Starbucks

Starbucks Corporation engages in purchasing, roasting, and selling whole bean coffees worldwide. The company also sells brewed coffees, espresso beverages, cold blended beverages, food items, teas, branded coffee drinks, etc. In addition, its stores offer pastries, sodas, juices; it offers coffee-related accessories and equipment, such as coffee grinders, coffeemakers, coffee filters, storage containers, travel tumblers, and mugs. Starbucks operates primarily in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. It is not in a highly competitive market, there are not a lot of competitors for Starbucks. I am focusing on Starbucks in the United States, and their coffees. I feel that that the sodas, juices pastries are the Complementors are also the other products they sell, such as you can find Starbucks t-shirts, bags, hats, mugs so on and so forth.
“Coffee is the second-largest U.S. import, and the specialty coffee market is estimated to be worth $11 billion a year, (http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2006/10/01/8387114/index.htm.) Starbucks is not the only one who is occupying the 11 billion dollar. But it is owning most of it, the main competitors are McDonalds, Dunkin Donuts, Coffee Bean, and other coffee houses. But predominantly Starbuck runs the coffee show in America.

Recent complementary services for Starbucks are Bank One. They have offer the Starbucks Card Duetto Visa. This is a stored-value card and traditional credit card. Starbucks has also introduced a T-Mobile Hotspot service which allows the Starbucks customer to have access to wireless internet for a fee. Offering more services like the Visa card, wireless internet and so on will add more value to the Starbucks experience and help draw more customers to Starbucks which will lead to higher revenues.

Starbucks has yet to force all coffee bean suppliers to only sell coffee beans to them.
The Suppliers want to be recognized as supplying to the best of the best. They have seen Starbucks Success over the past years, they have created a huge turnover each year. “Starbucks has announced profit growth of 9% in the third quarter of 2007, driven by international expansion. For the three months ended July 1, 2007, Starbucks profits rose 9% to $158.3 million, up from $145.5 million during the same period last year,” (http://www.drinks-business-review.com/article_feature.asp?guid=687F249B-A0BF-41EE-99DB-9A0DB8487489.)