Costa Coffee Swot Analysis

Costa Coffee Latvia is a part of a British multinational coffeehouse brand, operating more than 3500 stores in 29 international markets and ranking as the biggest coffee shop chain in the UK. Local business entity “Coffee Nation Ltd.” that represents Costa Coffee brand in Latvia has been fully owned by Whitbread PLC, the owner of Costa group, since 2009.

The purpose of this work is to elaborate Costa Coffee Latvia development strategy. Being part of large corporation, main goals and strategic initiatives are cascaded down from the headquarters. Such goals are set for the whole European division part of which Costa Coffee Latvia is and therefore do not reflect specific smaller business unit’s needs. It is expected from the local management to

The company is the only one international equity market that currently delivers profit to the shareholders, however the positive outcome has been reached applying rather ultimate cost-saving policy. Such approach helped to achieve profitability in short-time period but resulted in company’s stagnation, with lack of responsiveness on the new market and industry trends. First signs of slowdown appeared in the year 2016/17 but the situation was fixed on the early stage. To stay on track and deliver expected results in the future it is critical to recover past gaps, as well as not to miss new market opportunities.

After brief introduction the work starts with the insight to the industry where author introduces the reader with the specifics of specialty coffee shop industry, determines Latvian coffee shop market scope and size and provides information regarding the stages of coffee shop industry evolution. The industry in Latvia is small in size with many mixed-concept players on the market. Latvian coffee shop industry currently experiences the third wave of industry evolution, therefore goes in line with European average coffee shop market development life

Two main coffee shop operators target their own strategic groups; Costa Coffee focuses on the upper mainstream segment and Caffeine Roasters targets more price sensitive clientele. The industry looks attractive for any interested newcomer as has low entering barriers, low power of buyers and suppliers, moderate intensity of rivalry and low power of substitutes. Key success factors in the industry include good quality product, service and high traffic location. To increase business profitability, the companies should benefit from the economies of