starbuck

Starbucks is confronting decreasing sales and intensified competition in the coffee industry. The competition in the coffee industry has been intensified in recent years. Starbucks is providing people with special experiences instead of just a cup of coffee. This well established brand image of Starbucks has been playing an important role to maintain its position as a leader in the coffee industry. Therefore, in order to overcome the problems that Starbucks is facing, it should focus on enhancing its brand images by setting long term goals that make people believe that Starbucks is a nice and special company. Starbucks is facing two problems. Decreasing sales which are related to an economic recession is the first problem. To be specific, due to economic depression in recent years, Starbucks has confronted decreasing sales that result in reduced net income and revenue in 2009. There are only limited ways to solve the first problem because the problem is related to macro-economic condition that Starbucks cannot control. The second problem is an intense competition in its markets. For example, McDonald’s is adding coffee station that can be a substitute of Starbucks’ coffee shop and Coca-Cola is preparing a bottled coffee beverage brand that can decrease the market share of Starbucks’ bottled coffee brand. Compared with the first problem, there are relatively more ways to control the second problem because the problem is related to the industry that Starbucks has lots of strengths. The coffee industry is one of the fiercest industries in the world. There are not only many international coffee brands like Coffee Beans, and Starbucks but also various domestic coffee brands in the industry. In addition, a degree of competition in the industry has become more intensified. Under this condition, consumers barely recognized differences of these brands and as a result, a coffee brand can be substituted by other brands easily. Starbucks has remained its reputation