Starbucks wants you to help them charge you more
Just when you thought it was safe to hide at home with your addictions, Starbucks wants to hear all about it.
Starbucks pioneered the notion that coffee should be $3 a cup, and its been a great business model. However, the company has been late to the party on 2 areas: lower cost options and better tasting coffee, the confluence of which has caused the stock price to sag as the repeat visitors dipped.
Now the company is now trying crowdsourcing as its way to the future. (Note to self: get Starbucks to put my blog excerpts on its coffee cups)
The new MyStarbucksIdea site reminds me of Dell's Ideastorm, which was in part the impetus for Dell to start offering laptops preloaded with Ubuntu.
Starbucks is a company that followed it's vision as the market leader for so long it makes me wonder if they can act in any other way--that is, even if they get good feedback, can they act upon it? From the results so far it seems like there is fair shot--especially considering that people are asking for a loyalty program and wifi, 2 things that are cheap and achievable.
As a Peets coffee addict (though I am coffee-free for 2 weeks now) who really misses Dunkin Donuts, I got to the point where I didn't even bother with Starbucks as the flavor and consistency just didn't work for me anymore.
Probably the most interesting part of this whole thing is that Starbucks is using Salesforce.com Force platform for the interaction with consumers.
Via Gawker