Starbucks : An Ideal Form Of Communication

Building a successful brand with multiple stores opening. Selling whole beans and premium priced coffee. They also new and understood their target market. Unlike many other coffee shops they sold the lifestyle around the coffee and made it an experience for their customers as apposed to it being just an addition to a donut in the morning. They made it a lifestyle choice and something to be desired as well as focusing very heavily on the customer service aspect of the industry. What was so compelling about Starbucks value proposition? What brand image did Starbucks develop during this period?

As Starbucks moves into new markets all over the world, it continues to build its brand through the delivery of the Starbucks Experience. "Our success at every market that we have entered into reiterates our commitment to become a great, enduring company with the most recognized and respected brand in the world, known for inspiring and nurturing the human spirit. Our Mission: to be a global company, making a difference in peoples ' lives by leveraging our brand and the coffee experience to foster human connections." (www.starbucks.com)Starbucks ' development strategy adapts to different markets addressing local needs and requirements. Starbucks currently uses three business strategies: joint ventures, licenses, and company-owned operations.

Starbucks has a big brand impression is not because they have budgets in millions for marketing and advertising. It is because they are most engaging companies online. In social media, Starbucks is able to spend less on the advertising media, but the performance is improving in a few years. Starbucks only spends 1% of its sales on advertising. The interaction with customers or potential customers as a relationship is not limiting at advertising. People can feel a part of company through the social

Starbucks® has appealed by offering a mobile app which allows for ordering, tipping, and choosing the desired location of pickup (Starbucks Newsroom, 2014). Launched in Portland, Oregon, in 2014, plans were put in place to expand in 2015. The mobile ordering experience has been integrated into the already existing Starbucks mobile app, and My Starbucks Rewards® program. Continuing to utilize the expanding features of mobile possibilities, Starbucks® is growing with customer demand. Realizing the growing possibility of income from the use of the app, Starbucks has initiated a plan to expand the mobile app even more (Meola, 2016). In addition, sales through the mobile app has continued to grow, and, therefore, inspired the expansion of offerings through mobile communication. Studies have concluded that the use of the mobile app has become a core strategy for the business, and future growth for the Starbucks app will include recommendations to the customer for additional products. This writer considers the use of the mobile app to still be in the growing stages of the product life cycle. The maturity stage would indicate that the product has reached a peak (Solomon, Marshall, Stuart, 2012). However, not everyone has joined in the forces of utilizing the possibilities of the mobile app. Even though it would seem that most people have a cell phone, a select few only use the device for calling and texting. Therefore, the market is still growing and enticing new app

Several key success factors exist for Starbucks, a leader in the coffee industry. They include

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.

Starbucks is a major American company that was founded in 1971 by three college friends in Seattle, Washington. Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, and Gordon Bowker at one time were all of different paths until they learned coffee roasting techniques from coffee entrepreneur, Alfred Peet (Starbucks Timeline, 2016). Alfred taught the three friends his particular style of roasting which ignited a spark in the trio and they were inspired to sell high quality coffee beans and roasting equipment. They soon started brainstorming names, and finally settled on Starbucks

* Starbucks is a global coffee shop chain and it's headquarter is based in Seattle – U.S. It is considered the largest coffee shop company in the whole world.

The organization that I have chosen to analyze in this paper is Starbucks. Starting as just a single coffeehouse in Seattle in 1971, Starbucks has now grown into a multinational corporation with over 23,000 stores worldwide. (Smith) With a vision that stemmed from Italian coffeehouse tradition, Starbucks set out to become more than just an average coffeehouse, they wanted to provide their customers with excellent coffee but also a personable connection. Their mission is “to inspire and nurture the human spirit-one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time” (Starbucks). At the top of their priority list is quality however Starbucks is also passionate about ethically sourcing only the finest of coffee beans, roasting them perfectly and the most important part being improving the lives of the people who grow the beans.

The context change in form that Starbucks found itself competing with smaller chains that resembled its former pre-expansion model with competitors focusing in creating symbolic-expressive value and fast food restaurants that had started to offer specialty coffee with more aggressive advertisement at a lower cost. The competitive context changed for Starbucks because it’s focus in mass distribution channels and its retail footprint strategy stated its product within a standard performance product value; this affected the value perception of the product.

Joseph Michelli in his book ‘Leading the Starbucks Way: 5 Principles for Connecting with Your Customers, Your Products and Your People’ pointed out that brand rituals among B2B corporations are not practiced as much as it should be. Using Starbucks as a B2B example- this company has rituals for celebrations, for training and communication. Each of these rituals created a sense of togetherness and enable partners to share a certain set of historic traditions.

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.

Marketing and Sales: Starbucks aspires to build customer trustworthiness through word of the mouth as a cost effective means of marketing [8]. Though the stiff competition have made senior management to re-evaluate the marketing strategy and marketing budgets [8]

Starbucks is a highly socially engaged company. According to the Social media Index, Starbucks is enjoying the 36th position as a most effective company in social media in the United States. One important success factor is that for Starbucks, social media is a way to build the customer relationship environment rather than mere marketing channel. Starbucks has made a significant investment in social media to reconnect with the customers. Because Starbucks firmly believes that social media enhances the customer experience and improve customer interactions (Poirier, 2014).

When it comes to technology, Starbucks has created different features that will increase the likeliness of having their customers to return. One of the best things offered is when they came up with the mobile app. The app allowed customers to make purchases, track your rewards and check your balance. Because not all customers are the same in what they purchase nor their level of loyalty, it’s important to establish that value between the customers and the company. In terms of using individualized marketing approaches, Starbucks operates on the mission “to inspire and nurture the human spirit –