Introduction of Starbucks.•PresentStarbucks is an international coffee company and coffeehouse chain based in Seattle, Washington. It is the largest coffeehouse company in the world, according to statistics in March, 2012, it has 19,435 stores in 58 countries, including 12,781 in the United States, 1,241 in Canada, 1,062 in Japan, 976 in Great Britain and 645 in China, with more than 149,000 employees.•Developing historyNotably, it only took Starbucks 40 years to attain today’s reputation and popularity. So, now let’s have a brief look at Starbucks’ developing history.•FoundationIn 1971, Starbucks was founded in Seattle as a local coffee bean roaster and retailer. The name is taken from a novel Moby-Dick, Starbuck is the name of its character, a chief officer who was very charming and fond of drinking coffee. Its author, Herman Melville, enjoyed a high status in the literacy circle, he’s regarded as the American Shakespeare, but its readers were mainly those well-educated people. Here we can see the logo of Starbucks was a "twin-tailed siren", and was based on a 16th-century "Norse"woodcut,which was a combination of classic and modern. So, we can see from the very beginning that Starbucks has targeted on people who advocate knowledge and seek for relaxation and quality of life.•ExpansionIn 1987, Howard Shultz purchased Starbucks with the support of local investors. He brought the Italian espresso culture and cafe latte into American, and began the company expansion. In the beginning stage, it focus on expanding its coffeehouse in the north America. In the 1990s, Starbucks was opening a new store every workday, a pace that continued into the 2000s.In 1992, it became public listed at Nasdaq under the symbol “SBUX”, and entered into a new stage of development. At that time, it simplified its logo, which used to be regarded as ungrateful.The continuous growth in number of coffeehouses, was complemented by several joint ventures and strategic alliances to increase the availability of Starbucks products. In 1996, the firstStarbucks location outside North America opened in Tokyo, Japan, thus starting the international expansion of the company. Starbucks entered the U.K. market in 1998 with the $83million acquisition of the then 60-outlet, UK-based Seattle Coffee Company, re-branding all the stores as Starbucks. In 1999, it entered into China. In September 2002 Starbucks opened its first store in Latin America, in Mexico City.This period sees the fast expansion of Starbucks. It is said that the ultimate goal of Starbucks is to open 25000 stores in the world, like McDonald (which has 30000 outlets), that it can be seen everywhere. As we can see from its stock price, there is a continuous growth from 1992 to 2006, and since 1996 the growth speeded up. However, from 2006, its price decreased. It met problems in its expansion, and the world economic environment is not ideal.•Store closureAs a result, in front of the"on-going operational challenges" and a "difficult business environment." In 2008, the company announced it was closing 600 underperforming company-owned stores and cutting U.S. expansion plans in the growing economic uncertainty. It also cut almost 1,000 non-retail jobs as part of its bid to reenergize the brand and boost its profit.These closings and layoffs effectively ended the company’s period of growth and expansion that began in the mid-1990s.•Logo changingIn January 2011, Starbucks remove the Starbucks word mark around the siren, enlarging the siren image, and making it green. This change is made to work with its position of “comprehensive consumer product company”, for it earlier has launched a series of products other than coffee, including tea, ice cream, etc., which is unsuitable to use the words “Starbucks Coffee”. But it will still take coffee products as their core business and soul.。
