Starbucks Marketing Plan

Marketing Plan

Company Overview

Starbucks, which is currently the world’s largest coffeehouse company, was founded in Seattle, Washington in 1971 as a single store that sold high quality coffee beans. The idea to sell coffee in the stores did not come until the early 1980s, which seems to be the best idea that Starbucks’ ever came up with.

Expansion

Expansion soon followed for Starbucks as they rapidly started to grow outside of the Seattle area and all over the United States and Canada. Starbucks also made its entry to the stock market in 1992 after the rapid expansion throughout North America. Starbucks also entered the market outside North American was in Tokyo in 1996. Starbucks also went even further to expand overseas by making their presence known in the United Kingdom with a purchase of a large coffee company.

Since then, Starbucks has continued to grow both domestically and internationally, and not just in coffeehouses. They are still largely known as a high quality coffeehouse with products ranging from regular coffee to flavored lattes.

This expansion success did have to slow down and halted in 2008 when it seemed that Starbucks has overextended itself and had to close 500 nationwide stores because they were not performing up to standard. Many people believe this is that the expansion of Starbucks was too rapid and that Starbucks placed stores too close together. Many others also say that the economy played a large part in the downfall of those 500+ stores. This was not the end of the problems for Starbucks. They also had to close more stores internationally and a few hundred stores domestically because of lack of performance.

Current Standings

Currently Starbucks is still expanding their products by offering tons of different cold drinks and also selling different kinds of prepared foods like salads and sandwiches. They are keeping up with an ever expanding market by staying ahead of it. Although there is not a large competitor in the exact market Starbucks Dunkin Donuts would be their largest competition because of the high price of Starbucks coffee. The economy plays into this immensely because it is very hard for people to justify paying Starbucks prices when they can purchase from Dunkin Donuts for half the price. To stay ahead of Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks is continually coming up with new ideas before their competition can gain an advantage.

Starbucks’ main focus is their coffee and coffee products, but recently Starbucks has been involved in

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