Ch. 4 - The Marketing Environment

Target market.

The first big group of Starbucks target customers are adults aged 25-40. they account for about half of Starbucks customer, most of them are mid-income levels, and majority of these customers have high level education experience. Most of them are business men and women who have professional careers.

The next big throng of Starbucks target customers are young adults aged 18-24, who account for about 40% of Starbucks customers. College students like to stay at Starbucks do their homework, papers, projects while enjoy having coffee and listening to music. They also stay there to chat with their friends or just enjoy a relax time. 

Also, there are a small group of kids and teens aged 13-17 are Starbucks customers, too. Starbucks offer kids drinks and milk and fruit juice for them. 

Various food and beverages

Starbucks coffee, started as a coffee house, which just provide whole bean coffees at beginning, along with the develop and expansion, now provides various kinds of coffee, coffee beans, beverages, sandwiches, bagels,Tazo teas, cups and so on, to satisfy different needs of their customers. For example, if a college student is busy doing his/hers project or term-paper at Starbucks for a long time, he/she maybe hungry, he can simply buy a bagel or sandwich at the Starbucks store instead of goes to somewhere else to get food. This actually saves times for the student and also increase the Starbucks profits. Also, customers can buy Starbucks cups for themselves and friends or relatives as gifts. 

Competitive factor

Starbucks’ founders realized that people need a place with good environment to enjoy high quality of coffee and communicate with their friends. So Starbucks coffee house opened. Starbucks now serve people with extensive menu include drinks, breakfast, lunch and so on. They also offering organic soy milk, and other different kinds of milks for their customers. Wifi is available at Starbucks retail stores. They also play CDs and iTunes music in their stores to give people a relax environment. All of these makes Starbucks a great place to stay.

Value influence buyers’ habit. People are prefer high quality of goods at lower price. Starbucks provides high quality coffees and other products to their customers. In order to provide high quality coffees, they helps farmers and teach them how to plant coffee in an efficient way and increase the quality of the supply of coffee beans. They take care of their coffee from raw materials to finished products.