Individual Experience Paper (Essay Sample)

Individual Experience Paper
Student’s mane
Institutional Affiliation
Individual Experience Paper
Working in Starbucks Corporation during school vacations gave me great experiences. I acquired a job at this corporation as a secretary in the front office. I have worked in this corporation for about three years, where I acquired a lot of information on its structure and operations. Since I am familiar with the corporation, I stand higher chance of analyzing and evaluating it based on the business concepts I have been taught in class. This paper gives a comprehensive evaluation and assessment of Starbucks Corporation using various business and economic theories I have learned in my business courses. The assessment explains why it fits as a great company in the domestic and international market.
Three businessmen Zev Siegel, Gordon Bowker, and Jerry Baldwin started the Starbucks Corporation 25 years ago. The three sold coffee beans in a store that dealt with Starbucks coffee, tea, and other spice. Various other stores were opened in other parts of the country in an effort of diversifying their ventures. Later, all the companies merged and became Starbucks Corporation. Since then, the company has been expanding through opening other stores around the world. The notable growth of this corporation was realized when it became a public company partnering with major companies such as Pepsi Co. In 1987, its first international store was opened in Vancouver at the Seabus Skytrain. However, in 1995, the corporation formed a partnership with Chapter Bookstores of Canada. This created a coffee lover’s experience in Canada. During the following year, five more stores were opened on the same day in Ontario and Toronto. Other companies were opened across the nation making it one of the fast growing companies in Canada. Currently, the city of Vancouver and Toronto have been selected among the seven global locations for holding Starbucks’ international month of service. The recent survey indicates that the corporation has over 4,800 worldwide. This indicates that the corporation has the capacity of serving over 100 million clients every week
I joined Starbucks in 2010 as a secretary in the front office. I started working in this corporation when I was still a college student. My main role as front office secretary in this corporation involved carrying out stock evaluation each day. I prepared books of account for the company to ensure all the transactions were recorded. Together with other secretaries in this office, we had to keep daily records that depicted cash and product outflow and inflow. My activities allowed me to interact directly with managers and other leaders involved in this corporation. I was also involved in handling other administrative activities such as reviewing messages from our clients and replying some of them, which were within my mandate. In addition, during minor meetings in the company, I had the role of writing down the minutes. This allowed me to become close to the administration thus having great overview and knowledge about the company.
The vision of the Starbucks Company is structured to make it a key player in the international market. This is through principles if commitment and hard work in order to win the interest of their customers. It also aims at enhancing high quality of their products that will attract more customers. In this case, Starbucks target to become the most popular coffee brand in the globe. This vision is made visible through the provision of fine quality coffee beans and drinks, which makes the company more competitive in the industry. In addition, the fine quality beans and other drinks have maintained large proportion of customers demanding the products despite stiff competition in the restaurant trade and coffee selling. The core ideology of Starbucks targets growth and expansion as an intermediary to becoming global server in the restaurant business.
On the other hand, Starbucks’ mission statement is to motivate and foster human spirit of one person, one cup, and one neighbourhood at a time. In this case, it holds on to the diversity creating conducive environment to its clients and employees. The company, therefore, treat those around it with dignity, respect, and adhering to the generally accepted restaurant business code of ethics. In addition, at Starbucks, communities are considered as part of the corporation.
Starbucks missions are bound to various benefits such as creating opportunities that define the community as well as dispersing awareness of the company’s advanced rational goals to shareholders, employees, and the public. To achieve the stipulated operative goals, the company has used overall performance to determine economic assessment. This performance is determined through production, distribution, and consumption decisions. Production revolves around conversion of raw materials into final products that are ready for consumption. Their distribution decisions focuses on choosing the best channels that enables final products to reach to their consumers at a lower cost. Consumption decisions involve customer role of selecting commodity bundles that are consistent to their budget line. The three factors play a greater role in the growth and productivity of Starbucks Corporation. For example, high production cost makes Starbucks to push the cost on consumers purchasing price in order to achieve their operative goals. Starbucks have adopted various economic measures that will accelerate more sales and growth of the corporation in the next three years.
In the Miles and Snow’s strategy typology approach, Starbucks has applied defender strategy to achieve their goals of increasing the number of customers. Through this strategy, the corporation has been able to maintain quality of its products as it has always been since the time Starbucks was founded in Canada 25 years ago. The corporation believes fine blended quality of their products will increase their competitive advantages in the market. In addition, the Starbucks management has also used this strategy to ensure the cost of sourcing coffee beans as raw materials is low. This allows the company to increase its profit margins leading to higher revenue.
Starbucks Corporation has also engaged in defender strategy to increase purchase of their products by consumers in the market through product differentiation. Differentiation of products at this corporation is facilitated through products packaging, brand names, and the design. This has made their products unique from those of their close competitors. Good packaging designs have enabled safety of their product ready for purchase by the customer, warehousing, shipping, and storage. The corporation has also enhanced differentiation of their products in relation to customers taste, preferences, and unique needs. As a result of this, Starbucks Corporation is multinational positioned despite the stiff competition in the coffee market. This has made it big enough to make profits and at the same time realizing their growth potential. In this case, products differentiation into fine blend coffee has enabled the corporation’s sales to increase at an outstanding rate.
The source of power in this corporation is vertical. This organizational design is used because it allows coordination of activities from various departments and organs operating the corporation. In this case, every store under Starbucks Corporation has a manager, one assistant manager, a few shift supervisors, and about 40 employees. Hierarchical levels are well structured to ensure every department has its defined roles and duties. There is high level of centralization with numerous levels of authority. The general manager has the role of overseeing all the activities taking place in the company. Although he does not physically do this, his juniors act as channels to observe how things are done in the company. In this case, rule and orders are coordinated from the top to the bottom level of the organization. This design is well suited because it enhances effective and efficient performances in the corporation. This has facilitated satisfaction of customers because every employee has a designed role of ensuring products are in good state that will attract consumers. Although vertical leadership has been adopted in this corporation, the spirit of teamwork is embraced. All staff members of Starbucks work together as a team to ensure the welfare of their customers is maintained. This has enabled the corporation to become popular in Canada and other parts of the world.
Starbucks has focused on the three major organization environments to boost its success in the markets. One of the environments that have allowed the corporation to increase competition advantages is the market sector. Starbucks Corporation has a wide market for coffee drinks, coffee brewing equipment, Tazo tea brands, and other merchandizes. These products range from the narrow segments of consumers, which is the market niche and a broad cross section of consumers. The most intriguing part of the marketing strategy used by the company is the notion that everyone in the world wants coffee for relaxation. In addition, Starbucks channels it products such as coffee drinks, Tazo tea, and others through both wholesale and retail. The two channels makes products from Starbucks reach customers directly. These channels have been used for many years leading to the great success of the corporation.
Despite its high growth, Starbucks faces great competition from its rivals in the m...