Coffee Wars in India

1.What should be the important goals for Siddhartha and Venu Madhav when considering their responses to Starbuck’s entry into India?

CCD has placed itself as a hangout destination for teenage and college going crowd, and rarely an occasional meet for corporate customers. Earlier when CCD was established it was one of its kind of café and it provided customers with a new trend of driving a coffee culture in youth from the traditional tea drinking culture of India. But when Starbucks entered India, the market was saturated with many players from foreign brands especially contributing to give competition to CCD. The important goals that Siddhartha and Venu should consider include to continue to project CCD as a comparatively cheaper and affordable café hangout place where people can go almost daily. The Starbucks coffee rates were comparatively higher and will target the high end customers in future. But for now, because of Starbucks new establishment and less stores, many are willing to try out the foreign brand (the consumer behavior of India being that they want to try the foreign brands). Also when we look at the menu, considering the sales of food to go up compared to what it is now is possible if better choices offered to the customer. The brand differentiation compared to its competitors is necessary here. Here the point of differentiation being the regular routine hangout place with a good ambience and variety offered, the quality of food is of high importance if the number of CCD stores are to increase at this rate then it must offer something different than Starbucks to sustain. Also CCD has done segmentation on the basis of age where café targets the youth below age of 30, lounges between 28 to 36 and Squares for premium experience, which is to their added advantage for customers trying out new things. But also in response to CCD, they can segment into a new CCD for premium customers, directly competing with Starbucks in terms of coffee, ambience and...