RETAIL STRATEGY

Retail Strategy

Retail Strategy

Introduction

Starbucks Corporation is a company that deals in coffee retail with an approximate 16,850 coffee shops spread in 40 countries. Its stores specialize in offering drinks, food coffee and tea, as well as roasted beans. In the US, the company runs shops that are owned while other shops are spread in airports and shopping centers owned as franchises constituting 8,000 of their units. The mission statement entails a goal to become the best coffee stores in the world through observation of various guidelines including appreciating diversity, social responsibility and suitable work environment. The company is also geared towards customer satisfaction profitability and excellence in service and product delivery. Howard Schultz is an American businessman, president and CEO of Starbucks Coffee Company, a franchise with a business philosophy which has more than 10,000 stores around the world (Rippin, 2007, 136).

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz

Starbucks Corporation was established in 1987. Howard Schultz is the president until 2000, when he sold his seat to Jim Donald. In 2008, after the departure of the latter, he returned to his duties at the request of the Board.

When Howard Schultz joined Starbucks in 1981 as director of marketing, the coffee house in Seattle was ten year old. It was founded by Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegel and Gordon Bowker who were passionate intellectuals, art cultivates, and owners of a chain of Italian coffee. Howard Schultz is tried to convince its founders to diversify the products offered and consider opening other stores without success. Never mind, the determination of Howard Schultz led him to create in 1985 his own coffee shop called Il Giornale (Rennie, 2008, 23).

Two years later, he obtained Starbucks from the creators as they give him the brand for $ 3.8 million. An acquisition that was only possible through the financial participation of William Henry Gates's father, Bill. Anxious to preserve the soul of Starbucks, Howard Schultz excluded the possibility of setting up franchises, preferring to control everything. He opened stores in Chicago and Vancouver. Later wards, Howard Schultz decided to test the concept in California in 1991. The success was such that store opening was multiplying at a dizzying pace.

Howard began to look abroad and expand his business. Tokyo hosted the first Starbucks abroad and followed not many other locations in Asia and Oceania. The chain also attacked the Middle East with the opening of stores in Lebanon before conquering the European market through the acquisition of 65 coffee chains Seattle Coffee Company in the UK, in 1998 (Gladwell, 2000, 23).

Starbucks have been recognized by Fortune magazine as one of the "100 Best Companies to Work For" eight times. In Spain where in 2008 it employed over 800 people it ranked as one of the 30 best companies to work on the Great Place to Work Report 2008. In January 2008, Schultz, who in 2000 had decided to leave the CEO position to assume a role from the rear as president, decided to take the leadership role at the forefront of ...