Starbucks: Delivering Customer Service Starbucks is dominant coffee brand in North America, which also is well-known worldwide. Established in 1971 as coffee shop oriented to a niche of coffee purists, in late 1980’s it turned to be a constantly growing chain of stores that sold whole-beans and premium-priced coffee to mostly affluent, well-educated customers. In years 1992-2002 company was showing at least 5% annual growth. And by 2002 Starbucks was serving already 20M customers in 5886 stores (both operated and licensed) around the globe, had $3.3 billion net revenues and was opening 3 new stores a day in average. Case issue: Despite the consecutive sales growth most recent market research had revealed that the company is not meeting …show more content…
With coffee consumption being transformed into a habit, with active market growth, with Starbucks being a North America market leader the distance between company and its competitors was reduced. We believe such a dramatic growth have led to current customers’ dissatisfaction. That’s also the reason why brand image have had some rough edges and why the historical customer profile had expanded and Starbucks’ newer customers tended to be younger, less well-educated and lower-income ($65000 in average) and less loyal (according to exhibit 8). These changes aren 't fatal because the company is still growing in aggressive manner, but in our opinion this trend may lead to future losses, because lesser loyalty and decreased image may sign that brand has no clear strategy and clear target audience. Starbucks brand has few "traditional" components of uniqueness: offering highest-quality coffee, customer recognition and drinks customization. It could not remain upscale brand when being "fast". Working fast leaves no opportunity for recognizing customer and customizing her drinks: or you are Fastbeverage, cheap like McDonalds is, or you are offering to a client premium-segment coffee and “customer intimacy”. without these components there is risk for the brand of loosing all its "original" loyal customers (which currently make 62% of all Starbucks transactions). Customer Satisfaction
Since Starbucks entered the coffee retail business, the company has made many trade-off business decisions. The first major trade-off was made when Howard Schultz wanted to acquire present day Starbucks from three entrepreneurs Baldwin, Siegel and Bowker. Therefore, Schultz prior to the acquisition made the trade-off to open his own coffee bar in 1986 instead of staying at Starbucks as the manager of retail sales and marketing. A bold feat, Schultz was able to replicate success and was offered to buy Starbucks for $4 million. At the time of the acquisition, many investors, including the former Starbucks owners, would not expect that the American consumer would pay a premium for coffee products. Schultz, after calculating the opportunity cost, was convinced that Starbucks would become a large coffee chain not only in the United States but internationally too. Reflecting this approach, Schultz’s trade-off worked. Starbucks, according to our book has revenue exceeding $13 billion and nearly 200,000 employees. The company has also expanded to 40 countries with 17,000 stores (Hill et al., 2015).
Starbucks has created a competitive advantage with their product quality by setting themselves apart from their competitors. “The Company has stayed with the upper-scale of the coffee market, competing on comfort rather than convenience, which is the case with its closest competitors, McDonald’s and Dunkin Donuts” (Mourdoukoutas, Panos). Consumers believe they are receiving a better product and experience when they purchase from a Starbucks as opposed to another large food service company that may sell coffee.
I guess you can say that they changed their marketing strategy to include me and millennials. Starbucks went from just selling their products, to providing free Wi-Fi, and newspapers, along with a place to enjoy their products. When they made these changes, I can only imagine the number of new customers that they generated. i.e. students, business professionals, etc.
Starbucks is known for their Frappuccino’s; unfortunately they are on a downward spiral in sales due to competitors such as McDonalds. In 2008 Starbucks admits to its losses due to their competitors. “Company executives now freely admit that such thinking is largely to blame for the woes that led to Tuesday’s announcement that Starbucks will close 600 U.S. stores and eliminate thousands of jobs. The coffee giant’s missteps have come at a spectacularly bad time, hitting as the economic slump deepens and consumers are seeing their discretionary spending eaten up by rising gas prices and grocery bills (Linn).”
It was believed that there was a service gap between Starbucks scores on key attributes and customer satisfaction. Furthermore, according to a poll, the speed of service delivery was the biggest concerns of customers. Overall, customers are pleased with the cleanliness, atmosphere, and product quality. However, the main problem was that waiting time was steadily increasing. I believe this one of the factors that caused the decline in satisfaction.
When Howard Schultz launched Starbucks, its main targets were the competitors and the customers. Schultz’s brand aimed at gaining dominance in the coffee industry in addition creating a Italian coffee shop feel in the United States (Buchanan & Simmons, 2009). The strategy of Starbucks was based on new products, listening to customers wants and ensure future expansion (Buchanan & Simmons, 2009). In creating convenience for customers, Starbucks created stores almost on top of eachother. They hinged on the idea that, they did not want to lose out on a sale if a line was too long. This action, of placing stores in heavy populated areas, basing need on projected growth of an area caused some decline in sales during economic trouble with the economy. The 2007 recession, failure of subprime mortgages, increased competition from McDonald 's McCafe brand, and Dunkin Doughnuts all led to a decline in sales for Starbucks in the fourth quarter of 2007 (Buchanan & Simmons, 2009). To attempt to regain market share and recover after the
The story of Starbucks transformation from a small independent coffee shop tucked away in a corner of Seattle’s Pike Place Market to a cultural phenomenon spanning the globe is legendary. A number of factors have been attributed to the success - one being a keen understanding of its patrons. There are multiple methods used to obtain customer information and the value derived therein. Customer lifetime value is one.
Starbucks’ lead in the specialty coffee industry exemplifies the result of deftly executing a well-planned business strategy. Moreover, Starbucks is well positioned for what is expected to be a continuing rise in the popularity of specialty coffee products. The question before Starbucks’ leadership, however, is what avenues will lead to Starbucks’ goal of remaining true to its core, the highest quality coffee products while providing a “total coffee experience” for its customers?
As a well-established coffee retailer and over 35 years of success, Starbucks is at the maturity stage in the product life cycle. It is in this stage that Starbucks needs to shift gears and focus on marketing program modifications by increasing the number of customers and customer visits (Kotler, 2009, pg. 185). While improving service will attract first-time customers and retain current ones, further marketing modifications will need to be made if it wants to continue to grow. More advertising, distribution, sales promotions, and personal selling are a few of the ways to modify the marketing program.
The market research team has also discovered that Starbucks’ customer base is evolving. The customers tend to be younger and less well educated. Regardless of this insight, customer behavior remains the same. According to Figure A in the case study, the typical customer visits just five times a month. I believe this is in part due to Starbucks’ inability to meet customer expectations and increase satisfaction. In order for the company to increase the frequency of customer visits, customer satisfaction must improve. Thus, the ideal, most profitable consumer for Starbucks is one who is a
Customers: The demographics of a usual Starbucks consumer have altered extremely in the new years. In the Starbucks case documents innovative consumers of Starbucks are younger, a smaller amount knowledgeable, low pay, less frequent visited to the coffeehouse and had very dissimilar insights. The general outlook of Starbucks is very short on 25% by novel consumers while the consistent consumers stood in 44%.Although numerous features subjective customer satisfaction, generally service and quickness of service were recognized as the greatest significant; a rapid glimpse at Starbucks 's fresh customer satisfaction reveals that consumers did in
However, data from the market research team has shown that there is a shift on Starbucks’ brand recognition in customers’
Exhibit 8 shows customer retention information. We can find from this data, that established customers and new customers are quite different in respect of education, income and attitudes toward Starbucks. According to the exhibit, customers who first visited Starbucks five years ago have higher degree of education and higher income level. Beside that, new Starbucks customers do not see it as a brand of high value, while established customers believe Starbucks to be brand they trust (50%), offering high quality product (51%). Next exhibit suggests, who customers visiting Starbucks stores often, are more satisfied, than customers who buy coffee from the company average four visits per month.
Starbucks, the coffee brand in North America failed to meet the customer expectations and deliver satisfaction which leaded to losing customer
Starbucks first opened its doors in Seattle’s Pike Place Market with the name being coined from that of Moby Dick’s first mate (Schultz & Yang 1999). It has spread its shops across North America, all over Europe, the Middle East, Latin America as well as the Pacific Rim with an estimated 35 million customer weekly (Michelli, 2008). With tremendous growth from a small time coffee shop, the company has matured to an international icon that today it is one of the world’s leading retailer, roaster and brand specialty coffee (Story, 1971). The company offers whole bean coffees, espresso beverages, and confectionery and bakery items.