Following the September 11th, 2011 attacks on America’s World Trade Centers and Pentagon, the United States economy slowed to a preservation stage and in 2002 Starbucks Coffee Company was burdened with declining sales like many other companies. There were two areas that Starbucks needed to focus on to retain their customer loyalty. First, it was reported that “customers’ expectations in customer satisfaction” were not being met by their 4, 500 stores. Secondly, the condition and store cleanliness had been declining and required corporate wide attention to address the problem. Ms. Christine Day, Starbucks ' senior vice president of administration in North America, was in charge of improving these issues and really satisfying their …show more content…
“When Starbucks has polled its customers to determine what it could do to make them feel more like valued customer, ‘improvements to service- in particular, speed of service- had been mentioned most frequently (Moon & Quelch, 2006, pg 11)”.
The need for cleaner stores is another issues that needed to be addressed. Market research discovered that Starbucks ' customer base was evolving into a younger crowd. They were well-educated and tended to be in a lower income bracket than Starbucks ' more established customers. With this reduced visitation level of the stores and changing customer base, Starbucks had to ensure quick service and provide a clean, well maintained environment to meet customers’ expectations. A well maintained Starbucks store includes overall cleanliness and neat appearance, clean bathrooms and clean countertops. Starbucks needed to address the environment issue as well, which their data indicated that people come for the coffee and an ambience that makes them want to stay. A solution to this was adding more seating areas to encourage lounging and layouts that were designed to provide an upscale yet inviting environment. With a younger customer base, many stores became a social “hangout” which had to be inviting and beneficial for the customer to stay and utilize the environment, products, and drink coffee or tea. From personal experience, this
The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, and deliberate persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime. It is a word of Greek origin and means “sacrifice by fire” Shortly after Adolf Hitler gained power in the Third Reich, he began to implement horrific measures designed to disempower the German Jews from economic and social positions. Life for the Jews became increasingly worse when the onset of WWII came along in 1939. The Germans began to strip the Jews of their lives, and began deporting (or resettling as the public believed) them to the East to Ghettos and later to concentration and extermination camps. At the camps, the Germans either worked the Jews to death or gassed them in massive gas chambers, then destroyed the evidence by burning the copious amounts of bodies at a time in the colossal crematoriums. During the six years of the War, there were around 6 million Jews, including 1.5 million children that were murdered by the Nazis, and around two million other “undesirables” also exterminated. Hitlers annihilation of the Jews killed one third of the Jewish world population, and two thirds of the European Jewish population.
I enjoyed the female author Zara Neale Hurston. I found out a few things about this author born well over 100 years ago and she was black. She had an impressive resume for a black female brought up in the south. What I discovered while reading about her is the short story called “Sweat” that describes a working woman in relationship and the antagonist is her husband and his name is Sykes which is actually how you spell my name. The sad thing is Zara died penniless doing something she truly enjoyed and forty years after her death is when it’s been decided to publish her work. A critic mentioned that through her work you will discover a real “negro theater”. (Cole and Charles, Zora Neale Hurston, Project MUSE)
ticket size) X (4.4 customer life years)] $921.78. Calculating sales amount for the highly satisfied customer using the same method shows an amount of [(7.2 visits/mo) X (12 months) X ($4.42 avg. ticket size) X (8.3 customer life years)] $3,169.67. The sales figure for the highly satisfied customer is nearly three and a half times as much as the satisfied customer. This is why it is very important for Starbucks to figure out how to provide more customer satisfaction. The company needs to do research to find out if quality of service has actually declined. There is always the societal perception that a large mega brand is incapable of delivering customer intimacy. This perception is not necessarily a foregone conclusion. It’s just a matter of Starbucks collecting accurate information regarding both quality and quantity of its customer service. The company needs to take a look at itself and determine if its customer service strategy had changed from 1992 to 2002. This is an era indicative of the massive growth. Starbucks needs to answer the question, “Did we lose our focus on customer service quality by concentrating too much on opening more stores?”.
The millennial generation has seen the evolution of media representation. As our generation continues to advance and take on careers in casting and media representation we are able to challenge every previous ideal about what people want to see on stage and screen. The stages and screens are meant to be a place for people to come view reflections of our society and societies spanning the globe. 2016 is set to break previous boundaries for actors with autism. The representation of autism began its development as a way for unknown actors such as to break into the limelight for performing as a person with a lifelong development disability. Examples of this include Leonardo DiCaprio’s acclaimed performance in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and Eddie
Additionally with its growth strategy Starbucks seemed to have lost the ability to communicate its values to its customers. Note that Starbucks research team discovered that between 2000 and 2001 there was an increase in customers who felt that Starbucks primarily cared about making money and building more stores. This is an indication that the company lost sight of the components making up its value proposition. Customer service was a major component of Starbucks value proposition but according to the research team by 2002 it discovered that Starbucks was not meeting expectations in terms of customer satisfaction. In fact the data collected by the research team indicated that 10% of customers would like to see improvements in service especially speed of service and 19% would like to have friendlier more attentive staff.
Starbucks has developed a brand image that has revolutionized coffee drinking experience. It has created an ambiance that is designed to attract customers and keep them coming back to Starbucks stores. It offers wide varieties of services such as comfortable seating areas with unique music and free wireless Internet for their customers while sipping their favorite coffee. This distinctiveness sets Starbucks apart from most of its competitors and has allowed the company to successfully grow and profit while charging premium prices for their products.
The survey questions mostly consisted of multiple choice questions, two open-ended questions, allowing written responses, and one qualitative response question. These questions were chosen to establish consumers differences and comparative perspective of Starbuck’s competitors, their daily usage of the social media platforms, the coffee shops visited frequently, and their opinions on consumers who frequent Starbucks. The survey contains one matrix/rating scale question ( Appendix I, Question 5) based on how important qualities are when choosing a coffee shop. Lastly, there were two demographic questions. The demographic questions are for a general understanding on consumers behavior based on age group and gender. For an overview of the survey, see appendix I.
Starbucks has put heavy concentration on product innovation, new product launches and branding strategies and as a result, the company has lost sight of the customer’s wants and needs. Ultimately, Starbucks is not properly or correctly measuring customer satisfaction. They are basing these scores on characteristics affecting the product, and not precisely measuring the quality of their services. As Exhibit 10 from the case study shows, Starbucks’ customers ranked a clean and convenient store as the most important attributes of creating customer satisfaction. As marketing research is beginning to reveal, this should not be the only focus. Starbucks needs to shift their priorities and rank fast service, customer experience, and atmosphere as most important, as new studies suggest.
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 has discovered that they are not always meeting their customers’ expectations in the area of customer satisfaction. Starbucks has to come up with an action plan to address this issue, considering its significant correlation and impact to sales and profitability.
Starbucks – one of the fastest growing companies in the US and in the world - had built its position on the market by connect with its customers, and create “third place” beside home and work, where people could relax and enjoy others or themselves. It was the motto of Starbucks’ owner Howard Schultz and mostly thanks to his philosophy; company has became the biggest coffee drink retailer in the world. However, within the new customer satisfaction report, there is shown some concerns, that company has lost the connection with customers and it must been taken some steps to help Starbucks to go back on the right path regarding customer satisfaction.
Starbucks first began in 1971 its main goal was to offer a coffee experience that no other coffee shop has done before. As stated in the case study, Starbucks emphasis on customer service included eye contact and greeting each customer within 5 seconds, cleaning tables promptly and remembering the names of regular customers. Starbucks was to reinvent the sense of romance atmosphere sophistication and
Their marketing research shed light on the fact that their focus had shifted from the consumer towards store growth and product expansion. The research also highlighted the fact that they were lacking in customer service. Through these studies, Starbucks was able to identify what their customers wanted in terms of satisfaction. Consumers wanted Starbucks to make improvements to their service and also start offering better prices and incentive programs.
Starbucks provide a large in store seating with free wi fi and a take-out service which only a few retail shops offer. The main target customers for Starbucks are office workers, with enough income, whom are able to afford the high prices of their products (Gaudio, 2003). The company has worked hard to establish itself as the brand leader with its branding as the most frequently drank coffee and noticeable brand logo. Introduction of promotions like the Starbucks Card, allows a more convenient way for a person to pay for your drinks and earn rewards for your purchase (Starbucks Coffee Company, 2011). Furthermore, in‐store promotions accompanied by new products and amenities like free internet use are all strategies that Starbucks use to maintain their position in the market (Vasudha, 2011).
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.