Emily Thomas
Professor Gervais
Strategy
Starbucks Case
April 2, 2012
Starbucks’ Strategy and Internal Initiatives to Return to Profitable Growth
Starbucks has been the world’s premier roaster and retailer of coffee since its founding in 1987. Today they operate stores in over 50 countries. They have 8,812 company-owned stores and 7,583 licensed stores. Sales accumulate on average to about $10 billion dollars.
Starbucks along with the rest of the world was hit hard with the worldwide recession beginning in 2008. They were forced to change the way in which they operated. Starbucks is a rapidly expanding company and it is imperative through the leadership of Howard Schultz that they continue to evolve.
1. Summarize the overall
…show more content…
Starbucks also partnered with iTunes to make their music selections available for sale. Overall, Starbucks greatly increased their market segments and increasing distribution channels in various ways.
Starbuck’s had a specific strategy when it came to opening new locations. They believed more in licensing locations as opposed to franchising new stores because of the lack of control that comes with franchising. Starbucks also wanted to enter more international markets realizing that these new markets could increase revenues drastically. All of these things helped Starbucks as a rapidly expanding company.
2. Which one of the five generic competitive strategies discussed on Chapter 5 most closely approximates the competitive approach that Starbucks is employing?
Although Starbucks follows many of the five generic competitive strategies the strategy they follow most closely is the broad differentiation approach. Starbucks has put an emphasis on product differentiation in order to keep up with their ever-expanding company base. They have been extremely successful in their differentiation compared to their competitors. Starbucks offers such a multitude of products, which allows them to appeal to a variety of consumers. There are seven differentiating features of the generic competitive strategies. The following are ways in which the
Finally, the last part of the essay will introduce the strategies that Starbucks currently implements and provide recommendations that the company can follow to strengthen its internal management in order to manage, or overcome external challenges, by utilizing Marketing Mix model.
Starbuck’s was a genuine market driver. They developed a new type of product that included an experience, ambience and relationship with coffee. They had a working formula ruined by expansion. Manageable growth was definitely its downfall as it focused to please shareholders rather than its main target the consumer
Location is another growth opportunity factor. Parnell noted on page 153 that, “The organization should be located where skilled labor, suppliers, and customers are readily accessible” (2006). Starbucks stores are located in many large department stores including Target. Locating in department stores and other high traffic areas is a smart move for Starbucks. Universities and colleges would be another place for Starbucks to open stores. More international locations are also emerging. Global corporate strategy is discussed on page 97.
Starbucks believes in a good, competitive business strategy that is facilitated by passion for the product. They have good leadership and management approach. The Company’s motivation to develop the most recognisable brand was also based on the good planning and positioning strategy.
The Starbucks Corporation has enjoyed phenomenal growth since its early days in 1971 as a quaint coffee shop in Seattle, Washington. The rise of Starbucks can be directly attributed to the following factors; the emphasis placed on product quality, high employee standards, and creating the perfect cup of coffee.
Starbucks should have a growth strategy to focus in increasing their sales and market share even more. Since, Starbucks is in the maturity stage in the business life cycle implementing growth strategy will make sure to keep Starbucks company in this phase a longer time. Moreover, Starbucks should maintain an efficient fast supply chain and continue employing well trained and skilled people. Because it is easy for the rivals to copy Starbucks strategies but
Starbucks is a big company. With every new restaurant, it can use the experiences from the past and also rotate trained staff in order to ensure that the best practices are transferred to new outlets as well. In addition, they can reduce their costs by transferring technology and machines instead of relying on the local partners to arrange for them.
Today Starbucks has got about 20 million customers each week in about 5500 coffeehouses all over the world . While haunting to increase sales more and more, Starbucks has got a special growth strategy. They open a lot of stores in a very short period of time,
Starbucks is an American global coffee company and coffeehouse chain that was founded by Howard Schultz in Seattle, Washington in 1971. It is currently the largest coffeehouse company in the world ahead of UK rival Costa Coffee with 21,536 stores in 63 countries (Appendix Figure 1), (Yanofsky, 2014). The company rapidly expanded between 1987 and 2007 where Starbucks opened on average two new stores every day (Bspcn.com, 2007). The first coffeehouse to open outside the United States or Canada was in Tokyo in 1996 and overseas stores now comprise nearly one third of Starbuck’s stores. Reasons for their success is the continuous disciplined expansion of their global store base, adding stores in both existing, developed markets and in newer,
Firms that earn persistently higher levels of profit than competitors have a competitive advantage (Grant, 2008; Porter 1985). Michael Porters famous five forces of competitive position model provide a simple perspective for assessing and analyzing the competitive strength of a corporation or business organization. The competitive advantage (CA) model of Porter learns that competitive strategy is all about taking offensive or defensive action to create a defensive action to create a defendable position in an industry in order to cope successfully with competitive forces and generate a superior return on investment. Starbucks is a notable company that can be useful to researchers and industry observers who want to understand the underlying factors for a company to achieve a sustainable competitive strategic position in an ever-saturating industry. Starbucks is an exemplary company that has continued to succeed with a new take on an established product, coffee. On July 21, 2016, Starbucks corporation reported 3rd quarter 2016 earnings of 0.49 per share. This result is in line with the consensus of the 27 analysts following the company and this exceeded 2015’s 3rd quarter result by 16.67%. Given this background, a case study of Starbucks is presented and analyzed in this writing to determine and evaluate their competitive strategic dynamics.
Starbuck has entered into these other categories through partnerships and joint ventures. These relationships make sense, because every partnership is with a company in an industry related to Starbuck’s industry (e.g. Pepsi, Kraft, Unilever, Green Mountain etc.). Starbucks does not enter into partnerships with only one company; but collaborates with many companies, that are the respective leaders in their industry. The coffee company uses many of their partners as guides to learn from, and build relationships in a particular industry. Strategically this makes sense because Starbucks is gaining knowledge and not spending a major amount of money. Therefore, when the
In 1971, the first Starbucks store was opened in Seattle, U.S. Their objective is to sell coffee drinks, food items, roasted beans, coffee accessories, and teas. Starbucks has more than 21,000 coffee shops in about 60 countries nowadays. Starbucks runs more than 10,700 of its own shops, which are located mostly in the US, while licensees and franchisees run approximately 10,600 units worldwide (including many locations in shopping malls and airports). Furthermore, Starbucks markets its coffee through grocery stores, food service customers, and licenses its brand for other food and beverage products.
with the expansion. Starbucks lost money for three years running, and the stress was hard on Schultz, but he stuck to
Kuzmicki, Jana F. “The Five Generic Competitive Strategies.” (2009) The McGraw-Hill Companies. Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation.
Starbucks started as a simple retail coffee store at the Pikes Place store, where customers went to buy coffee of the best quality in the whole country and also they could find in this stores thing as coffeemakers and other coffee related products. The main idea of this company was set by three coffee lovers that were professors at the university, so they thought that would be great to share that love, that passion for the coffee. The company was doing great with just four stores in Seattle. All the knowledge they had about coffee, roasting, and about the business they got it from the owner of peet’s coffee and tea who was a Dutch called Alfred Peet, that