Case Study : Starbucks Aggressive Expansion

Within the coffee industry Starbucks Corporations has grown from a small shop to a leading coffee distributor, proving to have financial strength and determination to continue growth. With the weakening economy the continued success of Starbucks

There are 15,756 Starbucks stores in 44 countries. To have that many stores, serve that many people, and ensure they still maintain the best and highest quality of beans, really sets some doubts. Starbucks has truly become the McDonald’s of the coffee industry because of the supply and demand. In the Starbucks business, quantity is greater than quality because quantity equals to money, where as quality costs more money. There is no win/win situation with this equation when your business is serving practically the world.

However, Starbucks also need to learn about the culture among the country. Starbucks is International product and well known. Some of the country most prefers tea compare than coffee. That means , that is one of the challenges for Starbucks to come out with variety of product.

Starbucks have 11.000 stores worldwide, and they serve more than 40 million customers each week and even with these enormous numbers Starbucks continues to grow. The reason Starbucks is still growing is that; people loves the products that Starbucks provide, but there is more to it,

Basically Starbucks faced three major risks at domestic region. On of which was saturated market condition (USA). Fifteen years ago they initially started with 17 coffee shops in Seattle and 5,689 outlets in 28 countries. Now, amazingly 4,247 stores scattered across the United State and Canada. In Seattle there is outlet for every 9,400 people. And the company considers that the upper limit of coffee shop saturation.

The company currently has more than 17,000 stores operating in 60 countries (nasdaq.com). They are allocated in high traffic areas; located in-store of various large chains, according with Starbucks the “store is named after the street it is located on”. Also there is a web page that can show The World-Wide Starbucks Map (see map 1), here you can find all the stores across the world, and even this map proves the Starbucks’ cannibalization (see map 2). http://www.loxcel.com/sbux

Starbucks is a strong competitor in the service sector and a leader in the gourmet coffee industry. With a continued growth rate in store openings and maintaining successful profitability of its operations, Starbucks has demonstrated its ability to sustain a reliable and steady growth. Starbucks’ ability to contend with the vulnerability to current financial threats such as economic recession, higher interest rates, and global competition, is constantly proven by its incomparable brand image, its continual product innovations, and its exceptional customer service. This

Even so, just two weeks earlier Howard Schultz announced that the company will be expanding internationally. The plan is to open more than 1500 stores in Germany, France, and Britain over a 3-year span (Forbes, 2008). It is estimated that this expansion will boost revenue by more than 20 percent (MSN Money, 2008). In spite of Starbucks’ struggle among its love-hate relationship between customers and protesters, one thing that Starbucks

Starbucks started to decide on expansion by about the mid 1990 's, when the market became saturated. Market saturation is when a company or firm has covered an area so thoroughly with its presence, that it can no longer experience growth. Because of the market saturation, there were declining sales throughout stores. The company 's original marketing strategy was to blanket a region with new stores. The idea behind this was to reduce a customer 's wait in lines, while also reducing the company 's distribution costs. Revenues from stores were actually beginning to decline because stores were in such close proximity to one another. Although Starbucks was still ahead of their competitors, they were

In general the coffeehouse industry in the United States was experiencing an increase in coffee consumption per capita due to the “Starbucks effect”. At this time Starbucks was operating approximately 20,000 stores in the United States and was living a fast expansion strategy worldwide.

Starbucks started in 1971 and by creating a cozy third place to customers beyond home and work and offering a slightly higher price yet fine quality coffee, within 25 years, it had opened just over 1000 stores. In order to maintain its leadership position, Starbucks had continued pursuing growth opportunities by selling Starbucks products through mass distribution channels and expanding its retail footprint. Along with the rapid expansion and success, Starbucks has encountered financial downturn in 2008, and the rise of competitors from both high price independent coffee shops, smaller coffee chains that resembled pre-expansion Starbucks model, to low price fast food restaurants chain McDonald’s and Dunkin’s Donuts has deteriorate the

By mid-2005 Starbucks opened up 1,672 stores around the world. Even they set up their first outlet in Bahamas, Jordan and Ireland.

By applying the industry rivalry concept, although Starbucks has other competitors, they are comparatively smaller and they often focus their business in certain areas or regions. Some of Starbucks’ competitors are Coffee People, Gloria Jean’s, Second Cup, which are currently expanding or planning to expand their businesses nationally or internationally.

These partnerships have led to a meaningful increase in profits. Licensed stores, another type of partner for Starbucks, make up a greater portion of the corporation than company-operated stores. According to Starbucks’ Fiscal 2009 Annual Report, licensed stores make up 39% of total Starbucks stores in the US and 62% of Starbucks stores worldwide.

Starbucks also does not pay their employees very well. You would think with the amount of money Starbucks makes every year they would be able to pay their employees well.