Starbucks Case Study, Quinn Wieber, 9/24/2023 I found this case study to be an intriguing look into the world of those who have a different worldview than I do. I grew up 30 minutes from Seattle, the birthplace of the Starbucks, and yet, I don’t drink coffee. This is ofttimes shocking for people to hear. Given my age and hometown, they assume I must. But I find it equally shocking that people would want to drink this bitter, expensive drink. I assumed people just drank coffee because of its addictive nature. So, to hear the story of Starbucks within the context of this class was really an eyeopener for me. I had to contend with the fact that people who drink coffee aren’t weird or wrong, they simply desire different things than I do because they are a part of a different culture and have different ideas about status. Takeaway: your customers don’t think, belief, or care about the same things you do. Schultz started by selling to wealthy educated professionals who used consumption to distinguish themselves from others. This soon caught on, and people started to be influenced to believe that quality coffee was a symbol of status that made them cooler, richer, more sophisticated than others. It has become a symbol of what it means for something to be a lifestyle product. Takeaway: Schultz targeted the smallest viable group, and Starbucks is still seen as being for a group of people who have specific beliefs about coffee, time, money, community, opportunity, and luxury. Schultz never settled for the product he was serving, but rather was always seeking to make the changes and innovations he thought would be of value to people, and to find ways to make coffee accessible to new use cases. His comment that “customers don’t always know what they want” might come off as arrogant, but in fact, he was pointing out that the product being sold to most customers was missing the mark on what they desired, and that marketers have the responsibility to help people find things they didn’t know they needed. Takeaway: Schultz practiced effective marketing by utilizing empathy to see past the current culture and create a product that interrupted all the current patterns. I was shocked to read that Schultz started Starbucks to provide an experience like that of the European coffeehouse, a comfortable place for meeting and relaxation. The reason I was shocked was because while I was in Salzburg Austria, I experienced the Tomaselli Seit Café, a place well known for European coffeehouse culture, and in my mind, it was a stark contrast to the American Starbucks coffee culture. The Tomaselli Seit Café felt like a comfortable place for meeting and relaxation, a place where great minds could come together to share ideas, a center of culture (among other things that I think are lacking in American coffee culture), whereas I associated Starbucks with grab-and-go consumerism. I think that the European coffee culture would be beneficial to and successful in America, but the fact that Starbucks had to close 15th avenue coffee and Tea in Seattle might mean that it is a market that is not compatible with their brand. Perhaps they could do something like what they did with the Seattle’s Best brand and find a way to serve customers like me who don’t necessarily drink coffee, but desire that luxury environment. Takeaway: Schultz saw a change that he wanted to make to a culture, but as he moved from serving the early adopters to the masses, he lost one of the core ingredients that would interest a customer like me. I thought it was fascinating that Schultz removed the rotating selections of brews because it led less informed customers to think that the variations in flavors was due to operational inconsistencies. Takeaway: It is this kind of thoughtful insight, rather than aggressive advertising or expansion of options that has helped Starbucks thrive. One final reflection I had about Starbucks is that I know a good many people who choose not to shop there because they do not agree with the way that they donate money to organizations such as Planned Parenthood. It would seem counterintuitive for a large corporation to take a stance that seems to divide the American people. Takeaways: Starbucks is defined more by its brand than by the products it creates, and rationality is not what defines success.
