STURBACKS

Starbucks

Starbucks

Introduction

Company Overview:

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 UK, 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 company was founded in 1971 by Gordon Bowker, Jerry Baldwin and Zev Siegel in Seattle. In 1982 Howard Schultz joined the company as the head of market and retail with a vision of expanding to open more stores in the United States and Canada. The March of 1987 saw to the sale of Starbucks to Howard by Gordon Bowker and Jerry Baldwin. Over the years, the company has experienced exceptional growth to become one of the best retail businesses dealing in coffee, roasted beans and coffee equipment for customers' own brewing. It has established itself as one of the major brands in the European market. Since its transfer to Howard Schultz, the company has implements various strategies aimed at improving the performance of the company. The company culture is guided by various principles including quality and customer satisfaction. Moreover, the company is guided by a mission statement that encompasses the goals and objectives of the company besides the strategies of attaining them. 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 (Alvarado, et.al, 2007).

Discussion

Issues that could be involved in company's strategic planning:

Starbucks focused mainly on partnership for their international expansion then the countries. The international strategy of Starbucks also involved in targeting on small countries which has the significant potential to grow ,their international strategy also involved in to consider different peoples culture ,taste and preferences. Like in United States most of their orders were take away, where as in China even though people did not like the bitter taste of coffee they still visited the stores frequently because they liked the image and it was a good place for them to relax. Starbucks offered different countries with the product according to their culture and taste for example in Austria Starbucks offered smaller cookies and muffins with less sugar but they still retain with their core drinks and their no smoking policy even though they know that 40% of the Europeans smoked this is because of the trade off between the customization and consistency which they had to take care to establish globally (Dess, 2005, Pp. 23-45).

Organizational audit for Starbucks UK:

Starbucks Corporation has various strengths that strengthen its hold in the market. To begin with, the company has a good brand image that has worked to instil a culture in customers that has encouraged coffee consumption. It has created an image that avails to customers the opportunity to relax ...