Subject: Starbucks’ Competitive Advantage
Problem/Objective: How has Starbucks obtained a competitive advantage over its competitors such as
Tim Hortons, and how can it maintain that competitive advantage?
Plan: How to sustain Starbucks’s competitive advantage? Starbucks can maintain this advantage by continuing to produce quality goods which consumers want.
Starbucks has a competitive advantage which it has obtained against its competitors by providing quality products over the years. The company now needs to maintain this competitive advantage by continuously following through with their total quality management approach and producing products consumers like. Starbucks can learn what the consumers want by interacting with them and being loyal to them by providing quality coffee. This interaction can occur by working with the branch managers working and communicating with the community and finding out what they like and enjoy.
3. Discuss how Starbucks is committed to TQM, specifically addressing the “4 absolutes” of management for total quality control.
The four absolutes state that to enforce good total quality management, managers and workers much meet conformance standards, prevent defects, continuously be perfect, and save money by doing things once.
- Starbucks has continued to meet conformance standards by being involved with its customers and community, providing its customers what they want, and continuing to be loyal and committed to providing them with genuine and good quality products.
- Starbucks provides goods which are quality goods from the start, not products which are corrected.
This is done by Starbucks’ initiatives to work alongside coffee growing nations to obtain the best materials possible, and as well, have programs for training workers to provide defect free goods by providing proper leadership, training, and discipline.
- To ensure that all work is defect-free, Starbucks continuously obtains feedback from everyone and from everywhere they can to ensure that every product they sell is at the highest quality possible. This includes communicating with workers, managers, partners, and consumers in order to better processes and final products to obtain the perfect coffee product each time.
- By not making mistakes and defective products, Starbucks is able to save money on defect correction by working with its employees and customers. This money is used to fund better resources and produce even higher quality products, and ultimately help contribute to the growing value of the company.