Business Marketing Promotion and Price Term Paper

Starbucks continues to use the music-to-emotion connection in the television spots to underscore their core messaging and differentiation.

Internet - Starbuck's Internet strategy stresses their environmentally friendly corporate policies, humanitarian efforts, and accentuates its health coverage for part-time employees. In short, the Internet strategy primarily focuses on showing global corporate responsibility, which is a critical messaging platform as the company moves into new Pacific Rim nations including Australia, Japan, and Korea. The global reach of the company is also exemplified in the use of maps to show where the various coffees are grown and sourced from.

Starbucks also supports their two core messages of delivering "reward" drinks on the one hand (Frappacinos) and getting a caffeine boost for a job (Double Shot) through the heavy use of graphics and downloadable computer art. For the summer promotion of "reward" drinks there is also the attempt to link music with the positioning of the drinks through entire mini-sites running on Macromedia Flash that presents albums and music selections interactively as online shoppers look through the latest Frappacino flavors. The link of high performance, ambition, and acute intensity at work is also communicated through the websites' messaging around its core coffees and Double Shot as well.

Point-of-Purchase - With 75% of the company's sales being through retail stores, according to DataMonitor in Starbuck's Profile (2005) the need to excel at point-of-purchase marketing is clear. Exacerbating this is the fact that the market for coffee shops in the U.S. is becoming saturated, and lifetime customer loyalty is critical for the continued revenue growth of Starbucks. The critical nature of in-store sales through point-of-purchase messaging and fulfillment of promises to customers is central to the growth of the company worldwide.

Starbucks chooses to focus on just-in-time messaging in their stores, including the seasonal promotions around Banana Creme Frappacinos and the hot, spiced ciders and peppermint coffees during the winter holiday months.The high seasonality components of their product strategy, and the season the company decides to launch the majority of their products, is winter. This is due to the fact that they have an entire year to create a concerted launch and product strategy, and also create a series of point-of-purchase displays.

Another key point regarding the interconnection of point-of-purchase and product lifecycle strategies within Starbucks from a global perspective is this: it is always a season away from winter in any part of the world at any point in time. This translates into a significant competitive advantage for Starbucks in terms of learning their product strategies in the winter of Australia for example which is in fact the Spring of the Western Hemisphere. The knowledge transfer and focus on sharing lessons learned through geographies is what is more than anything else besides the store build-out in the U.S., key to the company's growth. Underscoring these growth strategies is the core messages of rewarding yourself with Starbuck's latest drink creation, whether you are in any hemisphere, there is something new in their product strategy that drives both new customers and lifetime customer value being increased. The integral part of messaging in lifetime customer value and a product strategy that never stops due to the multi-hemisphere focus of the company is why Starbucks dominates global coffee service today.

References

Citigroup Research (2006) - SBUX: Too Hot For Us. Citigroup Global Markets Research. May 16, 2006.

Mintel Research, 2006, A Classy Cup of Coffee, Convenience Store News

March 15, 2006. Retrieved April 28, 2006, at http://www.csnews.com/csn/foodservice/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002158065

Starbucks Profile, 2005 - Starbucks Corporation. Company Profile.….....