Starbucks Case Analysis

Starbucks: Delivering Customer Service.

1. What factors accounted for the extraordinary success of Starbucks in the early 1990’s? The success of Starbucks was once nothing but the vision of its founder and chairman, Howard Schultz. Starbucks brand strategies like its “live coffee” mantra were all in order to bring in the coffee culture by creating an entire “experience” out of coffee consumption. Along with this experiential branding strategy were three main components, namely: - The first brand component was the coffee itself. Starbucks took pride in offering the highest quality coffee in the world sourced from the African, Central and South American, and Asia-Pacific regions. - The second component was service and in the words of the Starbucks officials, “customer intimacy”. The best interpretation to this phenomenon was the one claimed by Jim Alling, Starbucks’ senior vice president of retail, “Our goal is to create an uplifting experience every time a customer walks through our door.” - The third brand component was “ambience and atmosphere”. This idea was enforced by Christine Day, Starbucks’ senior vice president of administration. She claimed, “People come for the coffee, but the ambience is what makes them want to stay.” Thus, Starbucks brought in seating areas to encourage lounging.

Starbucks coffee in the 1990’s was targeted primarily towards the affluent, white-collar, well-educated people. The concept of Starbucks was new and the notion of turning coffee drinking into a social experience was unexploited in the U.S and thus Starbucks did not face fierce competition in the early 1990’s. The absence of the above concept helped Starbucks succeed. 2. Why have Starbucks customer satisfaction scores declined? With the given data on this particular case study it is only possible to analyze that the customer satisfaction has declined but it is nearly impossible to state whether this is due to increased customer expectations considering increasing... [continues]

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