Starbucks – New Product Introduction

Starbucks – New Product Introduction

In 1971 three friends, Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, and Gordon Bowker, were inspired by another entrepreneur friend to open their shop selling high-quality coffee beans and equipment. They quickly grew to Washington's largest coffee roaster, boasting six retail outlets. After their Director or Retail Operations, Howard Schultz, returned from a business trip to Milan, Italy the company began to change into today shape. Schultz had discovered the passionate coffee culture in Italy, and he was awed at how customers in Italy would drink coffee for hours, socialize, study or read, and enjoy the trendy coffee house surroundings. He wanted to bring the same concept to the U.S. and believed that Starbucks was the company to do it.

The concept however, was not revered by the original owners so; Schultz opened his own coffee shop in 1985 called ll Giornale. It turns out Schultz was absolutely right and in just a few short years, along with some investors, Schultz was able to buy Starbucks from the original owners for $3.7 million in 1987. He immediately combined the roasting capabilities of Starbucks with the coffee shop operations of ll Giornale resulting in the Starbucks Corporation we know today.

Schultz and his investors decided to employ unconventional marketing strategy. You have rarely, if ever, seen a Starbucks ad on a billboard, ad space, newspaper, or other common places where you will surely see McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts. Starbucks has been incredibly successful using viral marketing and has over 6.3 million followers on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Their unconventional marketing has been essential to building their unique brand in the way they wished to be portrayed.

However, times are changing and it may be time for Starbucks to begin employing mainstream methods. Dunkin Donuts and McDonald's pose a major threat to Starbucks market