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Starbucks social responsibilities and ethics
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Starbucks traces its origins to a single store opened in 1971 in Pike Place Market, Seattle, WA. In 1982, Howard Shultz joined the Starbucks team. He traveled to Italy in 1983 and experienced the environment of its coffee bars. His love and appreciation of the Italian coffee bar setting motivated him to reproduce it in the United States. In 1987, Shultz gathered a group of investors and purchased the company. Over forty years since its humble beginnings, Starbucks has expanded to 62 countries with over 18,000 stores. Starbucks strives to not only provide high quality coffee, but also an environment for its patrons to relax and enjoy spending time in the store. Starbucks markets itself not only as a coffee company, but as an experience. Its atmosphere provides customers with the incentive to stay and enjoy what the company has to offer. From the coffee to the food items to the comfortable seating to the friendly staff, everything works together to provide an enjoyable experience for the customer. However, Starbucks is more than just a profit producing company. It is rooted in a strong commitment to …show more content…
Starbucks participates with other agencies throughout the world to improve the health and infrastructure of these communities. It purchases its raw materials from farmers who meet ethical sourcing requirements. There are more than 200 requirements that outside sources verify before a producer receives this designation. Starbucks uses its Coffee and Farmer Equity (C.A.F.E.) Practices to insure that it meets its social, economic, and environmental standards when purchasing coffee. This program allows farmers to receive fair compensation for their product while encouraging them to continue farming in an ethically responsible way. Starbucks applies this approach with its other products such as tea, cocoa, and manufactured
I’d like to start by pondering the company mission statement prior to looking at the site in order to determine what putting the mission statement into practice might look like. The first part, “Inspire the human spirit” is somewhat vague. Inspiration often comes from setting an example, so perhaps Starbucks wants to set an example. Pulling from the idea that to nurture the spirit, one must also nurture the body and mind, it’s possible Starbucks wants to incorporate nurturing minds and bodies into their business model. That could look like providing education, food, or means to those two things. The remainder of the statement “one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time.” seems to indicate a personal touch is part of the company goal, and perhaps indicates they want their coffee to somehow enrich the human experience, or that they want to be involved in the communities where they have a business presence. Let’s see if the company site confirms any or all of my interpretations.
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”.
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,
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 main stakeholders of Starbucks include the employees, customers, suppliers, investors, environment and the government (Thompson, 2015). Starbucks gives priority to their staff and ensures that they are happy with the provision of better working conditions, job security, and higher wages. Thus, the company builds the community, facilitating the growth of the employees. The company listens to their customers to improve the quality of service and products. For instance, Starbucks creates a warm and friendly relation with customers to satisfy their social responsibility with this stakeholder. By ensuring their suppliers are properly paid through their Coffee and Farmer Equity (CAFÉ) program, Starbucks fulfills their commitment to the suppliers through awareness. The company creates eco-conscious stores (Starbucks Corporation, 2016) and ensures to follow environmentally sound business practices using their foresight. Starbucks supports the emergency relief services. In 2005, they helped rebuild the Hurricane Katrina struck areas (Adams, 2007). Through their high financial performance in the industry, the company meets the interests of the investors proving the ability to conceptualize. Being an international company, Starbucks remains respectful of the people’s perspectives from the respective governments. Thus, they satisfy their commitment and
Starbucks not only shapes a defined importance on its product, the coffee, but also the relationships on its partners, its customers and its shareholders to create diversity, “to create a place where each of us can be ourselves” (Starbucks Coffee), to treat all related partners with dignity and respect at the greatest corporate level. In this sense, Starbucks involves its customers, its neighbors and is shareholders to participate in the community to “be a force for positive action—bringing together [its] partners, customers, and the community to contribute every day (Starbucks Coffee).
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.
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).
Founded in 1971 at Seattle’s Pike Place Market, Starbucks Coffee, Tea and Spices, as it was originally called, has been “brewing-up” its famous blends in over 43 countries, including the United States. Now called Starbucks Coffee Company, business isn’t just about the coffee and tea anymore. Starbucks has its own line of bottled water, handcrafted beverages, fresh food, entertainment, merchandise and a Starbucks Card. The company has received numerous awards for their outstanding business practices. Fortune Magazine has ranked them as one of “The Best 100 Companies to Work For” in 1998, 2000, 2002, and 2008 (Starbucks, 2008). The Starbucks Experience provides consumers and the general public a direct line a of business communication. From friendly baristas to press releases from CEO Howard Schultz, Starbucks keeps its “partners” informed.
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).
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.
Everything centers on the organizational culture within Starbucks. While being a customer service-based company and understanding that the customer satisfaction and loyalty are what will make the company profitable, Starbucks takes a different approach to customer service than other companies. By hiring employees that fit in the organizational culture (ICFAI, 2005) and treating their employees well (Lefevere, n.d.), Starbucks brings in and retains customers through their happy employees. The qualities that Starbucks hires for are "adaptability, dependability and the ability to work in a team" (ICFAI, 2005). The culture is supportive and laid back (Montana, 2005). Howard Shultz, Starbucks president and CEO, has the theory "that if you treat your employees well, they will treat your customers well" (Starbucks, 1997).
"Rewarding everyday moments". The Starbucks Mantra clearly implies that they are not selling just coffee. They claim to be selling the coffee experience. Their coffee bars that sell specialty coffee also gives customers an ambience where they can be themselves. Starbucks advertises themselves as the third place between home and office, where you can escape, reflect, read, chat or listen. They have become the largest player in the coffee industry and is still looking for avenues to expand themselves.
Most obviously, community is about people. Starbucks not only connects consumers with their company, but addresses the lifecycle of community from start to finish, starting with the farmers that grow their coffee, to the customers that drink it in their stores. In my opinion, one reason for their immense success has been their ability to communicate their mission to their customers, and allow their customers to feel like they are part of the mission. For example, for every bottle of Ethos water purchased, Starbucks will donate $0.05. According to Starbucks’ website, “$12.3 million has been granted to help support water, sanitation and hygiene education programs in water-stressed countries – benefiting more than 500,000 people around the world.” In addition to developing programs to supporting communities around the world, Starbucks also engages in philanthropic community efforts locally. A variety of projects currently exist, and Starbucks encourages their customers and employees to volunteer in these programs, which includes veterans and military support, creating jobs, diversity & inclusion, and opportunity for