Starbucks - Social Media Situation Analysis (Essay Sample)

Starbucks - Social Media Situation Analysis
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Starbucks is a leading coffee industry established in the year 1971 in Washington USA. It provides high quality coffee, tea and light foodstuff through its stores owned and licensed in the world all over. It aims at differentiating and innovating the “Starbucks experience” as well as its commitment to the global community and also implementing its employee satisfaction policy. During the 2008 economic crisis, it suffered heavily from its strongest competitors McDonald’s and Dunkin Donut. To revive and improve the customer relation, the company took to social media. It has been doing fairly in regard to the social media as customers give opinions on the services offered by the coffee store (Marketing par 1).
Following the biggest social networks, there are different messages that are passed on by the customers. For instance, many customers take on Facebook to pass complaints to the company. Most of the comments are of customers complaining of a poor service they receive in respect to Starbucks. In other social media platforms such as twitter and Instagram, the company takes a different role and is oriented more towards advertising the brand. There are few replies here and less reaction is registered from these sites (Social Media Analysis for Starbucks).
Some key themes that may be inferred from the customers’ reaction is first, the need to change the employees’ relation towards the customers. Once in a while, some customers report of poor reception by the employees. Second, the customers also report the lack of availability of some few items from their stores even though they are promised to be provided with. The implication here is the need to stock their stores with enough stock so as to take care of all the customers in need of their products. Third, there is another need for the company to be keener about their provision in regional markets. A customer may at times site report unavailability of products citing their region as a factor contributing towards the inaccessibility. On the other hand, Starbucks’ activities on the social networks are however lower compared to other similar brands that take advantage of the platform.
Starbucks uses the social media mainly to advertise its products as well as promote the “Starbucks’ experience” to other customers. One thing the company may need to learn is the purpose of the social media to evaluate the customers’ experience of their products. For that, the company would therefore need to interact more with the customers who post a complaint in the media. By following the customer’s case, they might be able to solve other similar instances that may hamper its development. Analyzing the consumers’ tone on satisfaction with the products; one may argue against it but considering the number of the followers, the number is considerably small. Basically, the overall performance considering the nu...