Marketing Case Study - Starbucks


BA 223 - Marketing Case Study
  • The company that I have chosen to do my marketing report on is Starbucks. Starbucks is in the news recently because of a incident that took place in one of their stores that many believed to be racially charged. The incident took place in a Philadelphia Starbucks store on April 12th where 2 African american men entered and took a seat while waiting for a 3rd gentleman to meet them there. They were asked to leave because they weren’t buying any products, and when they didn’t leave the store the manager decided to call the police. 2 police officers arrived and asked the men to leave 3 different times, and when they didn’t leave the officers took them under arrest. The 911 call by the manager was made at 4:37 pm, and by 5:00 pm the 2 men were under arrest and on their way to the police station. Starbucks has been dealing with the backlash to this incident in majors ways, one of the biggest being that they will shut down 8,000 of their U.S stores for an afternoon on May 29th to be able to give over 175,000 employees “racial bias training”.
  • The company has not had any issues of this kind in the past during their 47 years of business, except an issue with 2 men and a bathroom pass. In that instance there was a strict policy in place that Starbucks has always had, that being that you cannot use the bathroom in a Starbucks unless you are a paying customer.
  • Starbucks has always tried to stay true to their value proposition, which is their ability to provide a valuable and unique way to drink coffee to their customers, along with a setting to match that new way. 
  • The closest thing to this story that we have talked about in class so far would be when we have covered the topic of Social Listening. In this case for Starbucks the Social Listening aspect would be a hard thing to avoid in this recent huge mess up. The video of the event had over 10 million views, not counting all the other times the video was posted. It seems obvious in this case for Starbucks, because the message their customers are sending them shouldn’t really even have to be said.
  • My opinion on the topic as a consumer is that more of the outcry should be directed at the individual that thought that calling the police was a good idea in this situation. As an employee, she is representing the company she works for, but it isn’t like Starbucks taught her to do this if this situation came up, she made the decision herself when she deemed it worthy to get the police involved.
  • If I was the marketing manager for Starbucks, I would probably also go through with the training idea for your employees. It’s the best idea in a tough situation to show that they mean what they are saying. Race is one of the most sensitive issues for a company to try and come back from. It is a hard association to get out of your customer’s minds.
  • What do you think about the situation? And how Starbucks handled it? Do you think the police should have taken different steps to handle the situation? 
  • Edit from Class Discussion: The Starbucks manager did a poor job of proving what Starbucks's value proposition was. The racial bias training was something worth rolling your eyes over, but definitely necessary.
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