PESTEL Analysis - Starbucks

Extract

[...] Another prime market for the company is big cities with a large number of workers who will go out for lunches, takeaway meals and, of course, coffee. They can ensure their cafes entice the right clientele by providing comfortable seating areas, access to free Wi-Fi and an environment conducive to people meeting and eating and drinking coffee. Starbucks has become one of the world's most globally conscious corporations. Its coffee bean growers are given strict environmental guidelines to follow and the company has committed to using renewable energy in its stores and actively promotes recycling amongst its staff and customers. [...]

[...] Environmental Starbucks has implemented strategies to ensure it is seen as an environmentally friendly and sustainable business. By making use of biodegradable plates and bio cutlery in its stores to using recyclable cups and running campaigns to encourage consumers to use their own mugs by offering them a discount on their coffee purchase, the company helped to eliminate over 90,000 kg of plastic in 2017 alone. The company has invested in clean and renewable energy sources and implemented many strategies to combat climate change by ensuring their suppliers practise climate-smart agriculture as well as following Coffee and Farmer Equity practices (C.A.F.E.). [...]

[...] Shultz saw the potential of the brand and joined the company in 1982 as their head of marketing. He soon recognised that there was a need to educate their staff and in turn their customers about the intricacies of coffee and coffee making. Schultz attended an international houseware show in Milan in 1983, he was impressed by the country's cafe culture. When he returned home, he tried to convince the Starbucks owners to embrace this new culture; however, they were determined to remain strictly a coffee bean and coffee equipment seller. [...]

[...] Schultz could finally implement his cafe business model to the Starbucks brand and allowed the company to enjoy a meteoric expansion. By 1992 the company went public and in 1996, they opened their first stores in North America. Starbucks has now become the world's largest coffee-house with about 182,000 employees, in 19,767 stores in 62 countries around the world. The decision was made in 2003 to start serving food in their cafes. In 2019 they opened the world's largest Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Chicago, offering the most discerning coffee drinkers an environment in which they could discover and explore some of the world's rarest and most extraordinary coffee blends. [...]

[...] Unfortunately, the world is becoming more and more litigious as has been seen in recent cases brought against Starbucks and some of its competitors. The McGuireWoods company has a dedicated food- labelling litigation team which constantly monitors global trends in this regard and in 2019 they identified 5 key factors: Shifting Litigation; Death of Slack-Fill Litigation; Evolution of Nature of Claims; Re-emergence of Reasonable-Consumer Standard and New Targets. Companies need to be aware of these trends in order to protect themselves from these potentially costly suites and the damage they can do to a brand's image. [...]