Starbuck’s Services and Relationship Marketing

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Background
Discussion
Analysis
Result
Conclusion
Reference

Introduction

Starbucks is the world’s leading coffee and coffeehouse chain having almost 11000 shops in the United States of America alone. The company owns 5118 stores in the United States, 362 in the United Kingdom, 30 in Saudi Arabia, 64 in South Korea, and 27 in other countries and growing every day. According to Starbucks Chief Howard Schultz, the growth of the brand Starbucks is not an accidental phenomenon, but a lot of careful planning has ultimately yielded this result. The catchline “everything matters” worked wonders for this company. When one steps inside a Starbucks store, from the atmosphere to the music, from the aroma of the coffee to the behavior of the employee’s everything instantly appeal to the mind of that individual.

Background

Actually, the base product of the company, coffee, is different from our day-to-day commercial products, only by making the “Starbucks experience” a very personal and intimate experience, the management has yielded gold (Carlin 2003). They have created an atmosphere where the relationship along with the space and coffee experience will come alive; it is more like performance while enjoying coffee. The concept of “service as theatre” (Grove, John and Fisk 2004) is in all senses are applicable to Starbucks. Actually, the services are like theater, services provided by restaurants, coffee shops, hotels, hospitals, etc are all like role-playing in a theater and the management in Starbucks is perfectly playing their parts. A visit to their coffee shop chain should satisfy a person intimately. According to them, they are not in the filling business they are filling souls.

Discussion

A good metaphor is used in dramas for generations. In Starbucks, the whole atmosphere of the place replaces the metaphor. From the music to the interior decors, from the service to the aroma of coffee creates vivid images on the mind of the customer, it provides a place of mental peace. If a Starbucks shop is designated as the theater performance, then the service providers are the actors, the setting is the décor of the shop and other factors inside the shop, the service performance is the customer’s experience inside the shop and the audience is no one but the person who is in the shop. All these contribute to shaping the customers’ attitude toward the product ultimately as the good execution of a play makes the audience instantly like it. The flawless execution of Starbucks employees makes the customers fall in love with the brand and they keep coming back (Bernardez 2009).

Analysis

There are a lot of contributions from the upper-level management to make this effort successful too. Mr. Howard Schultz is the head of Starbucks who first got the idea of starting this coffee shop while he was in Italy and went to a coffee shop. The Italians treat coffee shops as an extension of their home, and he wanted to capture this feeling in his coffee shop. Successful execution of this plan has resulted in the Starbucks phenomenon (Carlin 2003). Rebecca Burk, who is overseeing the Starbucks shop’s decors outside Europe, is really concerned about the culture and mindset of the people of the country where the shop is going to be open.

Result

From the sitting arrangements to the interior decoration, everything is calculated ultimately to give the customer an atmosphere that pleases and flatters the person and ultimately winning him. Even the company has a person who decides which type of music should be played in the shops. All these are synchronized to win the customer, as a person falls in love with a good theater production, the same happens here too. Coffee is rather a small factor here the main factor is the orchestration of all the factors inside the four walls of the shop that ultimately brings the customers back (Grove, John and Fisk 2004).

Conclusion

Actually, the big multinational companies have to be more human, and this humanistic approach has worked wonders for Starbucks. They believe that they are not in the coffee business serving people, but in the people business by serving them coffee. As a person can relax by watching a theater, the same happens here too. They sincerely want to enhance people’s lives (Tallontire 2009). A cup of coffee in Starbucks is always an experience and this execution is nothing less creditable as a really good theater performance. The concept of “service as theater” is really apt for Starbucks and for this, all the credit goes to the management and all the employees of this company.

Reference

Bernardez, M., 2009. Minding the business of business: Tools and models to design and measure wealth creation. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 22 (2) pp. 17-52.

Carlin, J,. 2003. Ground Control. The Age [Online]. Web.

Grove, S., John, J., and Fisk, R., 2004. Services as theater: Guidelines and Implications. Service Marketing, 27 (6) pp. 192-198.

Tallontire, A., 2009. Top heavy? Governance issues and policy decisions for the fair trade movement. Journal of International Development, 21 (7) pp. 1004-1014.

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