Marketing strategy fundamentals and implementation approaches

Marketing Strategy

First of all, we need to identify the different categories we are referring to at Starbucks, see their relationship with the company and determine marketing strategies that can create positive relationships with the organization.

From a broad perspective, when we are referring to stakeholders, we can include here employees, customers, shareholders and investors (the four most important categories of investors), but also suppliers, government agencies, competitors, local communities, labor unions and NGOs. We will first of all focus on the four main categories of stakeholders.

From an employee perspective, there is a necessity to implement the idea that the company they are working for is the most powerful on the respective product segment. This would mean that the employees will always be convinced that the company they are working for is a market leader, a trend setter, one that promotes innovation as the main factor of progress. From this perspective, a leader market dominance strategy will help underline this perspective: the company is strong and it is able to promote not only the best on the market, but also the best for its own employees. This type of message, correlating the outside environment (presence on the market) with the inside organizational environment, will help motivate the employees towards sustaining the proposed strategic objective, that of maintaining Starbucks as a leader of the market segment it is operating in.

This is underlined by one of the first statements of the 2006 Annual Report: "our employees, whom we call partners, want to feel proud when talking to friends and family about where they work" (2006 Annual Report). This shows that the company's marketing strategy as directed towards the employee is one that promotes the idea of working in a privileged company.

Further more, the fact that employees are considered one of the most important resource of the company is clear from the chairman and president and CEO message, identifiable as a marketing approach towards the company employees. As such, they are referred to as "our store partners" (2006 Annual Report, page 1), a clear marketing strategy to share with the employees the responsibilities of building a company that dominates the market and of sharing the benefits resulting from this.

The second important category of stakeholders is the customers. The transition to this category is also made through the employees, as they are the ones "connecting and creating relationships with our customers every day" (2006 Annual Report). However, even more than the relationships created by the employees with the customers, it is important to note that the relationship with the customers, as main stakeholders, is also given by the product. From this perspective, Starbucks can use a product differentiation strategy to promote to its customers the idea that the product sold at Starbuck is unique.

Certainly, this is something difficult to support, since coffee, despite being perhaps made different in different locations, is still quite similar, however, Starbucks can promote the idea that the entire product package offered (service, taste, mugs, locations, atmosphere, cakes etc.) is unique. In this sense, even the sizes are not the same as elsewhere, the usual small, medium, large being replaced and starting directly with a big mug. The variety of coffee being served is just as generous, not only in terms of blend, but also in terms of the way it is prepared. Add to this things like the fact that Starbucks remains a combination between a "fast"- coffee shop and the traditional coffee shop and one has a complete idea about the fact that Starbucks aims to make out of its product differentiation marketing strategy its main instrument in retaining current customers and bringing in potential new ones.

In terms of the company's shareholders, as the people who actually own the company, the direction that the management would want to follow would be towards ensuring and promoting the idea of company profitability. In this sense, the marketing strategies that will target this category of stakeholders will also aim to show shareholders that the company not only is profitable at a certain point, but also that it has the strategic plans that will allow it to remain profitable in the next period of time as well.

The marketing strategies that will create positive relationships with the shareholders will certainly be in the growth strategies category. Following the discussion we have previously had for the customers category of stakeholders, a diversification strategy seems to be the most appropriate to encourage positive relationships with the shareholders.

Indeed, a diversification marketing strategy will encourage the shareholders to believe that the company is constantly willing to promote its own business model and its own particular products and services on the market. Additionally it will also sustain the idea that the company has a clear plan and strategy for the future, one that will support the company's profitability.

On the other hand, the company also has to promote innovation strategy of the leader/pioneer type. Such a strategy will determine the fact that the management's aim is towards supporting a leadership path into the future. Such marketing strategies will allow the shareholders be confident of the fact that their investment is safe with the company and that it is likely to bring in additional profit in the years to come.

A similar marketing strategy will have to be promoted towards the investors as well, as the last main category of stakeholders. We need to enlarge the perspective here from the current investors (shareholders) to future, prospective investors. Indeed, for the latter category, an innovation marketing strategy will promote Starbucks as a potentially beneficial business to be done. Innovation and a proactive stance on the market will let potential investors know that the company is targeting to be a leader in the present, as in the years to come, and that it will take the steps necessary to ensure this. In this sense, such a marketing strategy promoted towards the investors will help them make the step from potential investor to shareholder.

Resuming the main marketing strategies that can create positive relationships with each of Starbuck's stakeholders, we can emphasize the idea that all of the stakeholders need to receive messages that will sustain the idea that the company is a leader on the market, both in terms of services, as in terms of the conditions created for its employees, and that all the stakeholders are working together to their own benefit so that the company can grow on the market.

Further more, the marketing strategies will be build on the idea of innovation, leadership and the fact that the company is a proactive participant on the market, working towards creating the market and new trends rather than receiving the expected feedback from the market and reacting to it. These types of messages will also promote the idea that the company can attract new investors, as well as support its present shareholders.