Starbucks

1. Starbuck’s retail strategy is designed to maintain loyalty from their customers and keep the customers coming back. Starbuck’s has continued to hire and train knowledgeable counter servers which they call “baristas” which is italian for bartender. They train the baristas to be able to educated their customers about the specialty coffee and beverages. Starbuck’s target market are upscale coffee drinkers. Starbuck’s has developed an advantage over the competition by providing a relaxing atmosphere for customers to sit in.

2. Place: individual locations placed on high traffic street corners as well as multiple malls and big name stores ex. Target and Safeway.

Merchandise Assortment: composed of coffee beverages, whole bean coffee by the pound, food items, and coffee related equipment (coffee mugs, thermoses).

Price: the price is high do to the high quality of coffee beans that Starbucks uses.

Advertising and Promotions: the advertising is minimum. Starbucks does have loyalty cards from bronze all the way to gold members depending on the amount of coffee the consumer purchases.

Store Design & Visual Merchandising: the stores have an open concept that allow customers to wonder around so that they are able to see the different coffee blends and coffee paraphernalia that are able to be purchased.

Customer Service: Baristas are trained to be able to deal with complaints on the spot without the need to check with the manager.

Personal Selling: Baristas are trained to be able to customize each drink to the customers liking.

3. Howard Schultz realized that Americans didn’t have a place to enjoy a good cup of coffee, while having a conversation in an relaxing environment. Schultz was convinced that Americans would enjoy the coffee house culture if it was modeled after the Italian layout.

4. Starbucks owes their success to their employees due to the employee training, empowerment, benefits and corporate growth opportunities Starbucks turnover is only...