MAN 4764 Written Case Assignment

Starbucks Corporation: Competing in a Global Market

1. What factors in the global environment provide opportunities or threats for Starbucks? How do Starbuck’s strengths and weaknesses match up to its opportunities and threats?
Factors in the global environment provide both opportunities and strengths for Starbucks. Opportunities such as increased revenues, further expansions, and achieving their goal of becoming the most respected brand worldwide. Starbucks also faced threats. These threats include dealing with growing antiglobalization overseas and their huge risk of less return on each overseas store, this deriving from overseas operations being run by local partners instead of Starbucks …show more content…

3. What changes did Starbucks have to make in its domestic business model to accommodate the special requirements of its international markets? Why were these changes necessary?
In much of its overseas expansions, Starbucks had to change its commitment of ownership and resort to partnerships/joint ventures as reasonable alternatives. They did this in order to develop lasting overseas connections and gain advantage in local regulation negotiations.
Even though its coffee lineup did not vary, Starbucks also had to change its menus and adapt its food to local taste. Starbucks also changed its interior décor to the local architecture, especially in historic buildings.

4. Why was there opposition to Starbucks’ expansion efforts in the Primrose Hill neighborhood in London? Why was there opposition to a location in the Forbidden City in Beijing? Why was the company’s response to these two situations so different?
It was the Primrose Hill community at-large which opposed Starbucks entry in the location, however, there are other underlying issues discussed in the case. The Primrose Hill community’s claims for opposition vary, beginning with littering, disruption from deliveries to Starbucks, and ending with a critic’s quote saying Starbucks was “renowned for not paying proper money to coffee growers.” According to the case although the oppositions seemed to have been focused on local planning issues, there was an antiglobalization element as well.