Case 25 Starbucks 2015 - Analyze the specialty coffee café industry

Case 25-Starbucks 2015 (2017, p. C-200)

Starbucks Coffee – Teaching Note

1. Analyze the specialty coffee café industry using Porter’s Five Forces and Macroenvironmental Analysis. What are the key success factors in this industry? (I encourage students to look over Starbucks 10K in addition to the case, and to draw from their personal knowledge of the industry. Most are pretty familiar with the industry and will contribute interesting detail.)

2. What are Starbucks’ strengths and weaknesses? Does it have any sources of sustainable competitive advantage?

3. Porter argues that to achieve a sustainable position, a company has to make trade-offs that its competitors are unable or unwilling to make. What trade-offs has Starbucks made? What different activity choices has it made from its rivals?

4. How is Starbucks’ product positioned in the market? How do its functional-level strategies align (or fail to align) with this positioning?