Starbucks

Starbucks is not just synonymous to quality gourmet coffee but also phenomenal marketing success. In fact, when you look into the company’s humble beginnings, you will probably discover that there are practically volumes written accounting what would only be said as pure advertising genius. Its no wonder, a lot of business schools today would usually dedicate an entire semester on the subject alone.

The Starbucks beginnings can be traced way back in Seattle in 1971, with three coffee lover friends who share an equal passion from freshly brewed coffee: Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl and Gordon Bowker. This prompted them to open a small shop that primarily sells freshly roasted gourmet coffee beans. It was not until in 1892 when the Starbucks hired Howard, a plastic salesman to be their marketing head and was later sent to Milan for an international house ware show. Apparently, Schultz fell in love with the pulsating coffee culture in Italy, which struck inspiration and gave him an idea to create a gathering place of people, like one of those great coffee houses in Italy and bring it to the United States. This later became the very reason that triggered the exceptional success of Starbucks and made it to the historical tomes of business journals.

However, his idea was not taken well by Baldwin who was only keen on developing the store into selling whole coffee beans. However, he allowed him to make a market test of sorts in the small espresso bar in one of their outlets, which later became an instant hit among avid coffee drinkers. A few years later, Starbucks was up for sale and Howard Schultz painstakingly convinced key investors of his coffee house vision and immediately set out to raise $ 3.8 million. This resulted to 125 branches in a five-year period. Today, there are actually more than 8, 000 Starbucks Coffee locations in over 30 countries worldwide and enjoying a revenue of more than $ 7.5 billion annually.

Aside from the impressive growth of outlets, Starbucks also pioneered the idea of including a cup of coffee as one of the services in United Airline flights and made available whole and ground coffee beans in supermarkets. Such marketing brilliance made the company a household name not such through fancy advertising schemes but more importantly through word of mouth.

However, a closer look would tell you than the company’s success does not entirely rely on great marketing actions. Of course, behind the media hype, to be able to ensure long-term success you need to be able to deliver the goods, so to speak. Needless to say, they did deliver much more than their promise with a number of great quality variants one can choose from. A look at their menu would tell you right away that each cup of gourmet coffee would practically cost you an arm and leg. It aside from the exceptional taste and aroma of premium grade coffee, Starbucks has also become a status symbols f sorts. Of course, much of that publicity can be attributed to the pictures of celebrities enjoying their own lattes and soy mochas. This prompted teenagers to develop a taste for coffees to dive right into the hip and classy crowd.

Today, all the fancy drinking members of society have adapted the same importance akin to that of drinking expensive wine. In view of the unprecedented success, one can safely say the Starbucks definitely bucked the system and never quite paid attention to the comments and complaints of their highly priced menu. Despite the pricey costs, consumers kept lining up the streets waiting for their fill of fancy gourmet coffee and also to mingle with the ‘it’ crowd. Such observable fact can only be accounted to enticing and smart marketing and branding genius.