Starbucks will shut down the online e-commerce platform, so it is more important to concentrate on App.

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After announcing the closure of Teavana 379offline stores a month ago, Starbucks will shut down its online e-commerce platform store.starbucks.com from October 1.

Although Starbucks did not issue a closure announcement as usual, a company spokesman confirmed the news to Geekwire and Business Insider. Starbucks is also evaluating employees of the original e-commerce platform to find suitable positions within the company.

The site, which has been around for seven years, has a huge "Sale" logo on its home page, offering a clearance promotion of "less than 50 per cent discount on some items". But after it was shut down, North American consumers could still buy coffee beans, mugs and coffee pots from third-party retail stores as well as Amazon.

Starbucks has its own considerations when it closes its own channels and chooses to do business with these digital e-commerce companies. "We believe these partnerships will help us make better use of our brand, global retail business and customer base to expand our business," CEO Kevin Johnson said on an investor conference call in July.

In fact, for Starbucks, a brand peddling the "third space", it has always been more willing to attract customers to brick-and-mortar stores. In addition, North America is Starbucks' largest market, with more than 20000 stores in the United States, which means it is very easy for consumers to find a Starbucks on the corner of the city. At this point, this e-commerce platform is not so important.

But Starbucks chose to shut down its e-commerce site at this time in order to better focus on mobile digital.

Starbucks' conference calls in recent quarters have made it clear that their investment in technology and digital has been raised to the highest priority.

"one of Starbucks' top priorities is to combine digital mobile users with the offline store experience." "our investment direction will still make Starbucks a must-visit," said Maggie Jantzen, a spokesman for Starbucks. "

The digital trend of Starbucks can also be seen in the performance of the past few months:

Over the past year, orders from mobile have grown rapidly, and mobile orders now account for 30% of all orders. But brick-and-mortar store services that failed to keep up with the pace a few months ago led to a massive build-up of mobile orders at the peak, and excessively long food queues scared away some consumers, affecting sales at the start of the year.

Earlier this year, Starbucks promised shareholders to track digital orders in its 1000 busiest stores and test new technologies, such as sending mobile phone notifications to remind users when orders are ready.

According to Business Insider, months of technical follow-up has made things better: instead of asking baristas to call customers' names and wait for customers to pick up after preparing meals from mobile, Starbucks pushes a "You oder is ready" reminder directly to customers' phones. This not only improves the efficiency of baristas, but also allows customers to receive timely reminders and avoid the trouble of waiting in line.

"retailers that react quickly and have reimagination will be the biggest winners in the industry," Johnson told investors. He believes that the coffee industry is moving towards a upheaval dominated by mobile phones and numbers. "for those who are incompetent, it will be very difficult."

The picture is from: business insider

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