Starbucks’ marketing tactics!

Impacted by the epidemic in 2020, the global economy is facing severe challenges. When many brands' offline stores were forced to close due to the epidemic, Starbucks (SBUX.US) stated that it would open 600 new stores in China in 2021.

We rarely see Starbucks advertising. How do they unleash their endless commercial power and continue to attract fans around the world?

1. Sustainable business model

Starbucks has been able to continue to expand its presence around the world and has struck a good balance between the efficiency, replicability and sustainability of its business model.

First, an efficient and replicable business model

Starbucks has more than 30,000 offline stores around the world. If it wants customers to drink coffee of the same quality and taste, it must make it a product that can be replicated at high speed.

They understood from the beginning that most consumers are not actually "connoisseurs" of coffee. Therefore, instead of demanding high costs for coffee ingredients, they would rather achieve a good and balanced taste and give customers a high-quality consumption experience, thereby forming a psychological impression of the quality of coffee.

How did they do it?

In order to ensure the production efficiency and standardization of taste of its products, Starbucks uses fully automatic coffee machines. It only takes a dozen seconds from making a cup of coffee to delivering it to the customer.

Second, based on its own business logic, upgrade the value knife to a value cycle

The founder of Starbucks once said: "Not every business decision is an economic one." Beyond business standards, Starbucks has followed its own business logic, moved beyond pure commercial profiteering, and found a good balance between business and sustainability. It has done many things that seem cost-effective now but will definitely benefit customers in the future.

For example, Starbucks announced a long time ago that it would no longer use plastic straws in 2020, and would instead use non-plastic straws and duckbill cups to reduce plastic pollution to the global environment. It also launched the Love Green campaign every World Environment Day, providing free coffee to customers who bring their own cups into the store.

Mr. Bill Ford once said: A good company can provide customers with excellent products and services, while a great company can not only provide customers with excellent products and services, but also do its best to make the world a better place.

When Starbucks was trying to make the world a better place, it did not choose pure charity. Instead, it started from its own business logic, combined its own advantages with social concepts, promoted the healthy development of business and society, and planted the seeds of business growth in the future. At the same time, it allowed us to see the business form that future species should have, and made many customers willing to become fans of the brand.

2. Unconventional marketing tactics

Compared with other brands, Starbucks has a very prominent feature: it likes to interweave itself with the details of its customers' lives and use some unconventional marketing routines, thus finding many opportunities to gain recognition in a subtle way.

1. Horizontal queue

Normally, when people go to buy drinks, merchants will let customers line up in a single line. However, Starbucks, contrary to its norm, adopts a horizontal queuing method, allowing customers to wait for coffee. Why is that?

This is because customers can clearly see the coffee-making process by surrounding the production table horizontally, which increases their confidence in the quality of the coffee. Secondly, when customers see the barista making coffee, they can clearly know which order they are waiting for, which can effectively alleviate the emotional anxiety caused by waiting. Moreover, Starbucks has now set up 360-degree bars in many stores, so that not only customers in the store can see the coffee production process, but even customers passing by outside the store can see it.

Starbucks is more of a marketing company than a company that sells coffee. Every customer will be educated on Starbucks' brand philosophy as soon as they enter the store. Starbucks' brand design does not simply require a large and eye-catching logo, but rather uses more subtle influences to influence consumers' minds.

Adhere to the closed space, which is not easy to be mixed with external smells, and the fragrance in the store is not easy to spread out, so that customers can smell the fragrance coming from the store as soon as they open the door;

· We have formulated strict coffee bean selection standards and use concentrated roasted coffee beans to give off a rich coffee aroma;

In order not to affect the taste of the coffee, the store only serves cakes and light meals, and does not provide hot food;

· All employees are prohibited from using perfume in the store.

3. Making good use of price anchoring

There is also a very interesting phenomenon in Starbucks: Evian mineral water priced at more than 20 yuan is always placed on the counter, and only Evian mineral water is sold. Normally, we go to a coffee shop to drink coffee, so why is Starbucks so persistent in selling mineral water in its store?

Here, Starbucks actually used the price anchoring effect very cleverly. Price anchoring is based on the anchoring effect proposed by Kahneman and Tversky in 1973. The anchoring effect means that when people need to make a quantitative estimate of an event, they will use certain specific values ​​as starting values, and the starting values ​​will constrain the estimated value like an anchor. When making decisions, we unconsciously give too much weight to the initial information we obtain.

Starbucks sells Evian mineral water for more than 20 yuan in its stores, in fact, this is to compare the mineral water with the coffee in the store which costs 20 to 30 yuan. Just imagine, a bottle of mineral water can be sold for more than 20 yuan, so a cup of coffee for less than 30 yuan seems much more cost-effective, doesn’t it?

3

Customer experience under the peak-to-peak law

Compared to most brands, Starbucks understands better that consumers live in an emotional world and knows that most purchasing decisions are driven by emotions. Therefore, in the marketing process, Starbucks pays great attention to the peak and end-of-peak experience of customers.

1. Create a differentiated “third space” where the store is the spokesperson

What is the third space?

Lao She's "Teahouse" gives a good interpretation of this concept:

"Tea is sold here, as well as simple snacks and meals. Bird-lovers would come here to rest their legs, drink tea, and let their birds sing after taking their thrushes, yellow jays, and other birds for a walk every day. People who wanted to discuss matters, matchmakers, and boatmen also came here. ... In short, this was a very important place in the day, and people could come here to sit for half a day whether they had something to do or not."

The place that best reflects the warmth and soul of the Starbucks brand is actually their creation of the "third space". Instead of focusing on building beautiful buildings, Starbucks will integrate international architecture with local culture and build its own third space based on local cultural characteristics. For example, Starbucks in Beijing’s Qianmen Street, Tianjin, and Japan are integrated very naturally with the local ancient buildings.

2. Choose social media and play with customers

Coffee is a relatively inexpensive product, and the cost of laying out hard advertising is high and inefficient. Therefore, Starbucks has very cleverly used social media platforms as its main battlefield, amplifying the brand's connotation and topicality through social interaction, and using highly interactive content to play with customers.

For example, some time ago, the Starbucks atmosphere group suddenly became popular on social platforms, and Starbucks China followed closely. The official Weibo account posted a Weibo about recruiting the official atmosphere team, and attached check-in secrets, official event excitement, etc., and it became a hot topic in just a few days.

Coffee Express Password is an activity launched by Starbucks in 2019. Consumers can buy coffee online and pick it up offline with a password. Every time an order is placed, users will receive a command tailored for them. Sometimes it is a very warm sentence such as "It's my favorite autumn" or "Koi under the moonlight", and sometimes it is a very silly sentence such as "Oli, give me", "The chosen one", "The all-round little genius", etc.

Conclusion:

In just a few decades, Starbucks has evolved from a small coffee shop to its own coffee empire. If I have to say what its extraordinary marketing skills are, I think it is that the founders of Starbucks are not only business geniuses, but also masters of insight into emotions. They have established deeper thinking on the relationship between brands and people, and brands and nature. They are like psychologists who can grasp people's emotions and let customers feel the brand rather than just buy products; and like beavers, they have gradually built their own ecological circulation system, making profits while paying attention to the coordinated development with society.