My friend Eddie Radshaw just sent me an article about Starbucks' new social networking site. "My Starbucks" provides a forum for customers to offer up ideas and suggestions to the company.
The article highlights Starbucks' ongoing use of digital technology to engage/attract customers:
"You could say the company is as aggressive with its Internet campaigns as it is with its prices. There is Wi-Fi in the stores, they let you log onto iTunes to see what song is playing in the store and download it, let you use text messaging to find the nearest store, and they gave away free digital songs for a month last year."
I'm interested to see how Starbucks' use of online/digital technologies pans out. On the one hand, you could say Starbucks is ahead of the curve. But does that make the company more profitable? Starbucks' growth is at it's slowest pace in two years. Most of us following business news know about Howard Schultz's return to the company's CEO spot (after 7 years off the job) to revamp the company.
What do social networks, Wi-Fi and iTunes mean for business? In my mind, not much. Starbucks' drinks are pricey. To me, a $5 coffee drink is completely ridiculous - especially since the customer experience in a Starbucks is borderline terrible. If I'm going to spend big on a coffee drink, I'd prefer to do so in a "coffee house" environment - rather than a cookie-cutter Starbucks. But maybe that's just me - I'm from Northern California, where independent coffee houses are arguably the backbone of our culture.
Either way, I think Starbucks has its work cut out for it. Cutting-edge digital technology may help - I'm just not sure how much.
2 comments:
I think it could be cool. It would be neat if they offered a rant and rave section to rate baristas and talk about experiences. It might also be good if they made a claendar of open mics and events at various locations. If they do it to a point where you can be truly transparent, that would be key.
I completely agree, Eddie. I feel like a lot of companies miss the boat on this; they want to create a community - but a community has to have content that's fun to use. I love the idea of rating baristas. You are a genius!
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