Marketing Plan for Starbucks

1. COMPANY DESCRIPTION

Starbucks is the largest coffeehouse company in the world. It was founded by three very unusual entrepreneurs, an English teacher Jerry Baldwin, History teacher Zev Siegel and a Writer Gordon Bawker. They came with this brilliant idea of getting into the coffee business inspired by an entrepreneur who sold high quality coffee beans and equipments, named Alfred Peet. The first Starbucks store was opened in Pike Market Place in Seattle on March 30, 1971. It is a for profit company.

In the 1990's the company grew at a very fast pace. Studies show that Starbucks opened a new store every working day. From one store by its founders Starbucks grew to more than 8,000 stores in the United States itself and over 4000 stores around the world today. All this was due to the marketing strategies after Howard Schultz took over the company in 1982 as a marketing executive. His experiment to open a coffee bar in downtown Seattle made the mark for the company. First the espresso coffee bars were named Il Giornale used Starbucks high-quality coffee beans to make their coffee. The espresso coffee bars didn't take time to gain popularity, with backing of local investors; Il Giornal acquired Starbucks assets and changed its name to Starbucks.

It offers a very wide variety of products other than coffee beans and coffee beverages. The varieties include handicraft beverages, merchandise, fresh food, Starbucks entertainment, Starbucks card and Global consumer product. Other than these Starbucks is also involved with helping the community, the coffee farmers and also offering scholarships for students. In 1997, the Starbucks Foundation established The Starbucks Foundation to support communities where Starbucks does business. It supports not only locally but also on a global scale. This foundation mainly focuses on Youth Action Grants, Social Investments in Coffee, Tea and Cocoa Communities, Ethos Water Fund, China Education Project and Gulf Coast Recovery. In 2001, Starbucks offered over a million dollars in financial support to coffee farmers through Calvert Community Investments and The Starbucks foundation grants more than 450 grants totaling 4.2 million to literacy, schools and community based organizations across North America.

Furthermore, Starbucks' Shared Planet Program (You and Starbucks. It's bigger than coffee.). There are three main purposes of launching this program Ethical Sourcing, Environmental Stewardship and Community Involvement.

• Ethical Sourcing is dedicated to serving high-quality coffee that is responsibly grown and traded. Starbucks promises to achieve this goal by 2015.

• Environmental Stewardship program of Starbucks is concerned with conserving the environment. On part of Starbucks, it promises to completely make its coffee cups reusable or recyclable by 2015.

• Community Involvement, from the neighborhood