Marketing Planning for Starbuck

Introduction

The history of Starbucks coffee begins in Seattle in 1975.Starbucks purchase and roasts high-quality whole bean coffee and sells them along with fresh ,rich-brewed, Indian style espresso beverages, a variety of pastries and confections and coffee-related accessories and equipment-primarily though its company-operated retail stores. In addition to store group and supermarkets. The company' objective is to establish Starbucks as the most recognized and respected brand in the world.

Executive summary

Main goal

Increase the profit of Starbucks in China by 5% in 2 years

Recommendation of the plan

Analyze the current marketing situation

Find out threats and opportunities of Starbucks

Work out objectives and issues

Put the objectives into action through certain marketing strategies

Objectives and issues

Objectives

Revise the marketing strategies

Open a new chain-shop in Xian yang city

Issues

Analyze the performance of Starbucks China to find out the problems

Revise our marketing strategies

Analyze and decide new target market

Open new chain-shops in potential market with new strategies

Current situation

The product performance

Starbucks is the largest coffee house company in the world with 8505 companies owned and 6506 licensed stores in 42 countries, making a total of 15011 stores worldwide. Starbucks sells drip brewed coffee, espresso-based hot drinks, other hot and cold drinks, snacks and items such as mugs and coffee beans.

Customer groups

The main customers can be divided into two groups:

The first group is the foreigner, they come to China, and find a familiar coffee brand and then drink a cup of coffee to enjoy the good environment

The second group is people who are in the middle or upper class level in China. For the second group, what they want is not just coffee, but a kind of environment and the reorganization of the culture. They are seeking for the elegant atmosphere to enjoy the coffee and life.

Competition

With the highly spread of Starbucks coffee in the international market, Starbucks also came across many completion, such as U.B.C coffee in Xi'an

All of the coffee and food they served are not very high and even lower than its main competitor-U.B.C coffee, which was founded in 1968, in Taiwan, China. The place where USC choose are all excellent and fabulous .when customers entered in to the U.B.C coffee, they will totally be attracted by the elegant environment atmosphere and well-tasted coffee and delicious food. The most important thing is that the UBC coffee emphasis on the connection between the traditional Chinese culture. Furthermore, they prefer "the four best" (the best environment, the best service, the best quality and the best price) to serve the customers. However, Starbucks cannot perfectly make their products connected with the local culture. They came across the culture imperialism.

Distribution

Starbucks does not franchise with individuals, but does enter into licensing arrangements with some companies. As for November 2007, Starbucks had 8,505 company-owned outlets worldwide: 6,793 of them in the United States and 1,712 in other countries and U.S. territories. In addition, the company has 6,506 joint-venture and licenses outlets, 3,891 of them in the United States and 2,615 in other countries and U.S. territories. This brings the total locations (as of November 2007) to 15,011 worldwide. Sarbucks can be found in many popular grocery chains in the United States and Canada, as well as in many airports.

Threats and opportunities

Threats

1. The following are the list of the price of coffee in Starbucks

Caffè Mocha 19RAM(S) 23RMB(M) 26RMB(L)

Caramel Macchiato 19RAM(S) 23RMB(M) 26RMB(L)

Caffè Americano 23RAM(S) 26RMB(M) 29RMB(L)

Caffè Latte 16RAM(S) 19RMB(M) 23RMB(L)

Cappuccino 24RAM(S) 27RMB(M) 30RMB(L)

espresso 23RAM(S) 26RMB(M) 29RMB(L)

Caramel Coffee Jelly 19RAM(S) 23RMB(M) 26RMB(L)

Vanilla Frappuccino 21RAM(S) 24RMB(M) 27RMB(L)

coffee Frappuccino 20RAM(S) 23RMB(M) 26RMB(L)

mocha Frappuccino 19RAM(S) 23RMB(M) 26RMB(L)

Frappuccino Blended Tea 24RAM(S) 27RMB(M) 30RMB(L)

According to the price listed above, the price of the coffee in Starbucks may be a little lower, and the lower price cannot show its specific characteristic. If the price is still low, many upper class customers will seldom want to go to Starbucks, may be they will turn their way to U.B.C.coffee.in that case, Starbucks may lose a group of customers.

2, There are too many Starbucks opened in a same city, making the customers feel tired of them, so they may lost their interest of so many Starbucks and may be got the interest of going to U.B.C coffee. What's more, too many Starbucks coffee opened in the world will caused the waste of the recourses.

3, The Starbucks cannot perfectly connect with he local culture.

Example1, the company is noted for its non-smoking policy at all most all of its outlets, despite predictions that this would never succeed in markets such as Germany; which used to have few restrictions on smoking. This has changed in 2007 with many German states issuing smoking bans for restaurants and bars.

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