M10 Starbucks Case Assignment
Five Starbucks Associations
Then (1992)
High End Coffee
The case says that sourcing the “highest quality
coffee in the world” was part of their experiential
marketing brand strategy
“The third place”
Schultz highlights that in other countries there
are other places to go from work and home and
wanted to bring that to America.
Coffee focused chain
Shultz said he “wants to keep coffee alive”
Upscale Locations
With nice furniture and seating areas they
created a warm and inviting atmosphere come
for the coffee and stay for the ambiance the
customer base was more upscale as will with
higher educated and wealthier consumers.
Store
In 1992 the focus of the company revolved
around the Starbucks stores and decisions and
marketing used this as the focal point for
everything.
Now (2018)
Many types of coffee drinks
They introduced so many other frappes shakes
and things to introduce people to coffee but
there not exactly high end coffee maybe classify
them as high end drinks in general)
A place for free wifi and relax for a bit
Starbucks whenever I go is still packed and is a
place where people hang out BUT there are
definitely more people who are taking out drinks
or just sitting there with computers not exactly in
their spirit of the “third place”. One footnote
even noted that 10% of stored have a drive
through but that drive through made up 50% of
sales in that store
Snack location
added many other drinks and even real food
Chain Location
I would never claim Starbucks to be ugly but
there are so many Starbucks such as popups or
smaller stores that don’t have focus on the
seating and ambiance that I would no longer
claim this as a chain wide trait but there are still
some stores in the chain were this is the main
goal the point is that this became a more
everyman’s location as the study notes the
typical customer was less well educated and less
affluent as before
Brand
I think Starbucks has branched out to much to
say that they are just a coffee store with the case
saying that 15% of net revenue comes from
“specialty operations” and this is growing every
year the focus is on the Starbucks brand not just
the stores
Looking at the data provided it seems that the most important aspects to customer satisfaction is first a
clean store secondly to be convenient and third to be treated as a valuable customer.
Now looking at the behavior patterns the case explains; “With respect to customer behavior, the market
research team discovered that, regardless of the market—urban versus rural, new versus established—
customers tended to use the stores the same way.” That case has a graph that shows the typical
customers frequents Starbucks about 5 times a month and the middle category of drinker who consume
3-7 cups a month make 37% of the customer base and 27% of sales.
Lastly considering the way consumers currently drink coffee I would change the marketing of Starbucks
to be less about the coffee and try to go back to the old days of Starbucks and focus on the “third place”.
Now that Starbucks has successfully branded themselves as a coffee store to many Americans they need
to find a way to get those people back into the store. As we just noted above repeat customer are most
of their sales and with 8+ visits making up 62% of sales transactions they need to convince customers to
come back. With increasing the marketing of reminding people why they first came to Starbucks many
years ago I think will get them to come more often they will remember sitting with friends maybe
playing games in the store not running in for a quick drink and the rushing back out.