Moving Forward in the Future with Starbucks

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 Coffee originated in 1971 as a coffee and tea café opening in a small neighborhood of Seattle, Washington (Starbucks Corporation, 2010). Starbucks continued its service for Seattle residents for a decade when the new director of retail operations and marketing, Howard Shultz, decided to make some beneficial changes to the company. After two years of employment Howard Shultz decided to expand Starbucks outside of the Seattle area. In 1987 Starbucks was entering in the coffee market and the few numbers of Starbucks were now becoming a corporation (Starbucks Corporation, 2010). Fast forwarding to current times, Starbucks is

Background information: Starbucks is one of the biggest chains of cafés on the planet with 22,551 stores in 66 nations and domains, incorporating 12,739 in the United States, 1,868 in China, 1,395 in Canada, 1,117 in Japan and 830 in the United Kingdom. It was established 44 years ago – March 30, 1971 in Seattle, Washington, United States by three partners Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, Gordon Bowker. The company entered global market after 25 years operations in domestic market in 1996 by opening store in Tokyo, Japan. Starbucks currently, serves hot, cold beverages and non-coffee items – sandwiches, deserts and CDs with their creation history all over the world. According to Wikipedia, in 2014, Company had more than 191,000 employees globally and theyt made revenue of $16,447 billion with 13 % net income.

* Starbucks has a reputation for new product development and creativity. However, they remain vulnerable to the possibility that their innovation may falter over time.

2) Garthwiate, Craig; Busse, Meghan; Brown, Jennifer; Merkley, Greg “Starbucks: A Story of Growth” Harvard Business Publishing, July 2012.

Study shows that U.S. per capita coffee consumption has not really varied in over 15 years. Although the consumer has since evolved from regular brewed coffee to a more sophisticated gourmet brew, the overall intake for coffee has relatively remained the same based on the Gallup polls. (Brown, 2015) The Starbucks Company has managed to change the pallet of the consumer by the type of coffee they distribute. Companies like Dairy Queen, McDonalds, and Dunkin Donuts have had a complete coffee menu makeover in hopes to keep pace and their customer base. (Cowan, 2014) (Company Profile, 2015) Since 2003 there has been a noted growth of coffee import to the United States (U.S.), regions such as New York, Miami, New Orleans, Houston, and San Francisco have become major ports on handling imported coffee. The United States have increased their secondary countries in Latin and Central America in order to meet the demands of coffee beans here in the U.S. (Plume, 2003)

Starbucks smartly realizes that innovation will allow them to maintain the upper hand in the

Despite the recent downturn in revenue, the Coffee and Snack Shops industry is mature. For these reasons, industry research firm IBIS World has updated a report on the Coffee & Snack Shops industry in its growing industry report collection. According to IBIS World Industry Report, in the five years to 2014, industry revenue is expected to increase an annualized 2.7% to $30.2 billion. This trend is expected to continue into 2014, with an expected growth of 1.4%. Major operators like Starbucks and Dunkin ' Donuts are expected to expand their menus in the five years to 2019 in order to increase sales and access higher profit margins. Both Starbucks and Dunkin ' Donuts plan on rolling out hundreds of new stores over the next five years, making up for lost ground they experienced during the recession. Dunkin ', which is highly concentrated in the east, is aiming to expand westward to steal market share from local competitors. The major chains are also expected to invest more in international growth as part of a long-term strategy, because many larger players view emerging economies as markets with huge potential for growth and long-term profitability. (Lauren Robi, An Analysis of Starbucks as a Company and an International Business, 2011)

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?

Cateora & Graham (2007) noted that Starbucks shows to be attaining “the upper limit of coffee shop saturation.” Findings prove so, by showing the number of outlets Starbucks has, as opposed to that of competitors in the year 2011.

Starbucks roasts high-quality coffee beans to make espresso drinks and sells coffee products through multiple retail channels. The company has over 24,000 stores in 70 countries. Starbucks target market is affluent adults ages 18-40. This market segment makes up 49% of the company’s sales. In addition to targeting a specific market, the company employs a differentiation strategy. Along with the high-quality coffee, the company offers an experience within their stores which justifies higher products. Some aspects of this “coffee experience” include free Wi-Fi, friendly baristas, fast service, and comfortable seating. Also, the company relies on new product development as a strategic choice. This includes adding alcoholic beverages and food to its coffee shop. All of this is done with the idea of making the higher priced product worth it for the consumer.

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

Nevertheless, this was not embraced until 1987 were he would come in with several local investors to purchased Starbucks and rebrand. What a better location than Chicago. In 1991 is where Starbucks took off and became the took the position to offer to its full and part time employees. They also were able to take the lead in the coffee world by offering their Frappuccino’s. They continued to do well that in 1995 they joined forces with Pepsi-Cola and offered their consumers a ready-to-drink Frappuccino that could be purchased through local grocery stores or convenient stores. Drinks in 1996. It was also in 1996 that Starbucks opened its first store outside of North America in Japan. The company acquired Tazo Tea Company in 1998, and collaborated with Conservation International in 1999, to promote environmentally responsible methods for growing coffee. Starbucks has continued to grow over the years, launching its VIA™ Ready Brew coffee in 2009 (Starbucks Timeline, 2010). They have continue to work aggressively to serve the public as of today Starbucks has more than 15,000 stores in 50 countries, and have taken their name to be known as the world’s premier roaster and retailer of specialty coffee (Starbucks Heritage, 2010).

Starbucks is a well-known coffee purveyor with a global presence. All companies face opportunities and external threats that must be evaluated when analyzing the operations of the business. This paper will focus on the on nine major opportunities that are apparent for Starbucks as well as eight threats that could impact the company. The opportunities will be analyzed and discussed initially in the paper followed by the external threats.