Starbucks

Starbucks is one of the most famous companies among coffee industry in the world. There are 20,366 stores in more than 50 countries and 1,299 in the UK. The firm was built by Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl and Gordon Bowker selling coffee beans and brewing and roasting equipment, they did not sell brewing coffee. It was started at Seattle which is in Washington, U.S.A in 1871. Pequod is the first name of the firm but some of co-founder rejected it, and chose Starbucks to be the name of company, according to Lauren (2004).

There are several possible explanations about competitor analysis. First of all, in term of place, it is a widespread perception that Starbucks is the most number of stores in the UK, but in fact, Costa has more stores than Starbuck and Nero. Costa has 1,375 stores and 920 vending machines, but Starbucks and Nero have 793 and 250 stores respectively in the UK, referred to Georgina (2006) Secondly, in term of price, it seems likely Starbucks products is the highest price contrasted with Costa and Nero. For instant, considering in pricing of general product which is medium size of a Cappuccino cup, Starbuck’s Cappuccino is £3.12 which is the highest but Costa and Nero is £2.27 and £2.20 respectively in the UK, according to Starbuck, Costa and Nero’s website. Finally, taking a look at service of the companies, Costa seems to be the best service of the company because Costa is the most favourite store in the UK, cited by Costa restarts Starbucks ads (2011). The evidence conducted 16,000 people in the UK, and it claimed that 54% chose Costa to be their favourite coffee store but only 27% preferred Starbuck, (Ibid).

There are five aspects when giving external analysis. They are economy, society, technology, environment, policy and legal. Firstly, during the period from 2008 to 2012, there are numerous difficulties for coffee business in general and Starbucks in particular. According to UK government figures, unemployment rate is quite high. It sharply...