Starbucks Marketing Mix

Marketing mix :

Products :

Starbucks has diversified its supply of coffee areas. Thanks to quality suppliers in three continents, buyers Starbucks remain faithful to their manufacturer, ensuring the quality of the goods.

Starbucks makes coffee roasting itself. For this it has a factory in Amsterdam that caters shops located in Europe, Africa and the Middle East as well as three other production units managing the Pacific and the United States.

Based preparations Starbucks' espresso Roast ", which have a special roasting. It is the lightest expresso Starbucks variety . A range of six packs of 250 grams of coffee is available in all Starbucks outlets.

The Starbucks prepartions are various, they are not only made with coffee. The classic hot drinks are : Moka Coffee, White Moka Coffee, Caramel Macchiatto, Latte Coffe, Cappuccino, Americano Coffee, Expresso, Trade Fair Coffee. Starbucks offer also Frappuccino Coffe (frozen) with Caramel Moka Coffee flavor or with vanilla, chocolate or caramel cream flavor.

To change from the coffe, Starbucks offers many tea, hot chocolate with whipped cream, squeezed orange juice. There is also frappuccino with fruits « mango citrus », frappuccino with tea ; mango citrus fruit, raspberry. Starbucks offer the possibility to personnalise the drink by choosing different ingredient and flavor combination, and so Starbucks adapt itself to everyone.

2) Price

The price of drinks vary according to his waist. It exists 4 differents waist :

• Small (237 ml)

• Grande 5474 ml)

• Tall (355 ml)

• Venti (592 ml)

The price of one drink (coffee, chocolate or « frappuccino »), vary between 2 euros to 7,50 euros. Salty snacks are sold between 4,50 euros to 9,50. Muffins and other sweet snacks between 2,50 euros to 5,50. The packs of 250 gramms of coffee is sold between 4,85 and 5,50 euros, depends on the variety.

In fact, more than a product, Starbucks coffee is a real concept, his force is his stores atmosphere and the special feeling when we enter in a store. That made the « Starbucks experience » and give us the wish to go back.

The amount of money a buyer must give to the seller for a specific quantity of the product is the price of that product and usually consumers use this as an indicator of quality

(Dalrymple & Parsons, 1986). Price and quality determines the value of the product. When launched, Starbucks was expensive and was positioned in accordance with that. They always tried to deliver the high value promised to the consumers. They bought the quality beans, gave effective and efficient training to staffs, and moreover, made an atmosphere to enjoy coffee, meet fellow people and ‘take a break’ from the busy life. These all justify their pricing and show how price supported their positioning.

3) Place

The place of the stores selection :

Starbucks open three or four stores every day. But Starbucks knows, how much the place is realy important to keep a good image.

They tends to be located in high-traffic locations such as malls, busy street corners and even grocery stores.

According to Horwart (company founder) there is 3 major factors demographics, branding potential, and financials.

Second they categorize sites on an A to D scale. The differences between « A » and « D » store can be substantial. A « D » store is expected to have about 50-60% lower sales. Starbucks classifies a store as « A » if the store location is the focal point of the area, has great visibility, has readily avalable parking, has excellent access to and from the site, cannot be out-poistionned by competitores, and fits with Starbucks desire to build a distinctive image. They rarely choose a « C » or « D » store.

The Starbucks concept allows consumer to meet each others in a warm environment, in confortable sofa. That is also why, Starbucks choose big city, where people want this kind of cosy atmosphere.

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