Senior Supply Management Specialist Of A Manufacturing Company

3. How can supply chain design and integration help John Wolf reduce investment and space requirements while maintaining adequate service levels?

The “Coffee Wars – The Big Three: Starbucks, McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts” article focuses on the company analysis of the Starbucks brand and how its main competitors, McDonald’s and Dunkin Donuts, has affected their brand and driven competition higher. Even though there are many companies trying to enter the specialty coffee market, these three companies own the majority of the market share. With Starbucks’ top quality and above average prices they hold a different market than the fast coffee/food market of Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks; yet the competitive moves Dunkin’ Donuts has made over the years in order to compete with Starbucks and surpass McDonald’s has driven competition up between all three companies. The competition has stiffened ever more in the past ten years due to the changing economy. This led to “the big three” to come up with different techniques to gain competitive advantage over the other. Although the competition between these companies is to gain most of the market share, consumers are still loyal to a certain brand; this makes it difficult to gain each other’s clientele. McDonald’s continues to appeal to customers who want value and speed, Dunkin’ Donuts focuses on the middle-class, while Starbucks a customer who desires a higher quality product along with being recognized for using the brand.

Key questions should be related to the personnel and the organizational structure, whether local staff to be in the front line “interact with the customer”, positions and titles for local employees and for the international staff.

List and explain all aspects of supply chain management. pg 416; week5 lecture, pg 4;

* 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

4.Given the 4 areas of the company, choose some supply chain processes and suggest appropriate performance metrics.

3. Most managers of Wings & Legs see the exchange of tactical information about (price)

from a small local store to its current global enterprise. Starbucks has strategic partners all over

The company is also investing in introducing complimentary products such as take home coffee beans and coffee accessories for customers. Apart from this, Starbucks is also partnering to sell their coffee through other intermediaries.

6. In your opinion, what are the key lessons from this case study for supply chain managers?

Starbucks is also partnering with Chapters and Barnes & Noble. The high traffic in bookstores has led to a higher volume of sales for the company. In addition to the above channels, the company is working with NGOs to support the purchasing of fair trade coffee beans to reach long-term sustainability.

Starbucks does not use direct advertising such as commercials, ads or other promotion. They do however; have one of the largest social media networks with one of the highest customer contact percentages on a daily basis. This is one way they continue to promote their brand with customers who have been with the company for a long time. At the same time Starbucks has made quality choices in generating “alliances” with companies who have a similar market segment or customer base. Some of these alliances have been with “Barnes and Noble, I-tunes, Green Mountain, Tata Coffee”. These have allowed Starbucks to differentiate their product in India, Canada, USA and China. They can provide their quality product in hotels, bookstores and specific markets that relate to their direct customer base.

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

Starbucks have shown in the past that they are very good at taking advantage of opportunities. In an strategy alliance with Hewlett Packard, customers could create their own music CD within a Starbucks coffee shop. Thus the company could look for these kind of opportunities to seize. In addition, new markets for coffee are emerging such as India and the Pacific Rim nations, also Europe which is getting more and more accustomed with the brand name “Starbucks”. Co-branding with other manufacturers of food and drink, and brand franchising to manufacturers of other goods and services both have potential.

1. Based on the brief conversation between Jerry Kline, Grace Gallo, and Paul Swenson, what kind of sales manager do you think each of them is? What do you think is the level of performance of the sales force each person heads? How do you think each of them will benefit from the sales force each person heads? How do you think each of them will benefit from the sales mananagement training seminar?