Sep 30, 2009
The Economist: Woke up, smelled the coffee
As a follow up to my post last month about Starbucks and how many customer experiences a company can have, I offer up this article from The Economist which includes this interesting bit about how the new 15th Avenue customer experience is part of a strategy that’s helping to turn Starbucks around. A snippet:
This is but one part of the strategy initiated by Howard Schultz after he returned in January 2008 to run the firm he had made great but which had by then entered a seemingly inescapable spiral of decline. Investors approve: having fallen below $8 last November, down from an all-time high of nearly $40 in 2006, shares in Starbucks have risen above $20, a bit higher than they were when Mr Schultz took charge for the second time. So far this year, they are up by nearly 120%, while the S&P 500 index is not quite one-quarter higher.
Still yet to unfold is whether these new stores will solve a new need for a new customer – or if they are an evolution of the core experience. What do you think?
