rewriting work

This paper illustrate traditional and new media options for Starbucks Inc., taking into consideration effective communication, and will discuss traditional and new media types, and

target audience will be addressed as well.

Traditional Media Type

The traditional media type that would benefit the Starbucks organization would be print. The print in particular that would be most effective is the Direct Mail method. Advertising by mail allows the business to come right to consumer’s front doors and at least has to be observed, rather they take the advertising and throw it away or decide to keep it. One finding that serves the power of Direct Mail is explained in the following “Direct mail can also produce prospect leads, strengthen customer relationships, inform and educate customers, remind customers of offers, and reinforce recent customer purchase decisions.” (Kotler, P.T. & Keller, K.L., 2016, p. 637). This method could also be used to introduce consumers to some of the other marketing and communication types as it could be easily engineered to advertise a new: website, app, or otherwise, while offering incentives for registrations and memberships.

New Social Media Type

Businesses can use social media to engage with potential customers, answer questions, share upcoming news and release targeted advertisements. The speed of communication from companies to customers is faster with social media (Rocha, Jansen, Lofti, & Fraga, 2013). Starbucks will use the social media network Twitter to help its customers engage with their brand. Twitter is a social networking service which will allow Starbucks to grow their following and spread by word of mouth that Starbucks can view in real time. Twitter will allow Starbucks to utilize earned media by having customers share the brand through images of their Starbucks purchases (Kotler & Keller, 2016). The advertising conducted by Starbucks through Twitter will be spread by customers through retweets and responses.

Starbucks will advertise a hashtag for its customers to share a picture on Twitter with their favorite place to enjoy their Starbucks. Starbucks customers will upload a photo of where they enjoy their Starbucks with #favoriteplace. After a month, Starbucks will hold a vote on the top ten most liked photos, and the winner will receive a free year of Starbucks. Starbucks will also include a disclaimer that the top ten most liked photos may be used by the company in advertising. This will allow Starbucks to use the images on their website, in commercials, etc. in the future. Since the Starbucks brand is about finding a place outside of work and home, this social media tactic will align with their brand strategy.

Reach

Global growth has been built by carefully tailoring the Starbucks brand to the specific needs of local markets—each with its own traditions, habits, and customs. According to former president and CEO of Starbucks, Howard Shultz, “Each week Starbucks serves 60 million customers in nearly 18,000 stores in 60 countries. For a company that started as a corner coffee shop in Seattle 41 years ago, those are steamy numbers.” (Schultz, 2012)

Starbucks’ primary target market is men and women aged 25 to 40. This market accounts for almost half (49 percent) of its total business. Starbucks’ appeals to this consumer age group through hip, contemporary design that is in line with its advertising and decor, and consistently works to keep its products current as “status symbols”. Customers are usually people who live in cities or towns, with relatively high income, professional careers and a concern for social welfare. According to an article on Chron.com, “This target audience grows at a rate of 3 percent annually.”(O'Farrell, 2017)

Starbucks also targets young adults, aged 18 to 24, which, in total, equals about 40 percent of Starbucks’ sales. Starbucks sells itself as a place students can hang out, study, write term papers and meet people. Also included in Starbucks’ target audience are kids and teens, which make up a large part. Customers age 13 to 17 account for only 2 percent of Starbucks’ sales, but most items for kids are purchased by the parents. “Whether the focus is on the steamed milk that Starbucks’ baristas refer to as “babyccinos” or the sugary, caffeinated, whipped cream topped coffee drinks that are so popular with teenagers, kids and teens form a large part of Starbucks business. Kids go there with their parents; both mother and child leave with cup in hand.” (O'Farrell, 2017)

Differences in Channel

The channels Starbucks use are a mixture of distribution of the products which the company uses more than one distribution design. Which allows the company to reach a wider market, First Starbucks uses company owned retailers to sell their products. Which currently there are 21,366 stores in their global network (statista.com). They import and process coffee for which they then sell under the Starbucks brand. Starbucks also distribute their products in retail stores further enhancing their position and broadening the brand.

Starbuck also has the agreement with office coffee suppliers, hotels, and airlines. Which places their products in a wide array of markets, allowing Starbucks to launch new brands and rebrand older products in newer markets without having a significant barrier (helmikuuta 2012).

The channel competition deals with all three forms; horizontal, intertype, vertical. With utilizing many different forms of power, reward, coercive, legitimate, referent, and expert. The measures used are decisions made from the top down, limited advertising, with sales per employee, ranks first in the industry (Chapman 2013).

Differences in Content

There are differences in the content of advertising when using digital media vice traditional media. When using traditional media, such as television and printed advertisements, the content needs to be more generic and tailored to cover a wider range of demographics. The company running the ad does not know the age or background of every person who is going to see the ad. Furthermore, changes to traditional media can be costly and time consuming. Digital media content, however, can be more specific and is changed easily. As Cave (2016) states, “Further, you can tailor a campaign to specific audience demographics, such as gender, location, age and interests. This means your campaign will be more effective” (para 13).

A company wishing to make a personalized digital ad for a customer is able to do so by retrieving the cookie data from the customer’s browser and using that information to see what they’ve viewed in the past. This data is then used to show the customer items they would likely want. And many customers prefer this over general advertising. According to Caramela (2016), “According to a survey by Adlucent, a digital advertising and analytics agency, consumers said personalized ads reduce irrelevant content (46 percent), help consumers discover new products (25 percent), and make online searching/shopping faster and easier (19 percent)” (para 2). Many ads online are now adopting this model and showing more specific content instead of general content.

Difference in Audience

Starbucks continues to grow in the amount of consumers that they have purchasing their products. According to McNamara, T., “Social media and digital platforms are the future, and their companies are adapting to keep updated to take full advantage of advertising” (2015, p.2). Starbucks traditional social media audience, included consumers in their mid-30-40 years of age, which included advertisement through the T.V. channels, magazines, and bulletin poster (McNamara, 2015). However, the representativeness from Starbucks traditional media used was not very successful, Starbucks executives and marketing teams did not understand the complex issue between consumers, their product, and social media. These three areas were very essential and when Starbucks conducted an analysis, they realized that they needed to advertise with a new method of media (McNamara, 2015).

Furthermore, Starbucks conducted an observation on customer’s interactions with their products, and gathered their customer’s feedback (McNamara, 2015). Starbucks has more interaction with customers, and now has a closer relationship too. To advertise their products more successfully they managed to start using social media to introduce, and advertise their products. Nonetheless, Starbucks brand's increased their profile and produced greater sales, also the audience that uses Facebook are either fans of Starbucks or know somebody who is (McNamara, 2015).

Conclusion

Starbucks promotes its products mainly through advertising. This component of the marketing mix refers to the communication strategies used to spread information about the firm and its products. Starbucks famously describes its vision of reaching its customers as "one neighborhood, one person and one cup at a time." It would appear that through the effective use of digital marketing and social media, it is doing just that.

Caramela, S. (2016). Let’s Get Personal: 3 Things Consumers Want in Digital Advertising. Business News Daily. Retrieved from www.businessnewsdaily.com

Cave, J. (2016). Digital Marketing Vs. Traditional Marketing: Which One Is Better? Digital Doughnut. Retrieved from www.digitaldoughnut.com

Helmikuuta. 2012. Starbucks Distribution Channel. Retrieved from http://thecoffeeteam.blogspot.com/2012/02/starbucks-distribution-channel.html

Kotler, P.T. & Keller, K.L. (2016). Marketing management (15th ed). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall.

Logan Chapman. April 2013. Starbucks Marketing Channels. Retrieved from https://prezi.com/xeip9klbnuu_/starbucks-marketing-channels/

McNamara, T. (2015). Starbucks and Social Media: It’s About More than Just Coffee. Retrieved from http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/Editorial/Commentary/Starbucks-and-Social-Media-Its-About-More-than-Just-Coffee-103823.htm

O'Farrell, R. (2017). Who is Starbucks' Target Audience? Retrieved from http://smallbusiness.chron.com

Schultz, H. (2012, October). Howard Schultz on Global Reach and Local Relevance at Starbucks, An interview with the CEO. Retrieved from http://www.bcgperspectives.com

Statista. Number of Starbucks stores worldwide from 2003 to 2016. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/266465/number-of-starbucks-stores-worldwide/