Starbucks Non Brand Positioning Strategy

4063 Words17 Pages

Case: Starbucks

Starbucks was founded on a vision of a coffee community or “third place” where friends could meet to talk, work, or just hang out. The company quickly became a worldwide phenomenon characterized by rapid store expansion, add-on services (drive thru, music, sandwiches, etc.) and the best place to find gourmet coffee. Just as quickly, however, Starbucks’ success began to slip with declining customer visits, a falling stock price, and the actual closing of some locations. This case looks at how non-brand decisions (financials, contracts, locations, add-on services) eroded Starbucks’ brand positioning and brand equity over time. It serves as a reminder that even great brands can sometimes lose their way.

1. How was Starbucks …show more content…

Originally, Starbucks was a trendsetter with its unique brand positioning and differential values. It offers not only food and services, but most importantly, experiences. Starbucks can gain high customer motivation to pay with relatively low cost and earn reasonable profits. Its "non-brand" decisions, such as licensing arrangements, store locations and drive-through service, may financially make sense over a short period of time (Ferrell and Hartline, 2014, p. 527- 528). However, such short-term financial growth is in sacrifice of brand positioning and equity in the long term. When confronting the financial crisis and intense competition, Starbucks becomes inevitably vulnerable. As a result, it needs both internal and external brand revitalization to regain its competitive …show more content…

This could be achieved by adopting a balance approach such as ensuring that seeds would not create any health issues and making the consumers and the society aware of the fact. Improved labeling or requirements of labeling food items produced from the crops planted with these seeds would be good initiative as well. The shareholders interest of achieving higher returns can be achieved by not increasing the prices, but by reducing the operating cost. This will satisfy the needs of the farmers of lower price seeds and provide the investors with their

Open Document