Control

Control Mechanism

Crystal Dudley

Kim Bailey

Naila Awadh

Charles Harris

MGT/330

November 22nd, 2010

Tammy Matthews

Starbucks is the best well-known coffee in the world. They are also the largest coffee company in the world. They have more than 18,000 stores in 50 countries. They offer a variety of choices to their customers between coffee, espresso, snacks and trade mark items like mugs and tumblers.

It started in Seattle in 1971 when three friends opened a shop for selling fresh roasted coffee and gourmet coffee beans. By the 1980s Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, and Gordon Bowker, the founders of Starbucks, hired Howard Schultz as head of marketing and sent him to Italy, specifically Milan, to be present at an international house-wares show (“Starbucks Coffee Info”, 2010). Schultz noticed that there was coffee surrounding him everywhere he went. Nevertheless, he found something more valuable than coffee, the coffee houses, which looked like small communities, and in these communities people enjoyed coffee and talked with each other.

Schultz flew back to the United States with an idea of turning the coffee retail shop into coffee houses. The owners however had already made a deal with local investors to sell the coffee business and the Starbucks Company for $3.7 million. Schultz had a vision to open at least 125 coffee houses in the next five years, so he shared his ideas with the investors who welcomed it and put it into action.

By 1991 Starbucks coffee had stores in different states as well as Canada (“Starbucks Coffee Info”, 2010). They also grew their business to include ordering coffee from mail catalogs and obtaining a license to open stores in various airports. The success was phenomenal, and the number of Starbucks coffee stores was increasing to include other continents like Europe, and Asia.

Starbucks’ successful business did not happen by coincidence. It’s the result of good...