Analysis of customer sentiments

1. Starbucks Coffee
Mohita Verma, Section A

2. Introduction to the company
 Starbucks is a company that uses arabica coffee beans to make high
quality coffee. It has it’s stores worldwide.
 It offers both hot coffee and cold beverages in addition to the newly
introduced teas.
 Apart from coffee, Starbucks offers smoothies, baked products and
sandwiches.

3. Strategies/campaigns used by Starbucks
 1. Generating interest in the company’s events: One of the ways through which Starbucks is
attracting customers is by holding special events like comedy shows and VIB parties (where
customers can make their own coffees and do blind coffee tasting).
 Customers are informed of these events well in advance and attending these events helps in
generating brand loyalty.
 Comparing the number of events Starbucks holds in contrast to it’s competitors like Costa
Coffee Day and Café Coffee Day, the number is definitely more for Starbucks Coffee.

4. Consumer insights and sentiments to
the events held by Starbucks
 Customers usually ask whether or not the events (VIB events and comedy
shows) will be held in their city or not. This shows that Starbucks has
already succeeded in making potential customers interested in their
events, regardless of whether the potential customers will actually attend it
or not.
 There is some confusion regarding the events as customers do not know
what they should actually be expecting. It is not mentioned whether or not
the events are free to attend at times. (like in the picture on the right).
 Sometimes, it seems like the company is focusing more on it’s design and
graphics/ the aesthetics of it’s social media accounts than providing the
relevant information to the customers that creates confusions in the
customer events.

5.  The conversion rate for the events held at Starbucks was not very high, if
we compare the number of people who were initially interested in few of
the events to the actual number of people who ended up attending
(12.27% for the one on the left in the pictures below and 31.60%)
 These numbers are not extremely reliable- the actual number of people
who attended or were interested in attending could have been more than
this.
Events held

6. Events held
 Customer engagement in the form of queries asked in comparison to the
number of people seeing promotional videos to the events held at
Starbucks was extremely low. There were 32.2k video plays and only 26
comments for the comedy show held in Chennai and 90.4k video views for
the event held in Delhi and only 114 comments. This has also been quite
low for other events.

7. 2.Campaign: “Cricket With Starbucks”
 A different kind of drink had been chosen for all of the
different cricket teams in this case. This was to bring attention
to potential customers to various kinds of coffees available.
 People were asked to use the hashtag #cricketwithstarbucks.
The post received a lot of attention with people supporting
their favorite cricket teams.
 Customer engagement in the form of comments on these
posts was higher than the usual posts. For the post on the top
on the right, there were 363 comments was 19.2k video plays
and 319 comments for 135k video plays for the video on the
bottom. (this is less than 2% comments in comparison to video
plays but still more than the comments on other posts on the
Instagram account which are less than 100 comments.)

8. Customer sentiments
 Customers showed a lot of enthusiasm for this campaign in contrast to the
other ones.
 The major reason why this campaign received more attention than the
other campaigns was due to customers easily connecting to things of
national importance such as cricket.

9. 3. Campaign: “Celebrating 100 stores,
celebrating you”
 This was the most successful promotional campaign that Starbucks India
had. The coffee was priced at just Rs 100/- for one single day. There were
long queues at Starbucks outlets for such days (October 6, 2018 and
October 28, 2017)
 There were 8.6k people who were interested in this event and 4.1k said
that they were attending it. (47.64% conversion from people who were
interested and those who actually went)

10. Consumer sentiments for this
campaign
 The overall feedback from the campaign was quite
positive. People waited for the day of the event to
purchase coffee.
 Some potential customers were not very happy with
the “Celebrating 100 stores, celebrating you” campaign
despite the fact that many people actually went to
Starbucks stores. They complained about the long time
which stopped people from actually buying coffee
from the stores. However, the number of people who
were dissatisfied with the campaign was less in
comparison to the number of people who were happy
with it.

11. 4) Campaigns in the form of
promotions for various
occasions/festivals
Usually, there is a positive response to various
campaigns related to celebrating festivals and
potential customers appreciate the designs
that are used in the promotions, along with
enquiring what kinds of drinks are available
(on a limited offer basis)

12. Conclusion
 Engagement on company’s posts is low in the form of comments.
However, customers are positive about Starbuck’s coffee as a company.
 The information provided on the Instagram and Facebook accounts is not
sufficient. The style of the social media accounts is more creative and user
friendly but less informational. A lot of user queries and negative feedback
has been ignored which should be responded to ensure that the company
does not lose out on customers in the future.