Coffee shop culture Starbucks culture coffee shop culture

Coffee lovers have probably heard of Starbucks. Starbucks is the hero of a well-known American novel more than 100 years ago. In the 1970s, three Americans turned it into a coffee shop sign to promote the American spirit. Since then, Starbucks coffee has fascinated the whole world.

Starbucks 'ability to develop one of the world's oldest goods into a distinctive, durable, high-value-added brand is inseparable from its "experience culture" and unique marketing methods when it first started.

Starbucks success does not lie in the excellent quality of its coffee, relaxed, warm atmosphere infection is Starbucks win the magic weapon. Because "Starbucks" cafe rendered atmosphere is a kind of worship knowledge, respect for the human standard, with a little "petty bourgeoisie" atmosphere of culture. At Starbucks, the emphasis is no longer on coffee, but on culture and knowledge. Starbucks culture is actually a culture that focuses on the two themes of people and knowledge. The core of this culture is to use the most comfortable environment to help people broaden their knowledge and ability and tap their maximum value in knowledge.

Pay attention to the promotion of brand image

Unlike other multinational companies, Starbucks is one of the few brands that do not take advantage of huge amounts of advertising and promotion. Starbucks brand promotion does not rely on advertising, its consistent strategy is to focus on brand image promotion, all over the world. Starbucks believes that coffee is unlike McDonald's, coffee has a unique culture, sponsorship of cultural activities, Starbucks image promotion is very important. For example, Starbucks was the main sponsor of the Dali painting exhibition held in Shanghai. Starbucks is also the sponsor of the Shanghai APEC Conference.

The appearance of Starbucks chain stores is simply considered from the environment around the store, but its interior decoration should be strictly in line with the unified decoration style of the chain stores. Each store itself is an image promotion and a link in the Starbucks business chain. The American design studio specially creates rich visual elements and unified style for each store, so as to make customers and passers-by pleasing to the eye. to achieve the purpose of promoting the brand. This kind of promotion is called Tie-in, which closely links the image of the cafe to its customers.

In Starbucks coffee shops, employees are the main carriers to convey the value of experience, and the value of coffee can be enhanced through the service of employees, so employees are as important to the creation of experience as the environment. In fact, Starbucks employees are like coffee fans, they can explain the characteristics of each coffee product in detail, and they are good at communicating with customers and anticipating their needs. Employees are called "partners" at Starbucks because everyone has options, their status is fully respected, and they create great competitiveness for the Starbucks brand.

The flavor of each grain of coffee

Starbucks' rich black coffee has infiltrated into the lives of all kinds of people around the world, but there is only one version of its management, copied from the North American continent and applicable everywhere.

With consistent global management, quality and taste, Starbucks' success story does not begin with every cup of coffee with the same taste, but when coffee beans are still growing: very picky selection of coffee beans, from variety to origin to the shape of particles, every step has strict standards. It is said that Starbucks will never allow coffee beans that have not been strictly evaluated by experts to enter the market. Its coffee product evaluation experts evaluate more than 100000 cups of coffee every year to ensure quality, select coffee beans by cup evaluation, and then determine the precise degree of roasting. so that the unique taste of each kind of coffee can be fully released, Starbucks' slogan is: give full play to the flavor of each coffee. The final process is to sell steaming coffee to customers along with the standard service model.

Experience the connotation of coffee culture

Coca-Cola associates its sizzling drinks with carefree happiness; Nike uses "just-do-it" to convince runners that they sell personal success; Starbucks sells culture.

At Starbucks in Shanghai, a service called "Coffee classroom" has the best imagination in the game of "hanging coffee selling culture". If three or four people go for coffee together, Starbucks will equip them with a coffee maker. Once customers have any problems with the selection, brewing and roasting of coffee beans, the coffee maker will explain to him patiently and meticulously, so that customers can taste the coffee culture promoted by Starbucks while finding the coffee that best suits their taste. Culture gives its higher price a good reason to exist, from which customers get great psychological satisfaction, but the real winner is Starbucks.

In Starbucks' view, people's stranded space is divided into homes, offices and other places. McDonald's strives to create a home atmosphere and strive to maintain an ambiguous relationship with people's first space, the family, as long as possible. As a coffee shop, Starbucks is committed to seizing people's third detention space and keeping a close eye on people's detention space. Supporting facilities such as live piano performance, European and American classical music background, popular fashion newspapers and magazines, and exquisite European accessories strive to bring more "foreign atmosphere" to consumers. Let drinking coffee become a kind of life experience, let coffee drinkers feel very fashionable, very cultural.

When you walk into a Starbucks store, have you ever wondered what power dominates your legs? Is it delicious coffee? Maybe it's not much better than the coffee in any other street shop! To quench your thirst? It can be said that a casual glass of mineral water is more effective! And in terms of price, Starbucks is not ambiguous! I think when I ask you this question directly, nine times out of ten you will tell me, "idiot, what you want is that environment!" A friend of mine told me excitedly the day after she came to Beijing, "guess where I went today?" Starbucks! " That look is more excited than the Spring Festival when I was a child!

But if you hear me put the previous question is a person who knows a little bit about marketing, he / she will disdain and say, "this is all a good job of cultural marketing!" However, I will continue to ask, "can you tell me what 'cultural marketing' is like?" The other side threw out a sentence with more disdain, "Cultural marketing is cultural marketing, which is not easy to understand!" With that, I left my face flushed and left alone. However, I have to keep asking, because all the articles about "cultural marketing" found on Google regard "cultural marketing" as an exogenous concept (which does not need to be explained by other definitions, that is, self-evident)!

Four understandings of "Cultural Marketing"

So, what exactly is "cultural marketing"? But literally, there are at least four meanings:

One is the marketing of various cultural products or forms, such as audio-visual products, books, dance, acrobatics, etc., where they are also commodities and naturally have their target customer groups, which have their own needs and characteristics. this is no different from the marketing of general products or services.

The second is to use various cultural products or forms to assist in the marketing of goods, which is already very common, such as fashion shows at the launch of new car products, live performances by singers, playing background music, famous paintings arranged on the back, and so on.

The third is to consider marketing under the influence of culture as a social environment. Philip Kotler, a master of marketing, did not clearly put forward the concept of "cultural marketing". However, he pointed out that cultural factors (including culture, subculture and social class) are the most basic factors that influence purchase decision-making, so what is the culture in the sociological sense? According to the definition of sociologist David Popno, it refers to all the shared achievements of a human group or society, including material and immaterial, for example, if you are marketing in Beijing, then we should consider the values, language, knowledge and other intangible culture of Beijingers, as well as the physical culture of architecture, transportation, vegetables and so on.

Fourth, marketing in order to form a culture conducive to competition and sales, the culture here can be understood as something that includes a variety of elements, such as brand image, brand connotation, brand loyalty, unique community (made up of existing and potential consumers), and so on. Once this kind of thing is formed, it will enable brand owners to gain the support of their communities in competition with other manufacturers, thus giving them an advantage.

It can be seen that it is more universal and practical to define cultural marketing in the latter two senses, and the author also decides to talk about cultural marketing in this sense.

Why do people go into the coffee shop?

I cannot represent the people, but I am a member of the people, so what I think and feel should also be valued by coffee shops that want to target me as a member of the customer group! Remember, I'm just an ordinary coffee consumer now. Why did I go into the coffee shop? I can give you a list of situations:

First, there is a need for a quiet place to talk, when coffee shops and teahouses that are quiet, neat, softly lit and convenient (such as being close to work and providing broadband access) will become the first choice.

Second, there is a need for a place to relax between work, that is, the so-called third space, at this time, the kind of fast and relaxing (through decoration, decoration, lighting, background music, etc.), free (provide self-service choice, casual reading of newspapers and periodicals and Internet browsing), convenient (provide a variety of snacks such as desserts) coffee shops and fast food restaurants will become the first choice

Third, I need an occasion to fall in love. According to whether my girlfriend or potential girlfriend is quiet or active, I will choose a coffee shop or bar. At this time, the mood is the first. In addition, if the coffee shop or bar can show my taste, that couldn't be better!

Fourth, if I need to buy a good coffee set for my family and want to buy some self-polished coffee, and if the coffee shop can provide it, maybe I will go to the coffee shop.

From the above situation, we can see that, first of all, my demand is rarely for drinking that little coffee, mostly for a space, and in the fourth case, although I buy a commodity, it is not exactly; secondly, in the process of meeting different needs, there is more than one choice, such as teahouses, bars and fast food restaurants are all alternatives to coffee shops in some cases. Finally, there may be a variety of service choices for each need.

Culture in order to make money

However, because "culture" is involved, and "culture" is very difficult to price, because its cost can be more or less; in addition, it is precisely because "culture" is invisible and often runs counter to efficiency. All these make it easy to fall into the trap of culture for culture's sake, ignoring the commercial purpose of cultural marketing (except as a personal hobby, of course). As a result, it is often difficult to "sell"!

From a business point of view, culture is what customers want and actually get beyond tangible goods and services that can be described. the more such things you provide to customers, the more customers depend on you. You have formed a fixed connection or image in the minds of customers, which is beyond tangible products or measurable services, and it is difficult to change easily with the participation of competitors. This is the charm of cultural management. But just as there is no free lunch, it can't be done without cost. Marketers have to strike a balance between cost control and the provision of more services to promote the formation of a particular community culture.

There are no employees in the 53 stores owned by Starbucks, and the more than 700 staff in Starbucks are all called "partners". Starbucks of Meida stipulates that Starbucks stores must hold coffee lectures for customers once a week. The main content is by the "partner" to explain the relevant knowledge of coffee, such as how to make coffee, the use of various utensils and so on. The form of these lectures is also very flexible, generally choose when there are more customers, the time is controlled at about 30 minutes.

At a Starbucks store in Beijing, a "partner" is holding a steaming cup of coffee and giving a demonstration to more than 20 customers. She said: "people have nearly a thousand kinds of sense of smell, so the feeling of coffee should be the first smell, the aroma of coffee is to smell out." When drinking, open your mouth wide and leave some space so that you can taste the original taste of the coffee. When tasting, you should be more calm and calm and seriously feel the acidity and concentration of coffee. Due to the different kinds of coffee beans, the taste is also different. High acidity coffee has a bright irritation, such as Columbia and Fairview three Rivers (bella vista). There is also a significant difference in coffee with different concentrations. If you haven't eaten yet, you might as well choose a cappuccino or latte with a high proportion of milk. if you don't have enough energy, you can choose some strong coffee. If you want to sleep and have a good dream, you can drink some Sumatra. "

The "partner" described the coffee as both magical and romantic, which fascinated the customers and greatly increased their interest. Starbucks' move works well, offering lectures and selling coffee and knowledge together, which objectively plays a role in cultivating customers and expanding the consumer market.

"customer-oriented, take every customer seriously, cooking only one cup of coffee at a time." This corporate philosophy, derived from the craftsmanship of the old Italian cafe, has evolved into Starbucks' concept of focusing on the present experience-emphasizing the management of the "present" life experience in daily work, life and leisure.

Wang Zhaolong said: "in order to achieve the effect of word-of-mouth, it is necessary to serve every guest well." To this end, Meida's standard is to brew every cup of coffee and grasp every detail. For example, when brewing coffee, beans should be made sure that they are fresh, ground correctly, that the amount of water is moderate, that the quality is good, that the time is right, and so on. Otherwise, as long as there is a problem in one link, it is possible to change the pure taste of coffee. You may be facing the 100th guest today, but for the guest, it is the first cup of coffee that he started to know about Starbucks. "

In order to test "making every cup of coffee for guests", Starbucks of Meida has established a series of evaluation mechanisms, among which the "mystery customer" is the most distinctive. In addition to the usual theoretical knowledge inspection and practical operation inspection, Starbucks of Meida will entrust a company with inspection ability to secretly send someone to pretend to be customers and come to Starbucks coffee stores to spend money. During this period, the staff's service, skills, environment, atmosphere and other comprehensive inspection, and then combined with the performance of comprehensive considerations, and finally determine the service quality of a store, whether a clerk can be promoted, and so on. On the other hand, the ordinary clerks, senior clerks, trainee supervisors, supervisors and managers of the branches of Meida are all inspected and promoted in this way.

Cultivate the interest that belongs to urbanites

Over the past six years, Starbucks has opened an average of ten new stores a year, selling more than 10,000 cups of coffee a day. What is the secret to such a rapid pace?

On the afternoon of March 25, 2005, at the Starbucks coffee shop in Beijing's Oriental Square, Miss Hu, who was drinking coffee, was a regular customer. She said that she worked in the Sino-American Metropolitan Insurance Company, which had been established for a year. I just signed a donation agreement with the Beijing Red Cross Blood Center with a total insurance amount of 100 million yuan to give accidental injury insurance to 10,000 Beijing citizens who donated blood gratuitously, as there were many participants. She needs to coordinate among the government, companies and even journalists, and she feels physically and mentally exhausted after a busy afternoon. Miss Hu said: "Starbucks gives me more convenience than taste enjoyment." Whenever my eyes feel sour in front of the computer screen, and when my friends come and have no place to talk, I naturally think of Starbucks. " This is exactly what Starbucks wants to achieve-to be able to serve people who love Starbucks at any time.

Now, Starbucks mainly aims at white-collar workers in cities, but with the continuous development of China's economy and the rising income of ordinary people, this is constantly changing. Now many small cities in the Midwest are actively introducing McDonald's and KFC because operators believe that brand awareness has been established locally and it is only a matter of time before they open a restaurant to make money. The situation of McDonald's and KFC today is also a harbinger of Starbucks' tomorrow.

Wang Zhaolong believes that no matter how much money there is, it is interesting for urbanites to drink a cup of heavy-baked coffee together in a quiet and elegant environment. As soon as Starbucks entered China, it seized on China's petty bourgeoisie and middle class's pursuit of a new space, although a cup of coffee worth more than 20 yuan is a bit expensive, and despite its proud "cappuccino", "latte" and "Fabricio", none of them has a history of more than 25 years, but it is really warm and full of urban atmosphere.

A brief introduction to Starbucks

Starbucks is the leading specialty coffee roaster and retailer in North America, with more than 7000 unique coffee chains throughout North America, Europe and the Pacific Rim. In terms of purchasing, roasting, brewing and freshness of raw coffee beans, Starbucks adheres to the highest standards in the industry to ensure that every cup of coffee customers drink at Starbucks is "the most perfect". Starbucks' development in China has been moving forward at a steady pace. Starbucks, which originated in Seattle in 1971, has pursued a direct marketing strategy since its inception. When developing Starbucks coffee shops around the world, it usually adopts the way of joint venture or authorization with local companies.

At present, Starbucks has three partners in mainland China: Beijing Meida Coffee Co., Ltd. represents Beijing and Tianjin, Taiwan Unification Group represents Shanghai, Suzhou and Hangzhou, and Hong Kong Meixin Restaurant Co., Ltd. represents Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other southern regions. The company began to supply Starbucks coffee beans and coffee powder to restaurants, embassies and multinational corporations in Beijing and surrounding cities in 1995, and successfully opened Beijing's first Starbucks coffee shop on the ground floor of Beijing International Trade Center on January 11, 1999. Provide customers with world-renowned Starbucks coffee drinks, various flavors of plateau coffee beans and mixed coffee, freshly baked cakes and utensils and small commodities related to coffee making.

Attached related:

Starbucks: make every cup of coffee for guests

"Brand management is a lifelong career. Brands are actually very fragile. You have to admit that the success of Starbucks or any brand is not an one-off title and title, it must be maintained and maintained every day. " Howard Schultz, founder of Starbucks

Starbucks, a coffee company founded in Seattle in 1971 and founded with coffee beans, has been officially established since 1985. In the past two decades, Starbucks has attracted global attention with its fairy tale miracle: in 1996, Starbucks began to expand globally, and its first overseas store was opened in Tokyo. It has evolved from a small "mermaid" in Seattle to more than 30 countries and regions around the world today, with more than 7500 chain stores (as of February 2004). It is said that Starbucks opens a new coffee shop every eight hours.

In February 2003, Fortune magazine selected the 10 most respected companies in the United States, and Starbucks ranked ninth with its outstanding performance. Starbucks ranked 88th among the 100 best brands in the world in 2001 by BusinessWeek. But BusinessWeek called Starbucks the "biggest winner" because while the value of many famous brands fell sharply (such as Xerox by 38%, Amazon and Yahoo by 31%), its brand value soared by 38%. Ranked first among 100 brands!

As a multinational chain, the successful history of Starbucks' international market expansion is also the history of Starbucks legends. We can understand the secrets behind Starbucks legends through the analysis of Starbucks brands.

Personality Spectrum: tracing back to Starbucks Brand Culture

The brand standard theory holds that the brand is not only the identity of the product, but also has its own content, is the identification of its basic content, and the brand is the symbol that represents the specific cultural significance. Starbucks'"brand personality spectrum" is a collection of "symbolic elements" that annotate Starbucks culture from many angles.

Brand positioning: the name "Starbucks" comes from an extremely calm and charming first mate in the novel Moby Dick by American writer Melville. His hobby is drinking coffee. Melville has a high position in the history of American and world literature, but Melville does not have a large readership, mainly people with good education and high cultural taste. it is impossible for people without a certain cultural upbringing to read Moby Dick, let alone get to know the character Starbucks. From the brand name of Starbucks, the positioning of its target market can be clearly defined: not the ordinary public, but a group of petty bourgeois urban white-collar workers who pay attention to enjoyment, leisure, knowledge and respect for human standard.

Brand recognition: Starbucks' green logo is a mermaid-like double-tailed Poseidon, which was inspired by young Seattle designer Terry Heckler in 1971 from a medieval woodcut Poseidon. The mermaid on the logo also conveys both primitive and modern meanings: her face is simple, but she is wrapped in a modern abstract form, with black and white in the middle and surrounded only by a circle of colors. When Starbucks created the logo 20 years ago, there was only one coffee shop. Today, the beautiful "green mermaid", together with McDonald's "m", has become a symbol of American culture.

Brand demand: customer experience is the core demand of Starbucks brand equity. Just as McDonald's has always advocated sales joy, Starbucks has gradually broken down typical American culture into elements that can be experienced: the warmth of sight, the arbitrariness of hearing, the smell of coffee, and so on. Just imagine, looking at the crowded street through the huge glass window, gently sipping a sip of fragrant coffee, which is very consistent with the feeling experience of "yuppie" and how desirable it is in the busy urban life! jesper kunde pointed out in "Corporate Religion": "Starbucks's success lies in the shift from products to services at the center of consumer demand, and from services to experience." Starbucks successfully created a 'coffee religion' characterized by the creation of a 'Starbucks experience'. "

Starbucks people think: their product is not just coffee, coffee is just a carrier. It is through the carrier of coffee that Starbucks transmits a unique style to its customers. To a large extent, the consumption of coffee is a kind of perceptual consumption on the cultural level. what the cultural communication needs is that the environmental culture created by coffee shops can infect customers and form a good interactive experience.

Brand communication: Starbucks brand communication does not simply imitate the overwhelming advertising and huge promotions in the traditional sense, but develops a unique way, adopting an outstanding communication strategy-word-of-mouth marketing. to promote the growth of Starbucks target customer base by the way of consumer oral communication.

Schultz's explanation is that Starbucks' success proves that a multimillion-dollar advertisement is not a prerequisite for creating a national brand, and that sufficient financial resources are not the only condition for creating brand-name products. You can do it step by step, one customer at a time, one store at a time or one market at a time. In fact, this may be the best way to win the trust of customers, and it is also the uniqueness of Starbucks!

Starbucks creates a good reputation through a series of events. For example, the store manager won the lottery to distribute the bonus to the staff and went to work as usual. A store manager in Southern California hired a hard of hearing man to teach him how to order and win over people with hearing impairment to make them feel friendly.

Brand alliance: another strategy for Starbucks to promote its brand is to use brand alliance to rapidly expand brand advantages, find strategic partners that can enhance its brand equity, expand sales channels, and form alliances with strong partners in the process of development. expand the marketing network.

Barnes&nobile Bookstore is one of the most successful companies in cooperation with Starbucks. Barnes&nobile has launched a campaign to develop bookstores into the center of people's social life, which coincides with Starbucks' concept of "third living space". In 1993, barnes&nobile began working with Starbucks to open its own retail business in bookstores. Starbucks can attract people to take a nap rather than rush to buy books, while the flow of people in bookstores has increased sales in coffee shops. In 1996, Starbucks and Pepsi formed a "North American Coffee partner" to develop new coffee drinks and market them everywhere. Starbucks borrowed more than 1 million retail outlets from Pepsi, while Pepsi took advantage of Starbucks' goodwill in the coffee industry to improve its product image.

Brand expansion: Starbucks' chain expansion benefits from Starbucks injecting values into its brand and turning corporate culture into content and form that consumers can feel. Starbucks brand expansion, has always adhered to the direct line: by the Starbucks headquarters for direct management, unified leadership, the aim is to control quality standards. In this way, each store is managed and trained by the headquarters to ensure that every overseas store is 100% Starbucks. Although the initial investment is large, the professional quality of the staff is high, which facilitates the promotion of coffee education, and establishes the most professional image in the industry, and the expansion of Starbucks brand is more firm and powerful.

At the end of 2001, the results of a survey conducted by the Kellogg School of Management in the United States show that successful companies define and apply relationships in a consistent and clear multifaceted way. The mystery of Starbucks' rise lies in a special ingredient added to coffee beans: human touch. Starbucks adheres to this core value from beginning to end. This core value originates and revolves around the construction of the "relationship" between people, so as to accumulate brand equity. Howard Schultz believes that the strongest and most enduring brands are built in the minds of customers and partners. In the final analysis, brand is a kind of spiritual alliance formed inside and outside the company (between partners, between partners and customers) and a community of interests with both losses and prosperity.

Michelle Garth, vice president of beverage at Starbucks, said: "our culture is relationship-oriented and trust-based, and what we call partnership covers all aspects of the word. This emotional relationship is very valuable and should be seen as the value of a company's core asset, namely the company's network of customers, suppliers, alliance partners and employees. " From cafes to the coffee kingdom, Starbucks has proved that good relationships with customers are as important as visible assets.

Customer equity: one of Starbucks' main competitive strategies is to communicate with customers in coffee shops, especially between coffee makers and customers. Every coffee producer is trained 24 hours a day-customer service, basic sales skills, basic coffee knowledge, coffee making skills. Coffee makers need to be able to anticipate the needs of customers and make bold eye contact when patiently explaining the different tastes and aromas of coffee. Starbucks also strengthens its customer relationship by consulting customers. Every week, the project leader at headquarters reads the customer feedback card in public.

Employee assets: what Starbucks wants to build is not only a company that creates new experiences for customers, but also a company that attaches great importance to employee emotion and employee value. Howard Schultz owes much of the company's success to the "partnership" between the company and its employees. "if there is one achievement that I am most proud of at Starbucks, it is the relationship of trust and confidence we have built among the employees who work in the company," he said. "

At Starbucks, employees are not called "partners". In 1991, Starbucks began to implement "Coffee Bean Stock", a stock option program for all employees. The idea is to make every employee own shares and become a partner in the company, so that every employee is associated with the overall performance of the company, whether it is ce0 or any partner, to adopt the same work attitude. In the mid-1990s, Starbucks' job-hopping rate was only 60%, well below the 140% to 300% job-hopping rate of hourly workers in the fast-food industry.

Supplier assets: Starbucks' relationship model also extends up the supply chain to suppliers, including coffee plantation farms, bakeries, paper cup processing plants, and so on. Starbucks has strict procedures for supplier selection and evaluation. Starbucks spends a lot of manpower, material and financial resources to develop suppliers and can maintain a long-term and stable relationship with suppliers, which can save conversion costs. second, it can avoid the impact of supplier adjustment on business. "losing a supplier is like losing our employees-we spend a lot of time and money training them," said john yamin, a vice president.

Multidimensional Innovation: the Source of Starbucks Brand vigor

Successful marketing requires creativity and passion. In this era of eyeball economy, in order to attract more attention, the most important thing is to produce innovation and differentiation, so that consumers' attention to products can be transformed into consumer behavior. Starbucks for its brand culture to add strategic innovation, in the development of its unique "Starbucks" brand to inject vitality and enduring.

Service innovation: Starbucks also attaches great importance to the development of new service content according to the needs of customers. Seattle-based Starbucks is experimenting with business ideas to attract people into the store and stay longer. When you enter Starbucks, you will feel the music whirling in the air. Jazz, American country music and piano solos are often played in the store. These just cater to those fashionable, trendy, avant-garde white-collar workers. They are facing strong survival pressure every day, and they are in great need of spiritual comfort. at this moment, music plays this role, making you awaken some nostalgia that may have disappeared in your consumption of a culture. Since 2002, Starbucks has launched high-speed wireless Internet access in 1200 stores in North America and Europe, where customers with laptops or personal digital assistants (pda) can browse the web, send and receive emails and download messages over a cozy cup of coffee.

Channel innovation: in 1998, half of all coffee sales in the United States were sold through supermarkets and food. There is a broader market among more than 26000 grocery stores than Starbucks retail chains and special sales channels. Making full use of this channel can bring millions of consumers to the company. in addition, putting products into the supermarket can also save the company's transportation costs and reduce operating costs. The company's retail capacity will also be further strengthened, and Schultz and other company decision makers believe that supermarkets are an important way to continue to expand Starbucks coffee sales. Although Schultz laid down the rule of "refusing to enter the supermarket" because he could not bear the smell of fresh coffee beans, the changing environment constantly required the company to change its principles. In 1997, Schultz and his senior management ordered a move into the supermarket. Despite the risks and difficulties-after all, supermarkets are not sales venues that companies can control. However, the situation that worried Schultz did not happen, on the contrary, the original decision produced good results.

Consumer education: in the process of expanding into Asian countries, Starbucks has to face the problem: promoting and popularizing coffee in a country that is used to drinking tea is bound to encounter emotional resistance from consumers. To this end, Starbucks first focused on promoting "consumer education".

Starbucks branches must hold coffee lectures for customers once a week. The main content is the knowledge of coffee, how to make it yourself, the use of utensils and so on. The form is very flexible, generally choose when there are more customers, the time is controlled at about 30 minutes. Many customers asked questions one after another, and the commentators solved the doubts, and the atmosphere was very active. In Shanghai, Starbucks is planning and implementing a service called "Coffee Room", which says that if three or four people go for coffee together, Starbucks will provide them with a barista. Baristas may or may not, but the message is that the number of customers going to Starbucks is on the rise.

Mystery customer: for Starbucks, word-of-mouth is the best advertisement. In order to achieve the effect of word-of-mouth, it is necessary to serve every guest well. Starbucks' standard is to brew every cup of coffee and grasp every detail. You may be facing the 100th guest today, but for the guest, it is the first cup of coffee that begins with his knowledge of Starbucks.

How to test "make every cup of coffee for the guest"? Starbucks has established a series of evaluation mechanisms, among which "mystery customer" is the most distinctive. That is, in addition to the usual theoretical knowledge inspection and practical operation inspection, they entrust a company with inspection ability to secretly send someone to pretend to be customers and come to various Starbucks coffee stores for consumption. during this period, the staff's service, skills, environmental atmosphere and other omni-directional inspection, and then combined with a comprehensive performance assessment, to determine the service quality of a store, whether a clerk can be promoted, and so on.

Source: "Brand mantra"