Starbucks – History, Brand Value, and Brand Strategies

The coffee industry is one of the hottest and trending industries in the world. A morning without a cup of freshly brewed coffee is infused into our daily routines. Going out on coffee dates has been a part of our culture.

Starbucks is the first thing that comes to our minds when we think about these things. Starbucks is an American coffee company with the world’s largest coffee chain.

Starbucks History

The brand Starbucks was established by Jerry Baldwin, Gordon Bowker, and Zev Siegel. They opened the first store in 1971 at the Pike Place Market in Seattle.

The initial days

The creators of the brand Starbucks had one thing in common. They all adored coffee and tea lovers and they came from an academic background. They put away and acquired some cash to open the initial store in Seattle and named it “Starbucks”.

Alfred Peet, a coffee industry businessman, was a significant motivation for the creators of Starbucks. Peet was a Dutch migrant who had started bringing fine Arabic coffee in the US during the 1950s.

In 1966 Peet opened a little store, Peet’s Coffee and Tea in Berkeley, California.  The store mainly imported fine quality coffee and tea from the foreign markets.

The development of Starbucks

By the mid-1980s, Starbucks had opened four stores in Seattle that stood apart from the contenders with their top-quality coffee.

In the year 1980, Siegel chose to seek after different interests and left the remaining of the company with Baldwin. Baldwin became the president of Starbucks.

In the year 1981, Howard Schultz decided to visit Starbucks. Schultz was an agent for Hammarplast, a Swedish organization that made kitchen gear and housewares from which Starbucks purchased coffee machines. He found out that Starbucks had a massive range of orders and that made him more interested.

In the year 1982, Schultz joined Starbucks as the head of promoting and he started off his career with the brand. He noticed that there was inadequate availability of information about coffees for the customers and he decided to work on it. He soon developed communication skills and sales skills and made brochures to assist the customers in sales.

The rise of the brand

In the year 1987, Baldwin and Bowker chose to sell Starbucks, and Schultz rushed to buy the brand. He decided to implement the café idea and turned the brand into a pioneer of the café concept. He additionally kept items for sale such as coffee beans.

The organization went into a brilliant phase of development and in the year 1992, Starbucks made its entry in the global markets.

Starbucks soon became the biggest café chain in the world. By the mid-21st century, Starbucks had established more than 25,000 cafes in the world.

Starbucks Brand Value

Starbucks is one of the largest cafe chains on the planet. In 2019, the Starbucks brand value was estimated to be around USD $ 12 billion, up from USD $ 9.5 billion from the previous year.

Starbucks, the world-famous espresso chain, remains the most significant eatery brand after its brand value expanded by 23% since a year ago to USD $ 40 billion, as indicated by the most recent reports published in the same year.

The reason for the brand value

The brand has expanded its operations by collaboration and strategic market approaches. Starbucks has created a strong hold in the industry which has been dominated by major USA brands.

In the course of the most recent year, the brand has expanded its impression geologically and through key associations. The move started with the opening of its stores across China and a joint endeavor with Tata Global Beverages.

They joined hands with Nestle and Uber Eats, empowering clients to have hot coffee delivered right to their doorstep.

Starbucks Brand Strategy

Marketing has been one of the urgent components of the brand Starbucks over numerous years. The organization has put all in to create a normalized look and feel of its stores, product and nourishment and beverages.

The Starbucks Siren Logo

The Starbucks Siren logo is one of the most well-known logos in the world. The global development campaign has a key goal of reproducing the Starbucks brand image in the nations where the brand will make its entry. This basically brings about a comparable sort of involvement with its stores, regardless of whether it is situated in New York, New Mexico, Moscow, Tokyo or Shanghai.

The business strategy

The brand’s business strategy has consistently been the foundation of the organization’s way of thinking and qualities. In the US, where the organization assesses that most of its stores will become drive through, Starbucks has grasped an engaging plan to make stores out of unused transportation containers.

In its worldwide stores, the technique is focused around restricting a portion of the store components and yet at the same time remaining consistent with the Starbucks experience.

The rollover from coffee

There have been speculations that Starbucks is wanting to move its focus from coffee to different beverages and food items. The brand logo was changed in the year 2011 which expelled the words “coffee” and “Starbucks”. This logo is being used till date and is one of the most visual and well-known components of the organization.

Communication with customers

The brand image technique has stayed up with time and has developed to exploit new and rising client commitment stages. The organization works a site called mystarbucksidea.com, where clients can leave thoughts for the organization to extend and improve its items and client experience, improve commitment with the brand and upgrade social connections.

This has led to the rise in the crowdsourcing concept and has paved the way for innovation.

The usage of internet

Starbucks has developed a niche in the field of internet and social media platforms. This has been driven by the need to more readily connect with the clients and furthermore be noticeable on social media platforms where the target and future clients can be found together.

The brand has a functioning Facebook page, a Twitter account, an Instagram page, a Google+ people group, a Pinterest page, and a video channel on YouTube.

In 2015, Starbucks worked with Duracell and established wireless charging in the UK stores, adding to the positive customer experience and bringing digital upgradation into its stores.

Mobile advertising

The brand has invested a huge deal in mobile advertising. It has made significant development by creating and launching a Starbucks application for paying for items, tipping at baristas, and procuring and reclaiming rewards.

As of now, it has 15 million Starbucks Rewards customers and around 10 million clients making payments through mobile. The brand has more than USD $ 7 billion invested in prepaid Starbucks Cards in North America in the year 2016.

Other than the brand’s achievement in utilizing digital technologies like QR codes, coupon downloads, and virtual gift vouchers in its advertising campaigns, Starbucks has utilized AI technology to enable clients with the feature of ordering through their voice and messaging applications. This has proved to be a successful venture and has witnessed a sharp 25% increase in Starbucks membership expenditures.

Conclusion

Starbucks has become the global leader in coffee chains and has managed to build a name for itself in the coffee industry. The quality has been their greatest strengths and for this, they have witnessed a massive fan following over the years. The coffee brand has been the pioneer in the coffee chain concept and the future holds a bright prospect for the brand.

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