A report I wrote for Tony Racka's class back at OCC that dealt with Starbucks Coffee and how they could improve their market share. This was for a management class.

1. MEMO
To: Tony Racka Fax: No such business
CC: My Inner Child Pages: Uncounted, but large
From: Nathan Zhang Security: Encrypted
Date: 13 April 2009 Common Era
Subject: Starbucks Report
Starbuck's is a revolutionary coffee shop, having created a market segment and changed millions of
Americans' morning routine. Now with the financial crisis that has spawned a deep recession, Starbucks
is feeling the heat and is starting to lag. In the following report, I will give several suggestions into how
Starbucks, or any business, large or small, can turn around in this recession, begin hiring again, and through
the use of increased employment, bring back the economy. The recession took our livelihood from us, so
band together, because we're going to take back Main Street today!
First, the company needs to identify its core competencies. If necessary, it needs to consolidate its
businesses and de-hire anyone who is not performing meaningful work for the company. Next, Starbuck's
needs to develop a single product or product line that is guaranteed to sell in massive quantities. Having too
many choices makes a consumer less likely to purchase from that vendor versus a vendor who has only a
few choices but all of them respectable brands. Finally, Starbuck's needs to continue to train its employees
in their trade and make sure that they understand what they are selling and can relate to the customer when
they close a sale.
Starbuck's should also deal with the marketing with a new perspective. While traditional marketing is
something most businesses are familiar with, new marketing is also gaining ground. (Traditional marketing
includes advertisements, television commercials, cold calls, direct mail, catalogs, and sales letters (aka
copy). Some people take offense at such practices, since this style of marketing takes up space and is
hard to avoid, especially concerning billboards and ads). New marketing is a relatively new segment of
the marketing industry, but its primary premise is just as old as traditional marketing (in fact, both styles
are based on the same primary premise: communication). New marketing is for a large part based on an
adaptation of word-of-mouth communication, and certain forms (such as viral marketing, buzz marketing,
new network marketing (aka affiliate marketing), social marketing, and brand-jacking (aka brand hijack)
which involves relinquishing control of the marketing operation to the consumer while controlling the
flow of the campaign by being the supplier of the product) modify the communication to friend-to-friend
communication. In the case of brand-jacking, the communication is started by a published media and then
spreads from the primary set of viewers to their friends via email, electronic word-of-mouth, and other
means, until the marketing campaign has reached everyone in the mass market.
Starbuck's can use brand-jacking and buzz marketing hand-in-hand to get its message out and to reach
the large morning-coffee audience and seize its market share where it can. This can be accomplished by
redesigning cups, printing a free booklet that can be passed around among friends, and by setting up a

2. promotional website and allowing customers to buy coffee ahead the week before and pick it up at the
store when they show the barista (employee) their email confirmation. The website should also give users
the ability to share articles on social bookmarking sites (the articles are sales copy disguised as for-your-
information guides) and to email the articles to their colleagues, bosses they are friends with, children, and
relatives. Finally, the marketing campaign should be carried out over a three year period, since three years
is a good amount of time for the campaign to prove itself either an epic win or an epic fail, in which case
they should get rid of it now.
Finally, Starbuck's should lead the way in the economic revival by beginning to hire employees to manage
the prepayment website, the booklet publishing and distribution enterprise, and the writing of the articles on
the prepayment website. The majority of the employment should go to new stores and to reinforce existing
ones. A good way of making the employment system work is to get customers who can't pay to work as
temps to pay for their morning coffee and to pay free wireless fidelity users to work for one hour, and then
get three hours of wireless internet for free (and then work for another hour to get three more free hours).
All temps should be paid at decent wages.
Starbuck's is a massive company and has great potential to be the company to contribute to bringing back
the economy while turning itself around. I have given a list of ideas for turning the company around, and
the last paragraph stated ways in which the turnaround can also be used to turnaround the US economy.
I am going to release this document on the internet at the web address http://snurl.com/fts6j so that
Starbucks can see the report for themselves, and decide what their next course of action is (so don't get
jumpy if something shows up on TurnItIn).
Nathan Guannan Zhang
4629 Walden Drive, Troy, MI 48098, NathanShotCopy.INFO hachimonwriter@gmail ...