Starbucks’ Mobile App

Jingjing Qian
Marketing in the Age of Digital
2 min readDec 5, 2021
Starbucks’ Mobile App

Do you like Starbucks? I believe that most people have had Starbucks before and do like it. Starbucks started in the U.S. in 1971 and has become the largest coffee selling firm in the world today. They are popular for their tasty coffee and superior customer service.

Starbucks launched its mobile app in 2011 and had the stars rewards saved for later purchases with the phone. Unlike other brands, which we’re focusing on customer experience in the store, Starbucks had already taken a step further. They had their Starbucks app, which could order from a distance and choose any Starbucks location to pick up. Another way to use Starbucks app was to so mobile payments and get points for every purchase people to have with them.

Functions in the App

The marketing objective of Starbucks is to fulfill its customer’s needs and requirements in the gourmet coffee niche. By launching the mobile app, Starbucks provided a better customer experience with ordering online It saves much time than ordering in the store, sitting there, and waiting. The mobile app also comes with a membership, which builds brand loyalty for Starbucks. The membership promotion retains customers for later experience with them.

As a consumer of Starbucks, I had haven a lot of experience ordering through their mobile app. One advantage to using mobile payment is that there will always be coupons I can use to save spending. This kind of promotion will not influence the quality of their coffee. The convenience of using mobile ordering and payment is unbelievable. Big portions of Starbucks’ customers are like university students and office workers, who need coffee to start their days and wake up. The mobile app of Starbucks saves these segments of people a lot of time to get one cup of Starbucks before going to work or studying.

From this pandemic period, we can see that people relied more on phones. People spend more time on phones browsing websites, texting, and shopping. Mobile apps would bring more consumers to the brand and retain existing customers. Not only apps but also mobile payment make people’s daily lives more convenient. Customers can access the brand more easily and make a purchase. Mobile would be a potentially important channel for companies to utilize and amplify their advantage in marketing.

Since more time people tend to spend on their phones, the mobile trend will not fade and will be here to stay instead. Customers love the convenience of finishing the whole order process on mobile.

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