Case Study of Starbucks

PLANET STARBUCKS: A Case Analysis

I. Time Frame

Brief History

In 1971, three young entrepreneurs (namely Gerald Baldwin, Gordon Bowker and Ziev Siegl) founded Starbucks in Seattle Washington as a gourmet coffee bean roaster and distributor. It was named after coffee-loving first mate in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and the Starbo mining camp of the 19th century. The Starbucks logo is a two-tailed mermaid encircled by the store’s name (Thompson & Strickland,). It started as a single shop specializing in high quality coffee and brewing products, later the company grew to be the largest roaster in Washington with multiple locations until the early 80’s. In 1982, the company was joined by Howard Schultz, the current CEO, as part of the marketing team. Schultz recognizes a great opportunity and began working with the founder Gerald Baldwin.

After a trip to Italy to find new products, Schultz realized an opportunity to bring the café community environment found in Italy to the United States and the Starbucks brand we know today began to take form. Selling espresso by the cup was the first test. Schultz left Baldwin to open his own Italian coffee house Il Giornale which found outrageous success and in 1987 when Starbucks decided to sell the original 6 locations, Schultz raised the money with investors and purchased the company and fused them with his Italian bistro locations. The company experienced rapid growth going public in 1992, and growing tenfold by 1997, with locations around the United States, Japan and Singapore. Starbucks also began expanding its brand. As of today, Starbucks is a Seattle-based coffee colossal company that has roughly around 18,000 branches in 62 countries and still continuously expanding and sprouting everywhere worldwide. In the Philippines, there are 164 active branches that contribute to its global business in Asia and the Pacific.

For the purpose of this case analysis, we will focus our study and analysis between 1992 until...