OPPapers.com

Marketing

1.0 Company Background
Starbuck Coffee Corporation is headquartered in Seattle, Washington. In 1971, the original Starbucks was established with the goal of being a gourmet coffee bean retailer and coffee equipment seller (Mortana, 2005). In 1987, Howard Schultz who is the current chairman and CEO of Starbucks realized that Americans lacked the chance to relish a good cup of coffee in a relaxed ambience while engaging in good conversation and thus, he bought Starbucks (Starbuck- taking on the world: Can the coffee retailer join the all-time greats?, 2004).
Besides direct retailing activities, Starbucks has entered a joint venture partnership in the world (Welsh, Raven and Al-Mutair, 1998). In Malaysia, Starbucks is jointly owned by Starbucks Coffee International and Berjaya Corporations Berhad (The Sun Daily, 2009). The mission of Starbucks Malaysia is to provide the finest coffee in the world and create a Starbucks experience that makes Malaysian come for the coffee, stay for the atmosphere, and return for the connection (Starbucks, 2009).
The first Starbucks retail store in Malaysia was opened on the 17th of December 1998 in KL Plaza (Business Wire, 2004). Up to now, the company has 88 Starbucks retail stores throughout Malaysia. In just few short years, Starbucks has emerged as the dominant brand of specialty coffee in Malaysia (Gulati, Huffman and Neilson, 2002). Starbucks offers regular coffee or decaffeinated beverage, fresh food like pastries, cakes and muffins. In recent years, Starbucks has expanded their product depth to included coffee and espresso makers, and coffee mugs (Thompson and Strickland, 1999).

1.1 New Service
To improve the perceived service, especially the time to place an order and receive the coffee, Starbucks starting launching drive-thru service in Malaysia stores (Paquette, 2001). Starbucks enable expand their customer to a larger base by providing this services as their customer will enjoy the advantages...