Starbucks: Marketing of Services

Subject: Product Marketing
Pages: 3
Words: 666
Reading time:
3 min

Starbucks has been very competitive in the industry and for it to remain competitive; the employees have to be managed in the best way possible that the HR manager can. With respect, it is important to appreciate the employee cycle strategy. Starbucks begins its management abilities by supporting the firm’s strategies. This begins from recruitment, training motivating retaining and until the exiting of the employee.

This is the strategic approach to the management of human resources. HRM recognizes the efforts of individuals or group of employees who work towards the success of the company and rewards them accordingly. In this way, the organization is able to motivate the employees so that they can offer the best services. Recognition and rewarding of the employees also reduce the rate of employee turnover.

The customer cycle usually consists three stages begging from the acquisition of the clients, creating close relationships and enhancing the connection and finally retention of the customers. Employee cycle directly impacts on customer cycle in that when employees are fully motivated and are working with the best conditions, they will be more creative and innovative. Their service delivery will be superb. They can engage in direct marketing if they are in sales and marketing and efficiently or promote the products of Starbucks. This would even be better in cutting the expenses of searching and acquiring new clients, thus making the process of marketing and getting new clients cheaper. This could be the reason why less well-educated youths increased; the number of women was also on the rise.

The employee cycle also assists the employees to be able to conform to the existing work situation. In this was the process for creating relationships with clients and enhancing it is made easier. The firm easily understands the needs of the existing customers, their character and expectations. This way, they can improve productivity to meet their requirements and this translates to greater profitability for the company. The company can trains its employees so that the product can in the end be customized depending on the specific needs and also preferences of the customers.

Starbucks employs about 60,000 employees worldwide who are referred to as partners. It has 50,000 of partners in N. America alone. Starbucks’ low employee turnover can be attributed to the sound HRM strategies of its partners. The organization acknowledges the efforts by the partners and rewards them appropriately. Starbucks compares the 70% partners’ turnover and the 300% to other organizations as a result of more employee satisfaction. This led to the company being ranked the 47th best company in handling their employees.

The senior vice president of N. America says the company was always looking for ways of bringing the turnover down further. He says that most problems in the store are contributed by inexperienced store managers or inexperienced baristas. Baristas are usually hourly-wage employees and the word is derived from the Italian for Bartender, meaning a person who prepares and serves espresso-based coffee drinks. This means the company considered promoting from within.

Starbucks rewards its partners by offering them the health insurance policy and stock options to even the most entry-level partners. The company also rewards the partners by promoting some of them whenever the opportunity arose. 70% of the firm’s store managers were former baristas while 60% of the managers serving at the district positions were former store directors. This strategy together with offering them competitive salary packages retained most of the workers and reduced the rate of the partner’s turnover. It is noted that most of the companies’ esteemed customers who went to the stores 18 times a month were recognized by the employees by their tastes and orders. This employee’s cycle impacted greater on the customer’s cycle, as there was a more personalized service and cordial relationship.