Starbucks: Giving a social dimension to their coffee.
Founded in 1971, Starbucks is a global coffee shop chain that can be found in almost any country. Its success is attributed to its unique marketing model that sells the experience as a commodity along with coffee. Starbucks strives to create a separate third space from the home and work where consumers can enjoy not only coffee in the shop but also a welcoming environment and be in the same space with others who share the same lifestyle, which helps to relieve the growing stress of life when buying coffee.
Meanwhile, Starbucks has adopted a digital method to reinforce the unique impression of the brand. As we can see, Starbucks showcased their various cup styles on twitter.
In addition, Starbucks has taken to social media to promote its Starbucks Foundation and reinforce this image of them as a socially responsible company. As shown below, the Starbucks Foundation supported hurricane relief efforts in North America and the Caribbean both financially and materially. This promotion distinguishes Starbucks from other coffee shops and may convince people to buy a cup of coffee when they pass by a Starbucks shop in the future.
However, it is this targeted marketing strategy that has led to the majority of Starbucks’ consumer base being white-collar workers, meaning that they are likely to face frequent business trips by air. Starbucks has taken advantage of this characteristic of their customer base by associating with airlines, allowing them to expand their marketing base even further. As we can see, Starbucks has partnered with Delta Airlines to enable people to earn Delta miles when they spend money at Starbucks, which further strengthens the loyalty of Starbucks consumers.
Besides, Starbucks is also trying to associate airports with coffee to attract people to drink Starbucks coffee when they are on business trips.
In general, Starbucks is trying to make its brand relevant to people’s lives and it wants to see the brand filling all corners of people’s lives. As such, Starbucks might work with social media platforms that can make targeted recommendations to consumers thanks to automated analytics based on the vast amount of data they have at their disposal.
However, given Starbucks’ large user base, the amount of data they have about their consumers could lead to data colonialism, which could be sold as a commodity. This surveillance capitalism allows Starbucks to develop unique marketing strategies for almost every different consumer, for example, for white-collar workers the platform can recommend news of Starbucks’ partnership with an airline to further their interest in Starbucks.
