Starbucks deliberately avoids changing its core offering – the coffee. However, it does have a policy of continually refining other aspects of its products and services. Such innovation can be seen in the vast range of coffee-based products that it offers, the transition from foam to paper cups for take-away drinks and in the growth of its non-coffee retail items
Starbucks enjoys a market leading position among coffee shops, but the concept that it developed has been imitated and modified by an increasing number of competitors. Starbucks must continue to evolve its product offering in order to maintain its leadership position. It also faces the significant challenge of managing a consistent brand experience over thousands of separate retail outlets.
Simultaneously, the company has pursued a strategy of enriching the brand wherever possible, branching out into areas such as Hear Music, its music recording and distribution venture, and consumer goods. Such ventures, in turn, complement the customer experience.
Design at Starbucks, says Stanley Hainsworth, Vice President of Global Creative, 'is about a two way conversation between the company's customers and partners.' The need to address internal audiences as well as external ones is vital, he says, since it is the essence of the brand that employees share with their customers that plays a key role in delivering the right Starbucks service experience.
Hainsworth’s team, based at Starbucks' Seattle Support Center, is responsible for the design elements of the Starbucks experience. Those elements include the design of posters, cups and cup sleeves, advertising, packaging and numerous other items large and small that together make up much of a customer’s experience in a Starbucks store, or when interacting with its products elsewhere.
'We are responsible for basically everything but the physical stores; everything that’s in the stores, everything outside of the stores, advertising and partnering with advertising agencies, collateral, packaging, products in grocery and communal stores, and the website,' says Hainsworth.
The current design process adopted by the Global Creative team evolved in parallel with the group’s changing internal role. Originally, says Hainsworth, the department was more like a creative services function, creating design and print creative processes for the wider company. This approach led to inconsistency in output and the production of designs that didn’t always match Starbucks brand values.
In response, Hainsworth took steps to allow the department to have much more control over designs. The basic mechanism introduced to do this was a five-word ‘filter,’ against which every prospective design is evaluated.
The design process at Starbucks also covers the need to express the experience of Starbucks. Starbucks realises that coffee isn’t new in itself, and therefore they use design to build on the coffee experience, including the way in which baristas interact with their customers. Hainsworth cites an example of a Starbucks outlet in which the baristas had established a '100 club,' where staff had committed to memorising the names and drink orders of 100 regular customers.
As a consequence of such experience design, Starbucks has found that customers who feel comfortable in the Starbucks environment want to 'take it home with them' in various ways. This demonstrates both the challenges and opportunities around designing the Starbucks experience, particularly when they are able to drive trends and establish industry standards.
'Design has always been important to the company, but it hasn’t always had a prominent place at the executive table,' says Hainsworth. 'But lately there has been a lot more realisation that it can drive business and enhance sales. We can be strategic about design. It’s not just pixie dust that you sprinkle on things.' He cites top-level support as a key enabler for design’s current position with Starbucks. Howard Shultz, Starbucks' Chairman, he says, 'has a real appreciation for the transformative power of design.'
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