Starbucks case report
Xiaoteng Gao, Xiao Liu, Ping Cai, Mengqiong He, Yuheng Chen

1. What factors accounted for the extraordinary success of Starbucks in the early 1990s?
In the early 1982, the inspiring experience of Milan’s coffee culture and espresso bars’ role in Italians’ everyday social lives motivated Howard Schult to convince the company to set up an espresso bar in the corner of its shop which became the prototype for his long-term vision and also foreshadowed the success of Starbucks. After Schult taking over the company, he took all measures to take the company public by opening new stores, increasing the variety of coffee beverage, positioning the main customers, raising money and etc. He also tried his best to have created Starbucks’ experiential brand strategy and value in the process of the coffee drinking experience. In summary, we can conclude that the success of Starbucks in the early 1990’s can be attributed to Howard Schultz’s vision of the Starbucks brand which placed value in the process of the coffee drinking experience. And there are seven main factors accounting for the extraordinary success of Starbucks in the early 1990s as follows: a. Coffee itself: Starbucks kept full control of quality of its products to be the highest-quality coffee in the world by souring from qualified channels, controlling as much of the supply chain as possible, working directly with growers of origin to purchase green beans and overseeing the custom-roasting process. In addition, it controlled distribution to retail stores and refused franchising. All above composed the first component of its value proposition of quality b. Service: In order to create an uplifting experience every time the customer walk through Starbucks, its partners must undergo two types of training on both “hard skills” and “soft skills”. Except for being charge of using the cash