Customer Behaviour in the Case of Starbucks Coffee China

CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR ANALYSIS IN METRO CITY STARBUCKS, XUJIAHUI, SHANGHAI

SUBMITTED TO:

PROF.WANCE TACCONELLI

Submitted by:

Vincent cahyadi

123110221

Table of Contents

1.INTRODUCTION        

2. ANALYSIS OF THE PUBLIC SPACE OF CONSUMPTION        

2.1 The reason of choosing Starbucks        

2.2 The layout of the public space choosen        

3. DEMOGRAPHICS AND LIFESTYLE ANALYSIS OF THE CONSUMER        

4. ANALYSIS OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR        

5. APPLICATION OF A CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR THEORY        

6. CONCLUSION        

7. Reference list:        

1. INTRODUCTION

        Starbucks coffee is an American coffee company which based on Seattle, nowadays Starbucks is the biggest coffee house in the world ahead of their competitor Costa Coffee which based in United Kingdom. Starbucks have around 21.000 stores in 63 countries, including 12.067 in USA, 1570 in China, 1451 in Canada. The very first Starbucks store was opened in 1971 in Seattle, the founder are Zev Siegl, Gordon Bowker, and Jerry Baldwin. The mission of Starbucks is to inspire and nurture the human spirit- one person one cup and one neighborhood at a time, which means Starbucks want to make sure each cup they made could satisfy the customers whether is hot beverage, cold beverage, and the pastry. Customer’s satisfaction is the number one priority for Starbucks; they have a goal to make the customers feel as they were hugged with the relatives they haven’t met through each cup they made. Nowadays, Shanghai become the destination for many people from around the world to do business, study, or vacation, with this kind of condition Starbucks in Shanghai surely have a broad variation of consumers which is very interesting. Later on this essay will be discussed more about the customers characteristic, demographics (age, gender, income, and behaviors), employee attitude, store layout of a Starbucks Metro City, Shanghai.

2. ANALYSIS OF THE PUBLIC SPACE OF CONSUMPTION

2.1 The reason of choosing Starbucks

The reason why I choose Starbucks as the topic of the observation is because Starbucks is my favorite place to grab a coffee and spend my time there, in my opinion Starbucks has the best service and the taste is almost the same in every shop they had everywhere whether in China or Indonesia. Another reason is the experience we felt each time we go to every Starbucks store, which is the warm feeling inside the store that make us feel the welcome in it. Starbucks’s employee in China could speak good English which is make foreign people who can’t speak Chinese feel very convenient to buy a coffee and spent their time there. Almost all of the Starbucks store have a very comfortable layout that could make the customers want to spend time there to do business, school stuff, hanging out, and etc. the most important thing is each time when a customers went to Starbucks there will always be empty spot to sit and spend time there. Furthermore Starbucks has the most global customer base from many countries and races, even in Indonesia we could see a lot of western people spend their time there which rarely to see in others coffee shop. With having broad customer’s demographics, Starbucks is a quite interesting topic to do an observation for this essay.

2.2 The layout of the public space chosen

The place I choose for the observation is the Starbucks in Metro City, the main reason I choose this place is because this is my favorite Starbucks store in Shanghai and I usually went there to grab some coffee or chill out, also in this store is quite crowded each time I went there so it will be very convenient to do the observation there. This store is located at 2nd floor of Metro City, the size of this store is quite huge for ordinary Starbucks store but I can’t explain the exact size of this store. The layout in this store is quite spacious and comfortable, they have enough seating for accommodate more than 200 customers at the same time, there also have a outdoor seating that have a good view to the center of Xujiahui, the layout is representing the Starbucks unique characters and with having many of comfortable seating from sofa, wooden chair, and bar stools, the customers could choose which kind of seating they prefer in this store. Furthermore the atmosphere at that place makes the customers feels warm and welcomed, we can feel the coffee fragrance after we entered the store which makes the costumers feels cozier to stay at there, and the management also forbids the employee to use a strong fragrance in order to maintain the strong coffee aroma. At this Christmas time they also decorated their store with more Christmas accessory, the merchandise, and they offer special beverage in order to makes the Christmas atmosphere getting thicker. Starbucks also provide free electricity, Wi-Fi, and reading shelf to make the customers want to stay longer at there. The color of the store is mostly light brown and green. Each color could give the different feeling for the customers, for example green makes the feeling of peace, health, and growing. Light brown makes the friendly, approachable, genuine feeling. The music they play is slow tempo music , according to Gus Lubin (2011), Slow music could affecting the way customers behave with become move more slowly, but still buy more for supermarket, similarly with the restaurant or cafe they tend to become take the time or be more comfortable and buy more from the restaurant or cafe they visit.

[pic 2]

[pic 3]

[pic 4]

3. DEMOGRAPHICS AND LIFESTYLE ANALYSIS OF THE CONSUMERS

Based on my observation the customers of Metro City Starbucks is, for the age most of them are men or woman in their productive age which is around 20 – 50 and mostly are women are coming to this place as a group of 2 or more people, rarely can be seen a person came and seat alone without anyone accompanied. The education in my perception mostly are bachelor graduate, or undergraduate because there still are some people came there and did the homework, or a group project, the income should be more than 8k RMB each month because the price of Starbucks coffee is not that cheap that the one that earn less than 8k most likely considering other option to grab a coffee since they had more needs to cover, and based on my perception the one came to Starbucks usually bring a decent Smartphone and their other gadget which is not cheap either, the bag they bring also from a some high class name like Gucci, LV but I can’t be sure whether it is the authentic or the fake one since we live in China. Mostly the customers on the Metro City Starbucks is Chinese, Western people also can be seen there, however I almost never see people from Africa come to that place since 1st time I went there.