Starbucks
Starbucks is a large multinational chain of coffee shops with its corporate headquarters in Seattle, Washington. Its coffee shops in the U.S. are especially popular among students and young urban professionals. The company was in part named after Starbucks, a character in Moby Dick.
The story of Starbucks coffee history begins in Seattle in 1971, when three friends with a passion for fresh coffee, Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl and Gordon Bowker, opened a small shop and began selling fresh-roasted, gourmet coffee beans and brewing and roasting accessories. In 1987 Starbucks was up for sale and Howard Schultz，who owned a coffee shop named IL Giornale, raised the $3.8 million to amalgamate Starbucks with his own coffee shop. He modified the Starbucks’ bare-breasted mermaid logo into a more socially acceptable figure, changed the name of IL Giornale to Starbucks and converted the six existing Starbucks’ roasting shops into Italian-style elegant, comfortable coffee houses. Starbucks coffee history was just beginning to take shape.
Starbucks shares climbed 22 times higher than the earnings of General Electric, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Microsoft and IBM and other large companies. Today, Starbucks Company has become an owner of top-ranking brand. Its rate of expansion arouses the attention of world is top business magazine Fortune and Forbes. Starbucks is the world's leading retailer, roaster and brand of specialty coffee with coffeehouses in North America, Europe, Middle East, Latin America and the
Pacific Rim. Worldwide, approximately 33 million customers visit a Starbucks coffeehouse each week. In addition to coffee, Starbucks cafes also serve other drinks, both hot and cold, pastries, a range of teas, Italian-style espresso beverages, cold blended beverages, baked goods, confectionery, coffee brewing equipment and a range of Starbucks branded gifts. Many of their stores are inside other retail locations such as supermarkets and bookstores. As a general rule, Starbucks does not offer promotional prices on its products and its prices tend to be higher than those of competitors.
Starbucks has a group of staff who are loyal, passionate, energetic and responsible. This excellent human resource is a very important factor to Starbucks’s success.
Compared with other retailers, the salaries and benefits offered by Starbucks are very attractive. Each year, Starbucks does a salary survey among the companies in the same industry. Then they make some adjustment with analysis. What’s more, Starbucks provides assistance project, physical examination and disability insurance for the staff, which is extremely rare in the industry. With this special kind of welfare plans, Starbucks can give more consideration to the families of their staff. Although the staff may just get a little money, they feel that the company does cares about them very much. In this way, those who enjoy the welfare are bound to be grateful about it and they would like to offer better service. It is said that if Schultz were the king of coffee empire, the staff should be his loyal subjects.
At Starbucks, employees are not called employees. They are called partners. In 1991, Starbucks established a stock investment program, which allowed employees to purchase stocks at a discounted price. In that way, each employee has the opportunity to become the owner of Starbucks.
Starbucks put much emphasis on staff training. Employees would receive a training at least 24 hours during the first month they came to the company, which about the introduction of the company, the skills of serving customers, working skills and so on. Moreover, there is a management training program which focuses on the leadership art, service for customers and vocational development.
Starbucks in selecting employees, the importance of human nature, for example, warm optimism, and his positive, but also be able to provide their own achievements and the achievements of partners around proud.
Starbucks encourages employees to innovate, sticking to the principle that never strangles the ideas before they have been carried out.
In order to ensure the quality of the coffee, Starbucks established a specialized procurement system. Starbucks selects the best coffee beans, and bakes them in Seattle. So that the customers can enjoy the purest coffee at Starbucks
Most of the world's coffee is grown between the Tropic of Cancer in the South; these areas include plantations of African Arab countries, Latin America, plantations and plantations on the Pacific islands.
Due to different soil, climate and farming methods, the coffee produced on the flavor also have significant differences. Each coffee is unique treasures.
Coffee is just a carrier, through the carrier, a unique style to pass to consumers.
The background music played in Starbucks is mostly light music, soft blues and jazz, soothing the customers’ minds, thus slowing down the pace of their consumption and letting them staying longer in the shops.
Starbucks creates a warm and cozy atmosphere by using moderate, orange-based fluorescent lighting.
Adding variety to its interior decoration while keeping unified logo and outside appearance, Starbucks creates its unique style that reflects its own aesthetic value and gives its customers a visual impact.
Not only to create a uniform appearance, while adding changes in style reflect the aesthetic feeling, and create a visual impact.
With the unique management style, Starbucks created the important status; however, its success is inextricably bound to its external operation strategy.
The Starbucks focus on the reputation management. Word of mouth
marketing is the best way to establish a trust relationship between customers and shops. The success of Starbucks brand is attained by of word of mouth marketing
strategy. If the customer likes the atmosphere and the coffee provided by Starbucks, they will let their friends know about it. Thus Starbucks gains more customers.
In addition, Starbucks has opened a coffee room and enjoy the Star Club.
In the coffee room customers can understand the coffee culture of different countries and make their own coffee. Thus they can learn more about conception of perfectly handcrafted of the Starbucks. At the same time Starbucks has
established the club, where Starbucks' customers can enjoy the priority of the new product and Starbucks VIP level of treatment. In addition to by E-mail to send news letter, but also through the mobile phones to send text messages, or downloading games on the Internet, once pass the games consumers can get coupons, many consumers will forward to other friends about the message, cause going, the effect of the ten.
In order to extend the exclusive “customization” experience to its customers, the target group in China in particular, Starbucks has opened a website in Chinese --- Frgappuccino, where fans can enjoy fun through online games: preparing coffee for themselves and making their own Frappuccino posters.
To enhance its brand, another strategy of Starbucks is to expand brand advantages by brand alliance and find a strategic partner to expand sales channel, alliancing with strong partners to expand the marketing network in the
development process. Barnes& Nobile bookstore is one of the most successful
cooperation with Starbucks. Barnes& Nobile has launched a campaign that making the bookstore becomes the center of social life among people. In 1993, Barnes & Nobile cooperate with Starbucks. Starbucks open their own retail business in the bookstore. Starbucks may be attracting a rest rather than rushing to books, the bookstore has increased the flow of coffee sales. In 1996, Starbucks and Pepsi alliance as \"the North American Coffee Partnership\new kinds of coffee. Starbucks improved its product image by relying on more than 100 million retail outlets of Pepsi. In 2007, Starbucks and Apple have reached an agreement. They erect related equipment in Starbucks, which iPod music player users and iPhone users are able to use the new iTunes online music download service. This new form of service that music and coffee blend together creates the new marketing precedent.
Starbucks was set to the most people that can afford the luxury, its consumer groups are not common public, but a group of white-collar who pay attention to enjoyment, leisure, advocating knowledge. Starbucks spared no expense to seize prime locations, such as shopping malls, office buildings, top-grade residential area; Starbucks open several stores in the shortest possible time, occupying the best location, inhibit competitors from entering, Starbucks also stressed strategic forecasting, focusing on the development potential.
After thorough research, and competitive analysis the perfect locations in terms of exposure, accessibility and competitive edge have been acquired.
The inventory and easy transport facilities have also been a part of the
deciding factors while choosing the appropriate locale.
Starbucks Corporation is a very profitable organization, earning in excess of $600 million in 2004.The company generated revenue of more than $5000 million in the same year. It is a global coffee brand built upon a reputation for fine products and services. It has almost 9000 cafes in almost 40 countries. Starbucks was one of the Fortune Top 100 Companies to Work For in 2005. The company is a respected employer that values its workforce. The organization has strong ethical values and an ethical mission statement as follows, 'Starbucks is committed to a role of environmental leadership in all facets of our business.
Starbucks has a reputation for new product development and creativity. However, they remain vulnerable to the possibility that their innovation may falter over time. The organization has a strong presence in the United States of America with more than three quarters of their cafes located in the home market. It is often argued that they need to look for a portfolio of countries, in order to spread business risk. The organization 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.
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. New products and services that can be retailed in their cafes, such as Fair Trade products. The company has the opportunity to expand its global operations. New markets for
coffee such as India and the Pacific Rim nations are beginning to emerge.
Co-branding with other manufacturers of food and drink, and brand franchising to manufacturers of other goods and services both have potential.
Who knows if the market for coffee will grow and stay in favor with customers, or whether another type of beverage or leisure activity will replace coffee in the future? Starbucks are exposed to rises in the cost of coffee and dairy products. Since its conception in Pike Place Market, Seattle in 1971, Starbucks' success has lead to the market entry of many competitors and copy cat brands that pose potential threats.
因篇幅问题不能全部显示，请点此查看更多更全内容