Tribal Knowledge: Business Wisdom Brewed from the Grounds of Starbucks Corporate Culture
- PDF / 59,169 Bytes
- 3 Pages / 595 x 765 pts Page_size
- 54 Downloads / 143 Views
Volume 10 Number 3
For Your Bookshelf Tribal Knowledge: Business Wisdom Brewed from the Grounds of Starbucks Corporate Culture John Moore Kaplan Publishing; California, USA; 2006; ISBN 1419520016; 264pp; hardcover, US$22.95
Corporate Reputation Review (2007) 10, 213–215. doi:10.1057/palgrave.crr.1550053 Could an unpleasant and common activity be transformed into a pleasing mainstream consumption experience? This was the challenge proposed by Howard Schultz when he bought the Starbucks chain in the US in 1987. Before the Starbucks Midas’ touch, coffee drinking was an unpleasant experience endured just because of its caffeine, necessary to handle the day-to-day activities. Besides the low quality of the grains used, the experience itself did not offer anything that involved the consumer. The coffee was usually bought in drive-through places, and to disguise the unpleasant taste, milk or cream was added. After Starbucks was created by the entrepreneurs, Jerry Baldwin, Gordon Bowker and Zev Siegel, the consumption of coffee started to represent other experiences to the drinkers. Since the selection of the grains until the final preparation, coffee presented itself as a different and tasteful product. After Starbucks was incorporated, this new meaning of coffee was even more defined. Coffee became friendship, comfort, quality beverage and a moment of pleasure. It is possible to note that Schultz strategies not only accomplished a change in the coffee consumption habits but also changed the
culture too. People do not go to Starbucks to ingest the daily caffeine dosage. They go in search of warmth provided not only by the beverage but also by the human store ambient as well. The strategies used by Starbucks were presented for the first time from an inside perspective by John Moore. Responsible for the company marketing department for eight years, Moore grants us the innovations in the marketing strategies used by the coffee chain. These strategies granted Starbucks a growth bigger than $6.5bn/year and a stock price increment of 6.400 per cent. Nowadays, Starbucks is present in over 40 countries, opening five stores every day. Despite the quick growth, Starbucks does not forget that its success is based on a unique client experience consumption, according to Moore (2006). All these resources are collectively known as tribal knowledge. The name is due to the fact that the marketing strategies are diluted into the organizational structure, being part of the day-to-day works of the partners (as are called the company’s employees). These are not, therefore, meaningless actions imposed by the board of directors to the partners. Tribal knowledge is the meaning of
www.palgrave-journals.com/crr
Corporate Reputation Review, Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 213–215 © 2007 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd, 1363-3589 $30.00
213
For Your Bookshelf
all this managerial effort towards making the coffee consumption unforgettable. Another meaning of this knowledge covers the personalization of services and products to each client. According to Moore, in
Data Loading...
