Social Responsibility of Starbucks

Global Brand Marketing

One of the most recent changes in the Starbucks infrastructure may give us some insight into their present plans for intense global marketing. Underlying the recent appointment in July 17, 2007 of Mr. Martin Coles as CEO for is Global and Foreign market operations, Starbucks said that it sees an “unparalleled demand for Starbucks around the world “ (Borrman Starbucks).

This new strategy of selecting Mr. Martin Coles as CEO of Global operations indicates the concern for Starbucks to set an intense program towards developing their coffee stores around the globe. At the time of the same news story broadcasted to the world, via stock market analyst and presses across the globe, Borrman also indicated a “rapid global expansion” (Borrman Starbucks). Does this communication from the Starbucks press office indicate a new phase of rapid development or is Starbucks poising itself in rapid transit to international waters?

Mr. Coles will be reporting directly to Mr. Jim Donald, president and CEO, which indicates the importance of such a position of such a decision. The July 17 newswire reported that Mr. Coles would take responsibility “for the United States and International store operations and store development, the global Consumer Group and Supply Chain Operations” (Borrman Starbucks). Further in the newswire Borrman tells the importance of this strategy for Starbucks, since Starbucks “continues on its pace to double in size in the next four to five years” (Borrman Starbucks). What is the goal of such an enterprise of Starbucks? Bormann reports Mr. Coles as saying that the goal is “to ensure that the Starbucks Experience consistently exceeds expectations for every one of our customers, in every one of our stores anywhere in the world” (Borrman Starbucks).

Mr. Howard Schultz, chairman of Starbucks, mentioned, “this new infrastructure is aligned to support our continued rapid growth and is a natural evolution of the business.” (Borrman Starbucks). This indicates that the strategy of Mr. Donald and the Board of Directors is to prevent crisis in the future rather than to wait for one to occur (Coombs 5). Given the role that organizational communication plays, while seeing that Coles, Alling and Skinner were all chosen because of their previous performance as strong team players in the Starbucks corporate store, then it is easy to infer that each of them, correlating to their past successes, have strong organizational communication strategies already at work. In what ways will the “centrality, pervasiveness, and complexity of organizational communication” be displayed in this current scenario of Starbucks natural development (Coombs 5)? How will this effect the already established Starbucks Experience” for global customers?