Starbucks Case Study

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STARBUCKS CASE STUDY

Prepared by: Ivy Lau

Student number: 205 11 310

1. Executive Summary

In 1998 Howard Schultz had sufficient reason to be proud of what Starbucks had accomplished during his past one decade years as the company's CEO. The company had enjoyed exceptional growth and become one of the great retailing stories of recent history by making excellent coffee drinks and selling dark-roasted coffee beans and coffee-making equipment that would allow customers to brew an exceptional cup of coffee at home.

Starbucks Coffee Company in Seattle, Washington, it's also as rich as gold. Starbucks is a well-managed, aggressive company that has achieved heady growth since its inception. The company has earned its place in business history as an innovative first mover and its brand is synonymous with quality. Starbucks will be successful around the world. The increasing globalization offers the brand enormous potential to enlarge their stores worldwide. Through their various joint ventures with strong, regional partners they will overcome possible internal or external barriers with regard to different cultures, habits or political restrictions.

Furthermore, the coffee market is still growing and the portion of specialty coffee is increasing heavily. Together with the rising out-of-house consumption, Starbucks has great potential to expand profitably around the globe. But Starbucks is of course faced with different competitors, but none of them has a brand reputation like Starbucks has. This provides Starbucks a competitive advantage and secures its leading position.

Moreover, through their mainly company-owned stores, Starbucks keeps control over their business operations what is very important to maintain their quality standards, their product uniformity, and to stay in business in the long run.

After all, Starbucks is on the best way to reach their aim of establishing the Starbucks brand as the world’s most recognized and...