STARBUCKS CORPORATION INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATION

 


Belch and Belch (2013) state that Integrated Marketing Communication is an approach that is used by brands to create a smooth experience in an attempt to blend all aspects of marketing communication so that they all work together as a unified force. In this blog, we are going to explore the IMC strategy for Starbuck Corporation South Africa.

Starbucks Corporation is an American-founded roaster and retailer of specialty coffee that was established in 1971. The company now operates in 80 countries and South Africa is among those countries.

Starbucks' Unique Value Proposition

The unique value proposition of Starbucks is centered around three points; product quality, service philosophy and store atmosphere design. The brand thrives on providing quality coffee from its carefully selected coffee beans. The brand also pairs quality products with excellent service by providing a homely environment to enjoy the coffee and cheerful baristas to make a customer’s experience a good one and this is how it strengthens its value proposition.

Its brand resonance is built around the high standard of quality it gives its customers and how they invest internally through staff training to provide excellent customer care that will result in building relationships with customers.

The whole experience created with the brand’s unique value proposition creates an emotional connection between the customer and the brand. The experience makes the customer want to come back because of the warm environment. Baristas are not only trained in the coffee brewery but in customer care as well. Starbucks also creates an emotional connection with customers by personalizing their drinks. Each customer looks forward to taking a photo and posting a coffee with their name on it. At some point, the brand purposely wrote incorrect customers’ names and customers looked forward to seeing how their name was going to be written.

The warmth and friendliness experienced by customers in coffee shops is consistent even on social media platforms, The brand voice kept online is also friendly and optimistic. It opens room for interactions, and the brand engages with the customers by answering their questions and comments.

 

Target Audience

Starbucks targets both males and females between the ages of 22 to 60 in mostly urban areas. This is evident because in South Africa you can only get Starbucks stores around Cape Town, Johannesburg and Umhlanga in KwaZulu Natal and these are considered big cities in the country. Therefore, this further shows that the brand targets educated, socially aware, career and business-driven customers.

Marketing Channels

To communicate with its target market, Starbucks South Africa uses five online platforms, namely, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and its website. This is because the brand understands where its customers mostly consume information, and that is online because of their social standards. 





·       Consistent themes

Starbucks has a consistent theme across all its online platforms. The theme comprises green and white colours which make it easier for customers to easily identify the brand. The consistency of the brand's visual look across the board is one of its successful factors in IMC.




·       Consistent content and integrated messaging across all platforms

For a brand to achieve a successful IMC strategy it needs to thrive in communicating the same message in all its marketing platforms and be strategic about it. Starbucks has been successful in doing this. The brand sends similar content to its different online platforms so that all platforms can communicate the same message from the brand. For example, Starbucks uses videos mostly to communicate its products both on Facebook and Instagram and uses mostly photos for Twitter even though the message is the same. This is because sometimes Twitter can be limiting even with the number of characters a tweet must have.

The brand uses mostly photos for LinkedIn and the website, this is because these are the more professional platforms. Also, these two platforms show serious content even though the tone is consistent in all the marketing platforms.  

Conclusion

Starbucks has built a powerful brand unique value proposition and IMC strategy. Its messaging is integrated into all platforms. However, for the benefit of those who probably use the website as their first brand contact point, the website needs to be more interactive and allow options for communication and interactions. The website does not even have a contact number a person can use for any inquiries. Also, it is 2022, and companies make use of Artificial Intelligence. The brand needs to incorporate a chatbot on the website for quicker responses to customers, this will allow engagements to be consistent on all platforms.

References

Belch, G.E., & Belch, M.A. (2013). Advertising and Promotion: An integrated marketing communications perspective. New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin

https://www.starbucks.co.za/

https://www.facebook.com/StarbucksSA

https://www.linkedin.com/company/starbucks-south-africa/

https://www.instagram.com/Starbucks_SA/

https://twitter.com/Starbucks_SA?t=m1Oa82WMlgs9iNhWmoYZPw&s=09


 

 

 

 

 

 

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