Services Marketing at Ice Cream Shops: Baskin-Robbins, Ben & Jerry’s and Cold Stone Creamery
Introduction This purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast services marketing at three ice cream scoop shop companies: Baskin-Robbins, Ben & Jerry’s, and Cold Stone Creamery. In a Mintel report on ice cream shops published in 2009, “roughly seven out of 10 respondents say that ice cream is the first thing that they think about when wanting a tasty treat” (Ice Cream). Given that consumers are easily drawn to ice cream as a product, ice cream shops are not necessarily challenged at attracting customers to eat ice cream, but instead must focus their marketing efforts on selling the experience and service that comes with a customer’s visit to an ice cream shop. Some focus is also placed on marketing the quality of the product as an extension of the service experience. As described throughout this paper, all of the companies use both similar and differing tactics to market their service experience to their customers. Company Overviews Baskin-Robbins is a subsidiary of Dunkin’ Brands, Inc., based out of Canton, MA. It was founded in 1945 in Glendale, CA by Burt Baskin and Irvine Robbins. At the end of 2009, the company consisted of 6,207 franchised locations worldwide, in 33 countries and 46 states (Dunkin’ (a)). It has created over 1,000 flavors of ice cream in its lifetime, and serves over 300 million customers each year (Dunkin’ (b)). Ben & Jerry’s is a wholly owned subsidiary of Unilever Plc, with its headquarters in South Burlington, VT. It was founded in 1978 in Burlington, VT by Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield. At the end of 2008, it consisted of 845 scoop shops worldwide, most of

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which are franchised, while others are company owned (Ben & Jerry’s (e)). Unlike Baskin-Robbins and Cold Stone Creamery, who solely sell ice cream in their shops, a large part