Starbucks Brand Strategy

The brand strategy involves specific and long-term objectives that can be achieved with a successful evolution of a product. A product’s evolution encompasses combined elements of a company’s character that makes it identifiable to all stakeholders (“Keller’s Brand Equity Model Building a Powerful Brand”, 2018). A well-executed brand strategy affects every aspect of an entity hence impacting consumer needs, emotions and the business environment. However, it is noteworthy that a brand strategy is not a company’s product, name or website but rather a much broader aspect. According to Brand Equity Model, a brand strategy can be created by following several steps as long as a business entity is willing to build the right experiences that target their customers, develop positive thoughts, opinions, and perceptions about their businesses.

The first step involved in the creation of a brand strategy revolves around the development of brand awareness. A company should ensure that their brands stand out such that customers can easily recognize them (”Keller’s Brand Equity Model Building a Powerful Brand”, 2018). In brand awareness, a company is required to know the location of their customers. Market research is also vital in understanding customers’ perception regarding a product. Additionally, this helps every business to identify how consumers come up with the decision to choose among existing brands. Therefore, brand awareness helps a company to understand whether a client perceives a brand positively or sees certain problems that need to be addressed.

When developing a strong brand strategy, companies should communicate what their brands stand for to their customers to avoid confusion (Dayal & Hill, 1998). While there exist different means of communication, the performance of a brand should be the main communication channel between customers and the brand. Therefore, a product must meet customers’ expectations to build a sufficient loyalty culture. Quality, credibility and customer consideration are also essential items in communicating the meaning of a brand.

The third step involves customer responses that come with either judgments or feelings. For instances, consumers judge products based on their perceived quality, expertise, and likability dimensions. Therefore, companies use these responses to improve a perceived quality or a brands’ trait. The main objective of this stage is to help an organization achieve the most difficult and desirable level, the brand resonance stage (”Keller’s Brand Equity Model Building a Powerful Brand”, 2018). At this stage, a product has already created a psychological bond with customers. Once a company has achieved this goal, the remaining stage is to improve consumers’ loyalty behavior.

Over many years, branding has been a vital element of Starbucks strategy. The company has invested in the development of standardized feel and look of its coffee stores, food, and other merchandise. The global expansion strategy has a significant role in creating Starbucks’ new experience plan. Certainly, this implies that the company has gone through the brand identity, meaning and response stages. The remaining stage involves improving the customers’ experience. In the recent past, Starbucks has been using feedback from its stores to make crucial decisions such as recreating the company in other market locations. Unlike other companies that carry out market analysis and observation before investing, Starbucks is venturing into these new markets as the first entity.

Brand Promise

Starbucks’ Explorer Perception

Starbucks customers perceive the company as a promoter of self-discovery. Customers are not disrupted or swayed by domestic marketing strategies from the product’s competitors. The main brand promise of an explorer is freedom. As an explorer brand, Starbucks promote themselves as a pathway that helps others to experience something new and unknown. The explorer promise has been a significant motivation behind the achievement of Starbucks’ expansion efforts. For instance, it is through this promise that the company is venturing into new locations where other beverage companies have avoided.

The promise of experiencing the unknown is a combined effort of both the Starbucks Company and consumers (Roll, 2017). Through its website, the company has come up with a platform where consumers can share their ideas on how the company can improve its service delivery. The company has taken advantage of these new platforms to enhance its customer engagement and promote social responsibility. Moreover, the company uses unique customer insights compared to its global competitors. For instance, it goes against most research surveys carried out by other competing firms. The company has also adopted informal communication channels to gather information from the customers whilst other global competitors continue to embrace social media strategies. Most recently, the company announced its expansion plans to other countries. Some of these countries do not have a single company with a similar model to that of the Starbucks Company.

Added Value

Starbucks is not only extending its services to other countries but also planning to introduce new products other than coffee beverages. This plan has existed since the year 2011 when the company redesigned its logo to focus on other products besides coffee. Starbucks is planning to introduce other beverages and food products as a value addition strategy. The company’s brand strategy is mainly focused on taking advantage of the emerging engagement platforms. By introducing the new products, the company will boost the quality of services and customers’ satisfaction. Additionally, this is an important source of new customers since as the company diversifies; it attracts new types of clients.

Emotional and Self-expression Benefits

Notably, Starbucks is not new to brand strategies and marketing campaigns. For a long time, this company has spent significant amount of money in various brand building campaigns. Starbucks has been using these strategies to promote brand promotion where the main focus has been its products, improvement of customer experience and development of direct links between its expansion philosophy and core values (Roll, 2017). Also, the company has tested different models of advertisement and branding. Therefore, the company has acquired sufficient emotional confidence compared to other new firms in the industry. Additionally, this experience has motivated the company to establish and build strong brand strategies with the aim of increasing the quality of consumers’ life.

Second, the ability of the company to express its ideas and products through effective communication allow it to continue expanding despite the presence of stiff competition. Starbucks has managed to show its position across different levels of both regional and local competition. Even though Starbucks uses different channels to communicate with its customers, the experiential aspect of the company’s brand has been a significant differentiator for Starbucks. In the recent past, consumers’ have continued to evolve and become more sophisticated in taste and preference. Luckily, Starbucks’ self-expression has made the company more adaptable to changes in the market hence less susceptible to market failure.

References

Dayal, S., & Hill, S. (1998). How to Brand Sand. Retrieved from https://www.strategy-business.com/article/16333?gko=7a2df

Keller’s Brand Equity Model Building a Powerful Brand. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/keller-brand-equity-model.htm

Roll, M. (2017). The Secret to Starbucks’ Brand Success. Retrieved from https://martinroll.com/resources/articles/strategy/secret-starbucks-brand-success/

The 12 brand archetypes all successful businesses are built on | Brand Identity. (2015). Retrieved from https://www.sparkol.com/en/Blog/The-12-brand-archetypes-all-successful-businesses-are-built-on