The Starbucks Company appears to be in a bid to take over the world. At least, that’s what it seems like as this corporate giant edges closer and closer to its goal of having over 20,000 stores around the world in just a few more years. What is the secret to the rapid expansion of the Starbucks Company on an advertising budget that company executives readily acknowledge as a ‘joke’?
The Starbucks Company has capitalized on its primary customer – the lazy coffee drinker. Yes, the Starbucks Company has oriented its entire growth strategy with this one person in mind. It’s not because of the lazy chairs that find themselves in every location, nor is it because of the relaxing music playing through the stores’ speakers that can make you forget about time.
Rather, one look around downtown Seattle, Washington and the reason for calling the Starbucks Company a company for the lazy coffee drinker becomes evident. Starbucks has engaged in an expansion process many analysts have since come to label ‘self-cannibalism’. In downtown Seattle, the birthplace of Howard Schultz’s Starbucks Company, there are two Starbucks at the City Centre, two at the nearby Pacific Place, and eleven others within walking distance.
In total, the Starbucks Company has opened almost 40 stores in the “downtown core” of Seattle, and 90 throughout the rest of the city. And, the Starbucks Company expansion plan doesn’t stop once you reach the outskirts of urban areas. Suburban areas are becoming just as popular locations for Starbucks coffee shops. Starbucks Company CEO Howard Schultz doesn’t care if one or more of stores are right across the street from each other. In fact, that’s precisely what he wants.
It is one of the greatest ironies lying behind the success of the Starbucks Company that despite having built its success upon a foundation and image of being chic and catering to the busy urbanite, the Starbucks Company is actually a company based on the idea of catering to the lazy man. And, they’re the first ones to admit it.
“Starbucks builds stores where customers want us to be,” says Starbucks Company spokesperson Audrey Lincoff. “Because we are part of our customers’ daily routine, often crossing a street could interrupt that routine.”
The Starbucks Company is proud of its ability to meet the lazy coffee drinker’s needs and that’s exactly what it plans on doing for the next ten years as well. In its annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Starbucks Company claims that their objective is “to establish Starbucks as the most recognized and respected brand in the world. To achieve this goal, the Company plans to continue rapid expansion of its retail operations, grow its Specialty Operations, and selectively pursue other opportunities to leverage the Starbucks brand.”
To achieve its lofty goals, the Starbucks Company still has a ways to go; it has cornered just seven percent of the overall coffee market thus far. Nevertheless, so long as it continues to meet the needs of the lazy coffee drinker without disappointment, chances are the Starbucks Company will one day reach its objectives.
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