Starbucks and the Changing Trends

¶ … Starbucks Proposed research into the possibility of Starbucks opening franchises in targeted African Countries and how these franchises will be managed. The paper is a look at the possibilities of having Starbucks open branches in targeted African countries. INA bid to inform this possibility, the paper looks at the history of Starbucks, the steps and successes that Starbucks has achieved so far, the changes that have been made within Starbucks and the effect of these changes.

This will help make the decisions later on whether Starbucks is ready to go into other markets far and outside the U.S.A. Company situation Starbucks is an American global coffee company and a coffee house chain that has its base in Seattle Washington. This is the largest coffeehouse company boasting of over 23,000 stores located in 64 countries all over the world. The rapid growth of Starbucks has become a reference success story in the world of business and many people have been taken aback by the company's strategy.

The Starbucks stores offer both hot and cold beverages, micro ground instant coffee, pastries, whole bean coffee and snacks. Most of its stores have prepackaged food items as well as items like tumblers and mugs. The Starbucks evening locations offer wines, beers and appetizers as from p.m. Through their entertainment division and hear brand music the company does marketing for music, books and film. The company's products are seasonal and very specific to the store location.

Starbucks is committed to offering their customers the best coffee in the world as well as a fine experience while conducting their business in ways that offer a social environmental and economic benefit for the communities where their business is based. While other coffee shops are normally run independently as small businesses, the Starbucks ones belong to a broad network of coffee houses. The structure of this company is different from the corporate structures of other coffee companies.

The current business environment is becoming more and more competitive therefore; every business should strive to ensure that they keep up with this environment. Change is important in any organization since without change businesses are likely to lose their competitive edge and at the same time fail to meet the needs of what most have a hope to be a growing base of the loyal customers. Therefore, in order for Starbucks to grow strong and maintain its status as a global company it has to make some organizational changes.

Apart from the transformation agenda, Starbucks has carried out several organizational structure changes to its employees, which will focus more on the enhancement of customer experience. Changes undertaken at Starbucks These organizational changes include splitting of the organization into three separate districts to allow better handling of operations and ensure that their clients are kept happy. The company now uses a matrix organizational structure, which utilizes communication channels. This matrix organizational structure is quite an effective way of taking full advantage of all the communication channels that are available.

Whether the organization wants to label the organizational structure or not its structure has a big role to play when it comes to the success of its communication within the organization. Starbucks is now utilizing the matrix organizational structure for their benefit in order to serve their customers better. This structure groups employees by the function and product. This structure is normally very flat and the matrix structure is differentiated into whatever functions that are required for accomplishing certain goals of the company.

They have created products that are tailored in such a way that they fit specific regions and have now created a stronger organizational structure in order to accommodate the needs of their customers as they are expanding (Journalistic inc,2008). These organizational changes are aimed at restructuring the company and at the same time lead to the reduction of the number of the company's partners and positions. This organizational structure changes are designed to strengthen the company's focus on their customers in their field of operation within the U.S.

And centralize and consolidate its support functions in order to drive functional excellence and reduce redundancies. This organizational structure is aimed at creating more capacity for the field teams and enables the company to align its leaders close to their customers and partners. This will ensure that there is a storing level of support when it comes to development of partners, accountability in the field and coaching. The establishment of customer-centric field support structure within the U.S.

business makes it possible for field teams to focus on the company's partners, the customers and the coffee. It is expected that each of the divisions will be headed by a senior vice [president who is going to be reporting directly to the U.S. president. Within the divisions, marketing, partners supporting store development, partner resources and finance will be reporting directly to their particular functions but still be accountable for results at divisional level.

These teams are being centralized in order to create an infrastructure that has global span, capability and is effective (Onward, 2008). There is also a reorganization of Starbucks support functions, which is designed to consolidate functional activities into teams, which have shared goals, and visions that will support the business. The support functions that will be consolidated include U.S. store development, U.S. finance, U.S. licensed stores, marketing, global supply chain, global communication, partner asset protection, In-store experience and partner resources. These organizational changes will lead to.