Starbucks Coffee Essay Example

Starbucks Coffee Essay Example Starbucks Coffee Essay Starbucks Coffee Essay This one phrase sums up Starbucks Coffee’s approach to attracting more customers. They want the customers to feel that they are not â€Å"primarily about coffee† (Holmes, 2004). Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz explains further, â€Å"You get more than the finest coffee when you visit a Starbucks – you get great people, first rate music and a comfortable and upbeat meeting place† (Starbucks Corporation, 2007). Indeed, from that single coffee shop in 1971 (Gallo, 2006), Starbucks has evolved into a global brand that is a hybrid of a place where you can get good coffee, good music, a good book and where you can meet up with friends or business partners. Initially just another coffee shop, Starbucks morphed into a cozy hang-out place in the mid 1980’s – an idea brought about by Schultz’s visit to Italy. Charmed by the pleasant environment enveloping Milan coffee places, Schultz got convinced that this set-up could work in America; hence, the Starbucks of today (Gallo, 2006). Central to the transformation into a comfortable meeting place is not just Starbucks’ irresistible coffee but also a more personal kind of customer service that was achieved through a two-fold approach. First leg of this approach was the inclusion of a wider variety of coffee flavors and other drinks such as chocolate, juice and iced drinks in the menu – as this move gave the customers a wider array of choices, it expanded Starbucks’ market, which initially just covered the coffee-drinking public. Also part of this strategy allowing customers to individualize products by giving them the option to dictate the size, temperature and extra ingredients (i.e. whipped cream, coffee strength, caramel, etc.) of their favorite Starbucks drink (Gallo, 2006). To strengthen this image of personalization, Starbucks made an effort to build a personal relationship with their customers. In fact, a coffee giant that expanded to 12,440 location sin 36 years, Starbucks like to operate like a small, local store where the customers feel like they know the people behind the counters and vice versa (Kiviat, 2006). â€Å"It’s part of the reason [people] go [to Starbucks],† attests CEO Jim Donald (Kiviat, 2006). And to make sure they keep their base of loyal customers (and make sure they continue to add to this base), Starbucks invests a lot on the people working for them – whom they fondly call as â€Å"partners† (and not employees). â€Å"We realize our people are the cornerstone of our success, and we know that their ideas, commitment and connection to our customers are truly the essential elements in the Starbucks Experience,† Schultz expounds (Starbucks Corporation, 2007). Maintaining a ‘knowledgeable workforce’ requires Starbucks to give its partners a rigorous 24 hours of training (divided into six classes discussing different aspects of the job) before being able to stand in the front lines. The logic behind this is that, as Sarah Lockyer writes, Starbucks believe that â€Å"employees should be fully versed in how to make [drinks] and how to market them as well. They should be able to describe the contents and, especially if it’s part of the job description, spell the item correctly on a chalkboard or a menu† (as cited in Ablanalp, Reiliey, Bigler, Laracuente, n.d., p.5). This seemingly hard process of getting incorporated into the Starbucks Company comes with benefits, though. Partners are given stock options and health care benefits and are encouraged to share their opinions on operations and to make their own decisions regarding customer relations. And because partners feel more like their own managers than mere â€Å"worker bees†, partners start feeling good about their work, which in turn equates to a positive relationship with customers (Ablanalp et al.). It is also this commitment to an intimate set-up of operations that prevents Starbucks from using machines in churning out coffees. Schultz explains that it is in their utmost concern that the company’s culture does not get diluted with growth – they pride themselves for their hand-crafted beverages and their beverages are going to stay hand-crafted. Despite criticisms and harsh suggestions that they should snap up and accept the fact that machineries are important to increase efficiency, Starbucks remains firm. Jim Alling, president of Starbucks Coffee US, argues, â€Å"As much as we want to meet people’s desire to produce beverages quickly, we also realize that people want a smile with their drink, that they don’t want to feel rushed† (Kiviat, 2006). Another ploy to making sure Starbucks keeps it edge over the competition is their constant attempt at venturing to other endeavors that will greatly compliment their coffee and enhance what they proudly call as the Starbucks Experience. Like most of their other undertakings, Starbucks crossing over to the music business started from something that they already had and just expanded to cater to customers’ demands. When Schultz noticed that while waiting for their orders customers would often get up and ask about the song playing in the background, it gave him the idea of selling CDs of their ‘house music’ at the cash register (Holmes, 2004). Today, Starbucks has extended to more than just selling CDs – it has now partnered with music labels, started its own 24-hour digital music channel on XM Satellite Radio (genre of which is more adult-oriented jazz, blues, and alternative rock), and built the alternative record retailer HearMusic Coffeehouses in Santa Mon ica, San Antonio, Miami and Bellevue, Washington (Starbucks Corporation, 2007). And Starbucks coverage just keeps getting wider. Kiosks and stalls that sell Starbucks coffee can now be spotted on Barnes Nobles bookstores and some campuses (Ablanalp et al.). With the help of Kraft, their products are now also being sold in supermarket shelves and are now featured as Dreyer’s ice cream flavors. The company may now even start to attempt competing with McDonald’s and Burger King in attracting midday crowd – something that will surely boost sales because as of the moment, 60% of Starbucks’ sales are made before 6 a.m. (Gallo, 2006; Kiviat, 2006). Despite the fact that Starbucks’ price list is not exactly the most affordable in the market, people still continue to support its products. This may be traced to the fact that customers, like Starbucks, believe that â€Å"with any product, there is an inherent link between quality and price† (Starbucks Corporation, 2006). Starbucks got it right when they said that quality is the best and most sustainable driver of higher prices paid. Since Starbucks pledge to deliver uncompromising quality on their coffee, people are almost always willing to pay premium prices to have the privilege of sipping from a Starbucks cup. But Starbucks is not all about making money. The company always insisted that â€Å"putting people before products just made good common sense† (Starbucks Corporation, 2007), they always made a point to not forget that aside from an entrepreneurial mind, they also have a social responsibility. They have maintained environmental stewardship and literacy campaigns on top of producing great-tasting coffee. This, Starbucks shares, endears them more to the people and makes them truly part of a community where a Starbucks is located (Starbucks Corporation, 2006). Some business onlookers may get critical of Starbucks seemingly spreading themselves thin. The company looks like they have tried to cover –and is still trying to cover – a lot of other business endeavors. John Glass, who covers Starbucks for CIBC, says that Starbucks has fallen into a trap. â€Å"You have to have new products. That’s the retailer’s dilemma,† he says (Kiviat, 2006). But who is to say that this game plan is not working for the company? Surely, with its recent efforts at global expansion, Starbucks strategy is – contrary to what the pessimists will say – making them a stronger coffee magnate. On top of their already uncountable stores in America, Starbucks continues to reach out to Europe and Asia. Currently, there are now more than 13,000 Starbucks Coffee Shops in 40 countries, including Japan, Philippines, China, Hongkong, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Puerto Rico, Brazil, and Egypt. In 36 years, Starbucks Corporation has indeed grown into something that nobody may have envisioned when it first came into operation in 1971. Nowadays, Starbucks is not only parallel to good coffee but also to good music, books, food, and community service. Its influence has blown up to include not only the business people and the old who are wont to grab their daily dose of caffeine but also to kids, who now have the option to order chocolate or juice when they tug along with their parents as they drop by for their cappuccino, and students, who has found the perfect study place in Starbucks’ comfortable couches and mellow music. Undeniably, Starbucks has managed to employ a marketing strategy that is not in need of the aid of countless TV and radio advertisements – the image they painstakingly built throughout the years becomes enough for them to survive in an industry where coffee shop companies mushroom so fast. Lucky for the company, they have found the perfect mix of good product, incomparable customer service, and global brand imaging that keeps customer tied to their name. And, as they continue to move forward with the same approach, Starbucks Coffee is sure to stay afloat for a very long time.