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Starbucks: “Your Usual, Steve?”
- Rutgers University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
I’m not exactly sure why I started going to Starbucks to drink my coffee, read my newspaper, and eventually brainstorm and write in the cozy back corner.When I first stepped into the store, I’m sure I had no idea that the place would eventually become my home away from home. I also don’t know when I decided that I was willing to pay $4 for a cappuccino, or when exactly I switched to aVenti-oneand -a-half-shots-half-caff-skim-extra-hot cappuccino. But, now I do these things four or five times a week. I especially look forward to Sundays, when I spread out several newspapers at “my” table to do some reading and brainstorming. It has become a ritual. It has become a part of my life. And although I can’t say exactly why, I know I would never even think of spending as much time or money at Dunkin’ Donuts, or IHOP, or any other “coffee shop.” The Starbucks “experience” for me isn’t really about the coffee, and it isn’t solely about it being a good place to hang out or about being another place to do work, and it obviously is not like home. But it is a hybrid of all three on some level, and that’s the power of the Starbucks brand. An Accidental Brand The folks behind Starbucks say they never set out to build a brand. In fact, for years, Starbucks did not engage in big-time advertising campaigns. (That’s changed recently.) Its reputation was built on word of mouth and excellent customer service—and the brand naturally followed.That brand is now so powerful that candid photos of celebrities from Barack Obama to George Clooney generally show them walking around with a cup of coffee featuring that unmistakable green, white, and black Starbucks logo. An accident? I don’t think so. 100 Starbucks “Your Usual, Steve?” Adubato_(Brand)_final 4/11/11 11:29 AM Page 100 According to Howard Schultz, the original chairman and CEO of Starbucks, in his book, PourYour Heart into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time: “Our goal was to build a great company , one that stood for something, one that valued authenticity of its product and passion of its people. . . .Then one day I started getting calls ‘Can you tell us how you built a national brand in only five years?’ It was unusual, people told me, for a brand to burst into the national consciousness as quickly as Starbucks had.”1 For sure, Starbucks was doing something right. But then the company began to lose market share (especially in the late 1980s), and it looked like the quick rise in popularity was about to take a speedy fall. Looking back, it’s clear that the way the owners handled the problem is one of the biggest reasons Starbucks is as strong as it is today. Starbucks’s owners remembered that their original goal was to cater to the passion of the people, and so they began an aggressive campaign to survey their customers, asking for their opinions about why Starbucks was losing customers. Schultz says in his book that, from the customer responses, he concluded that “the key threat to the Starbucks brand was a growing belief amongst customers that the company was becoming corporate, predictable, inaccessible, and irrelevant.” According to Schultz, the Starbucks brand was seen by many as a “faceless corporation.” Like most great companies with sustaining brands, Schultz and his colleagues responded aggressively to the negative feedback they received. Changes were made, particularly in an effort to attract twentysomethings, who told Starbucks market researchers that they “want a place that is funky and unique, not necessarily well-lighted and efficient.”They found that “what matters to them is a place to hang out at night, not a quick to-go latte on the way to work.” Making a Connection with Customers Although Starbucks clearly caters to its customers’ needs, it did not put the customer first when building its brand. Schultz makes this very clear, saying: “We built the Starbucks brand first with our people, not with consumers . . . because we believed the best way STARBUCKS 101 Adubato_(Brand)_final 4/11/11 11:29 AM Page 101 [54.208.238.160] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 10:23 GMT) to meet and exceed expectations of customers was to hire and train great people. We invested in employees...