in new coffee types. Starbucks has recently developed a new type of coffee called green-coffee. These strategies are created with the objective of support Starbucks’ commitment to buy coffee that has grown and processed by suppliers. They meet certain conditions of social, economic and quality standards. In addition to that, the company is paying additional premiums to those vendors who meet the specific requirements that the company wants.
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...
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,
The foundation of Starbucks first international market outside of North America started with Japan in the year 1996 when it opened an outlet in Tokyo’s Ginza district as a joint venture between Sazaby League and Starbucks Coffee International, the international arm and subsidiary of Starbucks Coffee Company.
Usually that revenue growth is in line with the growth of the economy”. I believe there are thousands of students contributing to Starbucks 's growth today. “As a result, mature companies tend to engage more in inorganic growth to fuel innovation. That means acquiring start-ups or middle-sized companies”. Not all products have been a home run for Starbucks. A lot of their flavored lattes, recipe process, technology endeavors have been part of the declining stage as well. However, Starbucks does have product extension for some items and they tend to return them ever so often due to holiday or