Starbucks Case - Brand Management

The success story of Starbucks started when three coffee fanatics – Gerald Baldwin, Gordon Bowker and Ziev Sieglopened a small coffee shop in Seattle in 1971. The shop specialized in selling whole Arabic beans to a niche market of coffee connoisseur.

In 1982 Howard Schultz joined the Starbucks marketing team. His vision was to create a chain of coffeehouses that would become America’s “third place” beside the work and the home.  wanted to create a place where customers c relax and feel comfortable. The overall vision was to “establish Starbucks as the most recognized and respected brand in the world” Schultzdriven by the experience he when he visited Milan. He was fascinated by the Italian coffee culture and especially role the small espresso bars played in the everyday li of the Italian people. Th experience was the fundament of his long-term vision. He wanted to create a special place for all the “coffee-lovers” where they c socialize as in Milan. His target was to establish  Starbucks stores that the customers find their favorite coffee every corner. He especially wanted to focus on a special customer service to make every customer happy and to bring them again for their favorite type of coffeeHe knew that he ha to offer a lot of different types of coffee to meet all the customer wishes.  a lot of customers were only use to the “unspectacular 50 cent” coffees questionable quality the small coffee shops and diners.  Schultz wanted to change this and tried to made the “everyday coffee” to something special. His aim was to create a brand  highly recognizable and which provide same high quality and visual appearance. Furthermore Schultz was aware if you want to offer perfect and unique customer service you need highly motivated staff who love their work and are committed one hundred percent. One part of the establishment of the satisfactionwas that the employees where called “partners”. health insurance and stock optionsecause the company was convinced that if you are a important part of Starbucks you are also interested in satisfied customers and the success of the company. Howard expressed this with the words: “partner satisfaction leads to customer satisfaction”. Furthermore his aim was to have welltrained “partners” to “improve the speed-of-service and thereby increase customer satisfaction”. He this goal with special way of training .  every ha to work as a barista once, even the partners in higher positions. In this way made sure that everyone knw how the business work.  time statistics showed that w right  treaing their staff like this. They had a “satisfaction rate consistently hover in the 80% to 90% range, well above the industy norm, and the company had recently been ranked 47th in the Fortune magazine list of the best places to work”.