Starbucks Swot Analysis Essay

As the world’s number one specialty coffee retailer, Starbucks sells coffee drinks, food items, coffee beans, and coffee-related accessories and equipment. In addition, Starbucks sells whole-bean coffees through a specialty sales group and grocery stores. Starbucks has grown beyond coffee into related businesses such as coffee-flavoured ice cream and ready-to-drink coffee beverages. The purpose of this paper is to analyze Starbucks business strategy, customer value proposition, company’s operations and the risks to financial results and reporting in the short term.

* Starbucks expanded to pursue sales of products in a variety of distribution channels and market segments. Products were marketed to restaurants, airlines, hotels, universities, hospitals, business offices, country clubs, and select retailers. In the airline industry, Starbucks coffee was served in flights United Airlines and United Airlines. Packets of Starbucks coffee along with coffee making equipment were made available in each room in Hyatt, Hilton, Sheraton, Radisson and Westin Hotels. Coffee service was also provided in several Wells Fargo banks in California. Foodservice distributors such as Sysco

For more than three decades since Starbucks started its operations, the company was considered as a leading coffee chain operator. However, in 2008, the company faced a significant financial downturn that almost cost it its position in the marketplace. Through strategic planning and adopting a differentiation strategy, Starbucks, under the CEO Howard Shultz, recovered from the financial decline to regain a competitive advantage over other big companies like McDonald's and Panera Bread. This paper will discuss the business strategy and management for Starbucks Company and emphasize the importance of business strategy. It will cover the strategic basics of Starbucks, its financial downfall, an analysis of its profitability and a comparison with its key competitors as well as its technological threats and opportunities.

In 1971 Starbucks started as a small coffee shop that specialized in selling whole arabica beans in Seattle’s Pike Place market. After being inspired by Milan’s coffee culture - especially the role it espresso bars played in the Italians’ everyday social lives - Starbucks opened an espresso bar in the corner of their shop. Their ideal was to create a ‘third place’ - besides home and work - where people could relax and enjoy a good cup of coffee (Moon & Quelch, 2006). Over two decades the company enlarged and served over 20 million unique customers in over 5,000 stores around the world. Their brand strategy could best be described as ‘live coffee’, which meant creating an ‘experience’ around the consumption of coffee that fitted into people 's everyday lives (Moon & Quelch, 2006). Three components were fundamental for their branding strategy. First of all, the coffee itself which should represent the highest-quality coffee in the world, derived from Africa, Central and South America, and the Asia-Pacific regions (Moon & Quelch, 2006). Secondly, the atmosphere should be inviting and make customers feel comfortable. The ambiance in stores should make customers want to stay (Moon & Quelch, 2006). Thirdly, service - customer intimacy - is a key factor within their brand strategy, which aims to create an experience for the customers, and aims at building customer loyalty (Moon & Quelch, 2006). The employees - called ‘partners’ - are

Their mission, vision and values strives towards attaining the utmost respect and brand recognition for its coffee and distinctive beverages. To such a degree, Starbucks continued to amplify their franchises, innovation process of new merchandise outline and increase current customer satisfaction levels in order to abstain from losing market share against the competition. Together with the company’s beliefs, Starbucks claims that not only are customer requests and needs a top priority, but its employees are vital towards it success.

The Starbuck Corporation is considered as the one of the leading firms across the globe in specialty coffee consumption. Since its inception and launch in a market in Seattle, Washington, the company has developed to extent with which it offers quality premium coffees with an excellent level of customer service and at reasonable prices worldwide. The growth and profitability of this company is attributed to its development and use of an effective marketing strategy. Actually, the firm is renowned for successfully adopting a differentiation focus strategy designed to offer high quality, focused product, and premium prices, which is in essence no object to its customers. Throughout its marketing initiatives, Starbuck Corporation does not market its product or the firm aggressively but drives its sales through the image and reputation it has developed (Larson, 2009).

1.Analyze the business-level strategies for the corporation you chose to determine the business-level strategy you think is most important to the long-term success of the firm and whether or not you judge this to be a good choice. Justify your opinion.

One company that has been particularly successful in creating an overall company image in my option has been Starbucks. They have been able to maintain a dominant position in today’s market. Where in the morning most of our society needs a good cup of coffee in order to start their day. At one point, we looked at Starbucks as a high-end marketer. A sort of club to belong to. However, things managed to change in the recent years where a 4.00 cup of coffee was becoming a luxury items. This became known as the Coffee Wars. Starbuck had to now face competition from the fast food world. Which was McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts. They started to look at this market as an opening to gain more customers. They started to offer their

Starbucks has a strong market position and brand awareness, affecting the organization in the expansion of the importance of the general market, an increase of residential and external business sector development.

In this Assignment it is going to be analyzed the marketing strategies adopted by Starbuck Coffee and Virgin Group of companies. They have used, different strategies to expand the business activities. In terms of Starbucks they have used market penetration strategy to grab the market and when increasing sales revenue. With reference to Virgin Group of companies, they follow differentiation strategy and therefore, they have entered in to variety of markets. Due to these differences they have adopted variety of pricing strategies to reach the customers.

Starbucks has a challenging, great thoroughly considered conveyance process because of the astounding conveyances every day, yet they are still ready to supply every single story with the adequate amount of coffee with about 70,000 outbound deliveries to the Starbucks stores week by week.

* Starbucks expanded to pursue sales of products in a variety of distribution channels and market segments. Products were marketed to restaurants, airlines, hotels, universities, hospitals, business offices, country clubs, and select retailers. In the airline industry, Starbucks coffee was served in flights United Airlines and United Airlines. Packets of Starbucks coffee along with coffee making equipment were made available in each room in Hyatt, Hilton, Sheraton, Radisson and Westin Hotels. Coffee service was also provided in several Wells Fargo banks in California. Foodservice distributors such as Sysco Corporation

The most important Starbucks’ marketing strategy is culture and experience strategy, supplying unique experience and sharing coffee culture. Starbucks thought 90% of feelings to coffee came from smell while 10% are from taste. So, Starbucks focused on aroma of its coffee shop, making sure that costumers would be attracted by coffee aroma once they came in any shops. That’s why no smoking there and no perfume to Starbucks employees. In this case, desire for coffee would be conditioned response from aroma and be core of customers’ loyalty.

The purpose of this essay is to prepare a strategy formulation analysis required by the company. The company selected is Starbucks Corporation, commonly known as Starbucks, when they first started in Seattle, Washington in 1971, founded by Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, and Gordon Bowker; and became an American multinational company which started from scratch (Garza, n.d.). It was then incorporated on November 4, 1985, and is a roaster, marketer, and retailer of coffee. Starbucks offers a range of exceptional products include coffee, handcrafted beverages, merchandise, and fresh food. The company 's mission is "to inspire and nurture the human spirit - one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time" (Starbucks, 2012).

I have been given this opportunity to explore and analyze a remarkable American company, Starbucks, and particularly how they produce and market their own brand of coffee worldwide. I have discovered and wish to convey to you some remarkable ways that Starbucks uses specific marketing strategies based upon the countries where Starbucks are located. Specifically, in this critique I want to explore how Starbucks changes their coffee product in terms of level of sweetness in various countries, how Starbucks packages the coffee product to maximizes the attractiveness of the brand offering, and how Starbucks brands the product differently in various countries based on the promotion medias most attractive to the population of that specific