Caso starbuck

A09-03-0007

Planet Starbucks (A)
You get more than the finest coffee when you visit Starbucks. You get great people, first-rate music, a comfortable and upbeat meeting place, and sound advice on brewing excellent coffee at home. At home you’re part of a family. At work you’re part of a company. And somewhere in between there’s a place where you can sit back and be yourself. That’s what aStarbucks store is to many of its customers—a kind of “third place” where they can escape, reflect, read, chat or listen.” 1995 Annual Report, Starbucks Corporation During the World Trade Organization talks in November 1999, protesters flooded Seattle’s streets; and among their targets was Starbucks, a symbol, to them, of free-market capitalism run amok, another multinational out to blanket the earth.Amid the crowds of protesters and riot police were black-masked anarchists who trashed the store, leaving its windows smashed and its tasteful green-and-white decor smelling of tear gas instead of espresso. Says an angry Schultz: “It’s hurtful. I think people are ill-informed. It’s very difficult to protest against a can of Coke, a bottle of Pepsi, or a can of Folgers. Starbucks is both thisubiquitous brand and a place where you can go and break a window.” “Planet Starbucks,” BusinessWeek, September 9, 2002, p. 100.

Ubiquitous—that was the term often applied to Starbucks. It had indeed become omnipresent within the United States and Canada throughout the 1990s. Now the company—and its founder, Howard Shultz—had set its sights on the global marketplace. Howard Schultz had stepped downas Chief Executive Officer and President in 2000 and taken on the title with associated duties of Chief Global Strategist (he remained Chairman of the Board). Between 1999 and 2002, the company averaged sales growth of over 25% per annum, and despite the recession wracking the global economy, 2003 was expected to show the same rapid growth. But the North American coffee markets were quicklyreaching saturation. Howard Schultz and Starbucks knew that if Starbucks was to continue to meet the market’s expectations for growth, the global marketplace would have to support it. By 2003, Starbucks had become the growing target of the anti-globalist movement, and many questioned its ability to successfully expand the U.S.-based business model to the global marketplace.

Starbucks History andOrigins
Starbucks was founded in Seattle by Gerald Baldwin, Gordon Bowker, and Ziev Siegl in 1971 as a gourmet coffee bean roaster and distributor. The Starbucks name was a combination of Seattle’s past, the Starbo mining camp of the nineteenth century and the first mate’s name in Moby Dick, the classic American novel of whaling on the open seas. In 1982, Howard Schultz joined the company as a memberof their marketing team. After a visit to Italy, Schultz urged the partners to consider opening Espresso bars in conjunction with their coffee sales. In 1984, Starbucks opened its first Espresso bar, a small corner of the company’s downtown Seattle Starbucks store, to rave reviews. Although Schultz urged the company to expand the Espresso bar line, the controlling partners, now Baldwin andBowker, were unwilling to enter what they considered the fast-food business, wishing to focus on the coffee-roasting
Copyright © 2003 Thunderbird, The American Graduate School of International Management. All rights reserved. This case was prepared by Professors Michael H. Moffett and Kannan Ramaswamy for the purpose of classroom discussion only, and not to indicate either effective or ineffectivemanagement.

niche market. The company had recently purchased Peet’s Coffee and Tea, a Berkeley, California, coffee roaster and distributor, straining the company’s management and financial capabilities. The partners wished to focus on these two main businesses. Howard Schultz then left Starbucks and, actually with the financial backing of his former partners, opened Il Giornale in 1985, an...