Starbucks Coffee Company: Retail Successes and Challenges
| RETAILING CASE ASSIGNMENT |
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CASE ANALYSIS:
STARBUCKS COFFEE COMPANY: RETAIL SUCCESSES & CHALLENGES
STARBUCKS COFFEE COMPANY: RETAIL SUCCESSES & CHALLENGES
Starbucks Corporation is a leading international coffee and coffeehouse retail chain based in Seattle, Washington, USA. Starbucks owns and operates over 6,000 retail stores and is the largest coffeehouse company in the world. Its annual sales in 2006 were $7.8 billion and it employed 140,000 people in 39 countries.
Entrepreneur Howard Schultz joined the company in 1982 as Director of Marketing. He went on a buying trip to Milan, Italy. After the trip Howard Schultz advised that the company should sell coffee and espresso drinks as well as beans. The owners rejected this idea, believing that getting into the beverage business would distract the company from its primary focus. To them, coffee was something to be prepared in the home.
HOW THIS ASSIGNMENT IS ORGANIZED? 1. What is Starbucks’ retail strategy? What is its target market and how does it try to develop an advantage over its competition? 2. Describe Starbucks’ retail mix: location, merchandise assortment, pricing, store design and visual merchandising, customer service, and the promotional mix – advertising, promotion, and personal selling. How does its retail mix support its strategy? 3. What factors in the environment provided the opportunity for Starbucks to develop a new, successful retail chain? What demand and supply conditions prevailed in the U.S. coffee market when Howard Schultz purchased Starbucks in 1987? What insight did Schultz have that other players in the coffee market did not? 4. What were the principal drivers behind Starbucks’ success in the marketplace? What does the Starbucks brand mean to consumers? How have the growth opportunities that Starbucks has purchased affected the value of its brand name? 5. What are the major challenges facing Starbucks as it goes forward? Is
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CASE ANALYSIS:
STARBUCKS COFFEE COMPANY: RETAIL SUCCESSES & CHALLENGES
STARBUCKS COFFEE COMPANY: RETAIL SUCCESSES & CHALLENGES
Starbucks Corporation is a leading international coffee and coffeehouse retail chain based in Seattle, Washington, USA. Starbucks owns and operates over 6,000 retail stores and is the largest coffeehouse company in the world. Its annual sales in 2006 were $7.8 billion and it employed 140,000 people in 39 countries.
Entrepreneur Howard Schultz joined the company in 1982 as Director of Marketing. He went on a buying trip to Milan, Italy. After the trip Howard Schultz advised that the company should sell coffee and espresso drinks as well as beans. The owners rejected this idea, believing that getting into the beverage business would distract the company from its primary focus. To them, coffee was something to be prepared in the home.
HOW THIS ASSIGNMENT IS ORGANIZED? 1. What is Starbucks’ retail strategy? What is its target market and how does it try to develop an advantage over its competition? 2. Describe Starbucks’ retail mix: location, merchandise assortment, pricing, store design and visual merchandising, customer service, and the promotional mix – advertising, promotion, and personal selling. How does its retail mix support its strategy? 3. What factors in the environment provided the opportunity for Starbucks to develop a new, successful retail chain? What demand and supply conditions prevailed in the U.S. coffee market when Howard Schultz purchased Starbucks in 1987? What insight did Schultz have that other players in the coffee market did not? 4. What were the principal drivers behind Starbucks’ success in the marketplace? What does the Starbucks brand mean to consumers? How have the growth opportunities that Starbucks has purchased affected the value of its brand name? 5. What are the major challenges facing Starbucks as it goes forward? Is