Business report on A service experience for local consumers Essay

Business report on A service experience for local consumers - Essay Example The analysis revealed that there are some problems with customer service, product fit, promotional efforts, parking, employee involvement, and parking of Starbucks. Surprisingly, the packaging is the only aspect where there are no objections at all. The recommendations proposed in this report include first, offering discounts, coupons, free benefits, rebates, premiums, lotteries. Second, increase the volume of promotional activities. Third, train and manage employees in such a way that they could associate themselves with the company. Fourth, at off peak one employee must greet the customers at the door and the other must help customers with their parking problems. Table of Contents Introduction 4 Discussion 5 Target Market of Starbucks 5 Pricing 6 Promotion 7 People 8 Product 9 Process 10 Physical Evidence and Place 11 Recommendations 12 Conclusion 12 References 14 Appendices 15 Appendix # 1 – Questionnaire 15 Appendix # 2 – Respondent # 1 18 Appendix # 3 – Resp ondent # 2 19 Appendix # 4 – Respondent # 3 20 Appendix # 5 – Respondent # 4 21 Introduction It was in March 1971 in Seattle, when three people Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, and Gordon Bowker decided to open their coffee shop with the name of Starbucks (Bussing-Burks, pp. 26-34, 2009). The name came from their favorite novel Moby-dick but at that time they did not realized that this name would remain restricted to Seattle, but it is going to rule the hearts and minds of millions of people all around the world (Pride & Ferrell, pp. 36-38, 2007). With 2010 revenue of more than 10.71 billion US dollars, Starbucks is the biggest coffee house on the planet earth. With its 16,858 stores in more than 50 countries, Starbucks is one the corporations that have been able to survive when its fellow brands were failing due to revelations of corporate scandals, manipulations, socially irresponsible behaviour but despite going through all this, it was able to make it through to what it i s today (Armstrong et al., pp. 312-317, 2009). Currently, Starbucks is operating almost 23 stores in various parts of Australia. This report is an attempt to explore, investigate, and critically examine the service experience of the Starbucks shop at 201 Elizabeth St, Sydney, New South Wales. The report would first start by drawing lines to highlight the target market of Starbucks in Australia. The report has collected its data from four different people that fit in the picture of Starbucks’s target market and have who have recently been to Starbucks. The data collection method was primarily through an interview questionnaire, which is a part of this report under the heading of Appendix # 1. Furthermore, the responses of these people, in form of the brief bullet points and notes are also there in the appendix section. This report would be profound importance of to the Starbucks executives of Australia. For the past few years, Starbucks has been struggling in Australia to prod uce the same results that it has been showing in rest of the world. It was in the year 2000, when Starbucks entered the Australian market with hopes that it would capture the market and become the market leader as it is in the US and many other parts of the world. Important here to note is that this was the time when Starbucks was touching its peak. â€Å"Open a store a day and beat the competitors away† was the policy of the company (Michelli, pp. 255-256, 2007). However, Starbucks soon realized that this model is not producing the intended results and in mid 2008,