Starbucks’ International Operations Case Study

As Starbucks' strategic vision evolved over the years, so did its strategy. Starbucks current strategy in comparison to its original competitive strategy are: to continue the focus on growth; to establish a leadership with company owned stores in key markets such as USA, Japan, Australia, and UK; to pre-emptively enter and aggressively grow in all targeted markets; to leverage the brand into new product categories and channels; to continue operations improvement; to growth through innovation; to develop and maintain leadership talent; and to maintain their values, culture, and guiding principles. The key elements of Starbucks current strategy is to expand Starbucks globally, and to further develop its internet business. The strategy has changed over time as the business has grown exceptionally well in North America, and now they want to take that success over sea.

Starbucks is no doubt a phenomenon in the United States, but the brand wants to expand globally. Opening chains in various global locations such as Japan, Vienna, England; Starbucks wants to reach out to the coffee loving fans everywhere. Nevertheless opening chains globally is not that simple. There are many uncontrollable factors Starbucks need to focus on to make sure they are making profit as well has abiding by the country’s laws and regulations. Going global takes a lot of market research to make sure that the brand will be successful even with uncontrollable factors. Controllable factors can be tailored to fit the needs of each country. Starbucks has to find the happy medium so they don’t lose their identity overseas.

Many multinational corporations in the coffee industry have succeeded tremendously such as Starbucks. Each of these corporations has strategies that helped them continue to expand to nations of different cultures, ethnicities, governmental practices, and locations.

Introduction The two companies that are the subject of this report are Starbucks and Caribou Coffee. Starbucks operated internationally from an early point in its history, opening its 10th store in Vancouver its second market was international, before anybody in the US outside Seattle had heard of Starbucks. Now the company operates around the world. While its coffee business has not generally been built on the basis of acquisitions, it has attempted to complement that business and enter new ones with a variety of acquisitions over the years. Two recent ones were Teavana, a tea shop (Patton, 2012) and Evolution Fresh, a juice chain (Horovitz, 2012). In contrast, Caribou Coffee has remained a regional player, expanding slowly, with no international operations and without any major acquisitions. This paper will compare these two companies in terms of their expansion strategies, especially with respect to mergers and acquisitions.

Starbuck’s had a specific strategy when it came to opening new locations. They believed more in licensing locations as opposed to franchising new stores because of the lack of control that comes with franchising. Starbucks also wanted to enter more international markets realizing that these new markets could increase revenues drastically. All of these things helped Starbucks as a rapidly expanding company.

Maturity of Starbucks comes in United States stores where it is hard for Starbucks to extend the company

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

First, Starbucks has effectively applied the product differentiation strategy. To achieve it, the company has specialized in different product mixes, aligned its business locations to a specific ambiance that suits the context, and varied the customer experience, thus resulting in a higher customer service satisfaction. Further, Coskun, Basligil, and Baracli (2008) note that Starbucks prides in having their customers enjoy a premium service. Therefore, the company’s signature strategy has worked well thus far, as competitors find it difficult to imitate. Second, the enterprise has coordinated its acquisition and portfolio strategy, thus consolidating the market. As discussed in the background chapter, Starbucks has a portfolio network of eight brands under its stable. Third, Starbucks’ international expansion strategy has worked well, with a presence in 70 countries (Starbucks, 2017). These factors, coupled with its financial capability, offer Starbucks an edge over its

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.

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

Starbucks has a reputation for new product development and creativity. But new ideas can not come so often and even if they do they may not be on target. Moreover, almost the ¾ of their shops are located in the U.S. which means they are depended too much on one country. They need to spread into another group of countries in order to spread the business risk. Also organization is dependant on a main competitive advantage, the retail of coffee. This could make them slow to diversify into other sectors should the need arise.

This case assignment discusses the history of Starbuck’s accomplishments as they entered the American coffee culture heritage. In 1983, The chairman and CEO Howard Schultz traveled to Italy and had a dream to carry the Italy coffeehouse ritual back to the United States. Schultz was focused on creating an environment meeting company that makes good coffee but also be a social experiment. Starbucks today opened more than 19,000 stores functioning in 62 countries. Starbucks has numerous rewards that globalization has offered and they have significantly benefited from it, while in the coffee industry. Starbucks has a wide-range in marketing strategies to benefit the customers. During the different obstacles that Starbucks has encountered, they must stay reliable in quality and uphold to adjust to different customer values.

Following its success in the United States, Starbucks ventured overseas and quickly became a globalization icon. With its rapid globalization strategy, Starbucks expanded from about 5000 stores to an estimated 15,000 stores in 2000 (Groth, 2011). By mid-2000s, Starbucks’ supply chain faced many issues, resulting with challenges of having to fulfill expansion strategies yet minimizing escalating operation expenses. By 2008, Starbucks’ stocks fell by 42% (Schultz, 2011). The rapid expansion took a toll on the sales growth and stretched the limits of the existing supply chain, which then rippled down to erode the customer-valued ‘Starbucks experience’ (Gibbons, 2011).

Factors in the global environment provide both opportunities and strengths for Starbucks. Opportunities such as increased revenues, further expansions, and achieving their goal of becoming the most respected brand worldwide. Starbucks also faced threats. These threats include dealing with growing antiglobalization overseas and their huge risk of less return on each overseas store, this deriving from overseas operations being run by local partners instead of Starbucks

Starbucks’ retail entry model in the United States does not have the same strategy as their international model. In the states Starbucks holds great control as a corporation, but in international territory, country partnerships, cultural, government laws and politics play a very important role in Starbucks’ entry strategy. Starbucks has set it sights globally since the coffee market has come close to saturation in the U.S. which will give them the opportunity to continue to expand without fierce competition. Starbucks has looked to countries like India and other emerging markets with great growth potential to set down new roots. Starbucks recognizes India as a great choice to expand business internationally but also recognizes the complexity in the same market after several attempts to enter without success.