The marketing research team conducted a survey of 100 Starbucks customers in Boston to understand reasons for the closure of over 600 Starbucks stores. Key findings include: 1) City residents were less satisfied with Starbucks than suburban residents, with issues around small store size and long wait times due to under-trained employees. 2) While customer service was rated as satisfactory overall, 44% of customers had neutral or poor ratings, indicating room for improvement. 3) Dunkin' Donuts was identified as a major competitor, with 42% preferring Starbucks but 55% thinking they were similar or preferring Dunkin' Donuts instead. 4) Price value was the most important attribute for coffee purchases, particularly for

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Data Analysis & Descriptive Statistical Summaries
Christopher Mowbray
Yusuf Kara
Mike Dee
Philvie Daniel
Tomas Maldonado

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As a marketing research team we have conducted a survey questionnaire where we were
able to gather valuable qualitative and quantitative information about Starbucks Coffee shops.
Starbucks has recently closed over 600 stores in the past few months. Our purpose for
conducting this survey was to find out the struggles that Starbucks faces to ultimately support
our insights with representative evidence. After visiting many Starbucks locations in the city of
Boston to gather our projected sample size of 100 surveyors, we have come to some interesting
findings and feel much stronger discussing the problems that Starbucks faces and the reasoning
for so many closures in the United States.
Our team’s survey consisted of both qualitative and quantitative questions. We purposely
put in a few qualitative questions to let the customers talk about in depth any issues that they
may have with Starbucks that maybe our research team did not cover in the questionnaire. This
way we can get as much information as possible. According to the mixed answers from the
surveyors we have come to the conclusion that people living in the city are less satisfied with
Starbucks than the people who live in the suburbs. This is a huge issue especially because the
majority of Starbucks locations are found within major cities and areas with high population
density. We have come across some reasons why the employees are dissatisfied with Starbucks
and can make an inference that it has to do a great deal with the customer service from the
employees. For example, a good amount of dissatisfied people said that the employees are not
well trained, they are incompetent, and are talking to each other behind the counter, making
people wait longer than expected. A further issue that has risen from the qualitative data is the
fact that customers are unhappy with the size of Starbucks. They believe that Starbucks café’s
are becoming smaller and smaller in size. With this decrease in store size it only frustrates the
customers when it becomes crowded. Many customers said that Starbucks is supposed to be a

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place where people pay more money to receive hedonistic feelings with the products they
purchase and the store they are hanging in.
As a research team we decided to generate the qualitative data and interpret it first so that
we can have some insight as to what type of questions we should pay attention to. This
qualitative data is very useful although it does not provide us with powerful enough influence to
be able to describe to the population. By conducting the quantitative questions we can
specifically get data to backup certain issues in detail that were discussed above.
Considering that we had multiple issues about the customer service of Starbucks we
decided to run a T-Test to determine important information such as the average quality of
customer service. Before we conducted the analysis we created our own hypothesis that thought
the average quality of customer service was less than or equal to somewhat unsatisfactory
service. When we calculated the one-sample statistics we found that the average was in fact very
satisfactory. Before we could say this was acceptable we had to look at the 95% confidence
interval and determine if the whole interval was above zero, and in fact it was. This step process
holds true for every t-test given. With this in mind we have a good idea that the test statistic falls
within the rejection region but we first need to calculate it. After calculating it we ultimately
find that our hypothesis falls within the rejection region and it is safe to say that the customer
service seems to be ok. We also created a frequency table for only the customers who were very
satisfied or felt that the service was superior. We found that 66% of people had positive feelings
about customer service, leaving 44% with undecided, poor or average answers. With this
interpretation you can see that Starbucks could in fact try to improve their customer service a bit
more. See Exhibit 1

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Another issue that we as a group felt may have an effect on the store closings was the
overall satisfaction of Starbucks coffee. We generated some statistics and realized that 55% of
respondents had positive feelings about their coffee, whereas 44% had neutral or negative
feelings. We were surprised with these findings because as a research group we were given the
impression that Starbucks has better quality based on the reason their prices are higher than
others. This is in fact a problem that Starbuck’s faces and they should either work on improving
their coffee satisfaction or end up lowering the price, which could switch other café’ regulars
who go to places such as Dunkin Donuts to become Starbucks customers. See Exhibit 2
It seems overly obvious that Dunkin Donuts is Starbuck’s main competitor today. We as
a group wanted to find out if Dunkin Donuts had any impact and if so how much of an impact on
the profitability of Starbucks. To do this we created a simple frequency chart with an
accompanied histogram to answer this question once and for all. We determined that 42% of our
surveyors prefer Starbucks over Dunkin Donuts. This statistic is HUGE and most definitely
reveals to us that Dunkin Donuts has a lot to do with the downsizing of many Starbucks locations
lately. A total of 55% think that Starbucks is either the same as Dunkin Donuts, worse than
Dunkin Donuts, or they were not sure. We would like to mention that these test statistics are
reasonable and with little to no error. See Exhibit 3
Now that we understand that Dunkin Donuts has a large effect on the profitability of
Starbucks, we wanted to get an idea of why that statistic holds true. What makes Dunkin Donuts
such a huge competitor in this market? First, we wanted to get a general frequency distribution
based on certain attributes that customers felt were important when purchasing a coffee.
Supported in our depth interviews and focus group study we realize that there are a few attributes
that make up a good coffee. These attributes are best quality, looks good and price value. We

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wanted to know which attribute was preferred the most in terms of importance for the customer’s
coffee. In SPSS we came to the conclusion that 55% prefer Best Quality, 28% prefer Price
Value, and 7% prefer Looks when it comes to purchasing a good coffee. See Exhibit 4
Technically this statistic means nothing until we can group it with the customer’s
preference of either Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts. Once we have found both preferences we can
combine them and create an independent sample tests and cross tabulation to see if they are
correlated or not. For example, we created a test and found that people who prefer to go to
Dunkin Donuts also feel that price value is the most important, and for people who prefer to go
to Starbucks feel that Quality is most important when it comes to purchasing their coffee. As
you can finally see, price value of customers is very important and should be recognized by
Starbucks to try to generate lower priced products. See Exhibit 5
We currently have processed all the factors that we thought would have some
implications or problems with Starbucks’s success, although we still feel that one more test
would suffice to ensure our recommendations. For example, our research hypothesis was that we
believed the reasoning for so many Starbucks closings is mainly because of the location density
of the café’s. We believe as a Research Group that there are too many Starbucks locations that
are too close to each other. They are only taking away from their own profits. This is called
cannibalism. We decided to conduct some analysis on several questions that were posted within
the questionnaire. For example, “How do you feel about Starbucks Location”? Is one of the
questions. We sense that determining the frequency of people who thought that Starbucks was
inconvenient would be a good start and benchmark for further studies. The statistics show that
74% of people replied with a positive answer describing that the café’s are very convenient.
Now we understand that this statistic is not false but we have to take into account the fact that

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these people could be situated in different areas and based on the area in which they live in their
answers may vary. In lieu of these issues we decided to conduct an independent T-test to gather
group statistics. For instance, based on our studies we have customers that live in three different
areas: Rural, City, and Suburb. We wanted to obtain information about whether or not this
setting of where the person lives has any power or correlation about how they feel about the
locations of Starbucks. After getting back the group statistics we found a great difference
between the different areas. For example, the average of the people living in the rural areas
believed that Starbucks locations are not very convenient, whereas the people living in the city
thought that Starbucks locations were very convenient. The average number of people living in
the suburb said that Starbucks locations were fairly neutral to somewhat convenient around their
area. This analysis tells us a great amount of information about where Starbucks should
strategically distribute their café’s and whether or not they have too many in one area. See
Exhibit 6
All of our analysis can be found in the available exhibits on the following pages. Based
on our calculations we can safely describe the problems that Starbucks faces without a doubt and
if we were asked to show evidence we now have proof to do so. In order for Starbucks to
become a successful business and regain their status and stores they will need to improve on their
customer service a bit more and also the satisfaction of their coffee. Furthermore, today it seems
as if Dunkin Donuts is doing well in the market. Based on the studies the people who go to
Dunkin Donuts prefer price over quality when it comes to their coffee. Starbucks should realize
this and understand that price value is a very large population, especially in today’s economic
crises. It has been proven that Starbucks has an abundance of locations that are too close to each
other in the cities whereas they lack locations in rural and some suburb areas. Starbucks should

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shut a few café’s down in the city and spread them out to areas where there are no Starbucks at
all. This may create a better name for them and also may not seem as annoying to the customers.
It is safe to say that location, customer service, price and the coffee itself is the main problem for
the shutdown of many Starbucks locations across the United States.

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EXHIBIT #1
One-Sample Statistics
Std.
Std. Error
N Mean Deviation Mean
The Quality of the
customer service you
received at your last 100 3.7000 .68902 .06890
visit with Starbucks
was?
One-Sample Test
Test Value = 2
95% Confidence
Mean
Interval of the
Sig. (2- Differenc
Difference
t df tailed) e
Lower Upper
The Quality of the
customer service you
received at your last 24.673 99 .000 1.70000 1.5633 1.8367
visit with Starbucks
was?
Frequencies
Statistics
The Quality of the customer service you received at your last visit with Starbucks was?
Valid 100
Missing 0
Mean 3.7000
Median 4.0000
Mode 4.00
The Quality of the customer service you received at your last visit with Starbucks was?
Valid Cumulative
Frequency Percent Percent Percent
poor 1 1.0 1.0 1.0
somewhat
2 2.0 2.0 3.0
satisfactory
Average 31 31.0 31.0 34.0
Very Satisfactory 58 58.0 58.0 92.0

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Superior 8 8.0 8.0 100.0
Total 100 100.0 100.0
EXHIBIT #2
Frequencies
Statistics
How satisfying is Starbucks Coffee?
Valid 98
Missing 2
Mean 3.5510
Median 4.0000
Mode 4.00
How satisfying is Starbucks Coffee?
Valid Cumulative
Frequency Percent Percent Percent

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Valid poor 3 3.0 3.1 3.1
somewhat
4 4.0 4.1 7.1
satisfactory
Average 37 37.0 37.8 44.9
Very Satisfactory 44 44.0 44.9 89.8
Superior 10 10.0 10.2 100.0
Total 98 98.0 100.0
Missing System 2 2.0
Total 100 100.0
EXHIBIT #3
Frequencies
Statistics
Based on your experience how does Starbucks coffee compare with Dunkin Donuts coffee in
terms of taste?
Valid 97
Missing 3
Mean 2.0103
Median 2.0000
Based on your experience how does Starbucks coffee compare with Dunkin Donuts coffee
in terms of taste?

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Valid Cumulative
Frequency Percent Percent Percent
Valid Starbucks is better
42 42.0 43.3 43.3
than Dunkin Donuts
Starbucks is the
same as Dunkin 22 22.0 22.7 66.0
Donuts
Starbucks is worse
23 23.0 23.7 89.7
than Dunkin Donuts
Not sure 10 10.0 10.3 100.0
Total 97 97.0 100.0
Missing System 3 3.0
EXHIBIT #4
Frequencies

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Statistics
Which of the following attributes are important to you?
Valid 97
Missing 3
Mean 2.6392
Median 3.0000
Mode 3.00
Which of the following attributes are important to you?
Frequenc Valid Cumulative
y Percent Percent Percent
Valid looks good 7 7.0 7.2 7.2
price value 28 28.0 28.9 36.1
Best quality 55 55.0 56.7 92.8
not sure 7 7.0 7.2 100.0
Total 97 97.0 100.0
Missing System 3 3.0
Total 100 100.0
T-Test
Group Statistics
Rank the following Std.
Cafe's from best (1) to Std. Error
worst (6). N Mean Deviation Mean

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Which of the Dunkin Donuts 32 2.3750 .83280 .14722
following Starbucks
attributes are
important to you? 44 2.7727 .56501 .08518
EXHIBIT #5
Statistics
Starbucks coffee shops are too close to each other.
Valid 97
Missing 3
Mean 2.7526
Median 3.0000
Mode 3.00
Starbucks coffee shops are too close to each other.
Valid Cumulative
Frequency Percent Percent Percent
Valid strongly disagree 15 15.0 15.5 15.5
2.00 24 24.0 24.7 40.2
3.00 38 38.0 39.2 79.4
neutral 10 10.0 10.3 89.7
5.00 10 10.0 10.3 100.0
Total 97 97.0 100.0
Missing System 3 3.0
Total 100 100.0
Group Statistics

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Rank the following Std.
Cafe's from best (1) to Std. Error
worst (6). N Mean Deviation Mean
Starbucks coffee Dunkin Donuts 33 2.8788 1.13901 .19828
shops are too Starbucks
close to each 42 2.4762 1.01784 .15706
EXHIBIT #6
Group Statistics
What type of setting Std. Error
do you live in? N Mean Std. Deviation Mean
How do you feel about Rural 3 4.3333 .57735 .33333
Starbucks locations? City 75 2.2400 1.35407 .15635
Independent Samples Test
Levene's Test
for Equality
of Variances t-test for Equality of Means
Sig. (2- Mean
F Sig. t df tailed) Difference Std. Error Diff
How do you feel Equal
about Starbucks varianc
2.64
locations? es .108 2.654 76 .010 2.09333
9
assume
d
Equal 5.686 2.973 .011 2.09333
varianc
es not

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assume
Group Statistics
What type of Std.
setting do you Std. Error
live in? N Mean Deviation Mean
How do you feel City 75 2.2400 1.35407 .15635
about Starbucks Suburb
locations? 20 2.8500 1.66307 .37187
Independent Samples Test
Levene's Test
for Equality of
Variances t-test for Equality of Mea
Sig. (2- Mean Std.
F Sig. t df tailed) Difference Diffe
How do you feel Equal
about Starbucks variances 1.239 .269 -1.704 93 .092 -.61000
locations? assumed
Equal
variances not -1.512 26.102 .143 -.61000
assumed