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Starbuck is a well-established brand for coffee business. With around 5000 stores around global market, Starbuck has created a differentiated market segment for themselves. A competitive advantage is an advantage gained over competitors by offering customers with greater value either through lower price or by providing the additional services.. The article illustrated that the competitive advantage of Starbuck is through the additional services it can offer to its customers apart from its normal business. Some of the factors assuring competitive advantage are illustrated as following:
- Brand Recognition: Among the respondents, most of them have heard about the Starbuck brand before. Their curiosity brings them into the store which passes the recognition based upon their quality and service of Starbuck. Since, the market of Starbucks is targeted mostly towards the International tourist and second to the local, the international brand recognition of company adds advantage to it over its competitors.
- Quality of Starbuck: Starbuck is well-known for their product quality, service quality, and the atmosphere around. This makes the position of Starbucks distinct from what other coffee shop offer. This distinguishes the position of Starbucks from other retail coffee shop in the market. Among the respondents, most of them preferred the quality of coffee, atmosphere at which it is served, and friendly staffs. These factors has contributed for the additional benefits that Starbuck can offer to its customers apart from its regular services.
- Innovative services: There are several innovative services offered by Starbucks in the market. The additional offerings such as Frappuccino’ blended coffee, green tea, newspapers, and high-chair adds additional benefits to customers beyond their quality product supplement in the market.
The marketing process for service marketing has values over traditional marketing theories. The added concept of people, process, and physical evidence beyond product, price, promotion, and placement (distribution) has distinguished service marketing from its regular product marketing. A paper believed that services are produced and consumed at real time so right people with right attitude, available at right time, with right training are needed, considering the entire customer interaction and experience with the organization, and with added feature from its surroundings.. These features add the benefit over the regular service process providing competitive advantage to the firm over its competitors. The core competencies of Starbucks offered to market were in terms of their staffs, service environment, locational proximity, and brand recognition apart from its product available. Business aiming to gain such competitive advantage upon their product should focus on adding benefits as a package with its normal product. Like Starbucks, they can add value by providing supportive staffs, improved physical evidences on which the services is being served, and locational proximity for the consumption of services that enhances their brand value over the competitors. Like Starbucks, they can gain their competitive edge over their competitors with additional values associated with their products. The competitive brand advantage can be assured with distinct recognition from its customers on such process. The major obstacle the can appear can be the cost issues associated with such offering. On the other hand, the process of gaining competitive advantage is a gradual process as it can be copied by competitors. The business must focus on constant innovation rather take it as a one-time strategy.
The study here has just provided us with the glimpse of competitive advantage of Starbucks. The store having over 5000 service outlets cannot be pictured truly with the sample questionnaire of 100 respondents. The sample size for this survey should be at least 10000 as its sample size for its error at around ±1, and 2500 for ±2 result.. The sample size considered here is too less for achieving the exact output from the research. The study here has been limited enough to draft a conclusion for the business at Starbucks. The recommendations suggested as per the sample size in the survey cannot be standardized among all the stores as the perception of people may vary from place to place as per their cultural and domestic values. For standardizing the result, the consideration must be on extended survey that can standardize the outcome for Starbucks to all its retail outlets around the world.
Bibliography
Ehmke, C. (2010). Strategies for Competitive Advantage. Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, University of Wyoming.
gilliresearch. (2011). samplesize. Retrieved December 21, 2013, from www.gilliresearch.com: http://www.gillresearch.com/pdfs.gr/samplesize.pdf
Merrikh, K. (2012). 7P's of Marketing . University of Guelph.
