IntroductionStarbucks is a famous coffeehouse. Until the mid-1980s it was only a provider of coffee to fine restaurants. Thereafter Howard Schultz, director of retail operations and marketing, was impressed of the popularity of coffee in Milan while he was in Europe .
His idea was born. He wanted to bring the coffee bar culture to the Americans. So Starbucks started to realise his idea and so created a new trend. The clue is not only to sell coffee, but to sell an experience.
Today Starbucks has got about 20 million customers each week in about 5500 coffeehouses all over the world . While haunting to increase sales more and more, Starbucks has got a special growth strategy. They open a lot of stores in a very short period of time, expanding numerous food offerings and also getting into new segments, for example supermarkets. They develop new products like bottled coffee or Starbucks-flavoured ice cream.
Starbucks Bean Life display in Miami at the Latin ...
Grounds for Your Garden, the Starbucks recycling s...
English: Starbucks' headquarters building in Seatt...In addition to that, Starbucks tests new coffeehouse concepts, for example with live music. Since a few years, Starbucks opens more and more stores outside America.
The important question is, if Starbucks' growth rate will continue within next years because on the one hand critics say that Starbucks grows too fast and is loosing the focus while on the other hand some critics compare Starbucks' coffee with Mc Donald'sô hamburger and believe that they will grow up more and more as the dominant player on this market .
With the help of the SWOT analysis and the BCG matrix the situation of Starbucks can be analyzed after finding out, why people pay more money for a coffee, than in other coffeehouses.
What has suddenly made people across the world willing to pay three to four times more for a cup of coffee than they used to?Starbucks...