Starbucks Corporation: A Strategy Recommendation
Elizabeth Joyner
Capella University

I. Introduction and History of Starbucks
It all began in 1971 in a small storefront in Seattle, Washington’s Pike Place Market. This was the site of the very first Starbucks store where unlike how the store is set up now it was merely a roaster and retailer of whole bean coffee and teas. Ten years later in 1982, Howard Schultz joins the company as the director of retail operations and marketing. To further immerse himself into the coffee world he travels to Italy in 1983 and subsequently falls in love with the coffee bar experience. The following year, the very first Café Latte is served in downtown Seattle. In 1985 Schultz founds Il Giornale, a business that offers brewed coffees and espresso drinks made from Starbucks brand coffee beans. Two years after the founding of Il Giornale, Howard Schultz acquires the assets of Starbucks and changes the name of Il Giornale to Starbucks Corporation and opens up 17 Starbucks stores including stores in Chicago and Vancouver, Canada. The statement, “Our Mission: to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time” (Starbucks Corporation), the popular coffee chain became what it is today.
II. History of the Internet and Social Media
While Howard Schultz and the “big wigs” of the Starbucks Corporation are watering the new coffeehouse idea and growing Starbucks into the conglomerate that it is today there is another thing happening that will change the face of how businesses conduct their marketing and how they communicate with the consumer. Around the mid-1980s the very prehistoric version of the internet was made available for those people who could afford a computer for their home. This “internet” was a type of online message board system where people could post messages