Starbucks, has established a high image and created excellent customer relationship by incorporating its policy of personalizing customers’ drink.

As the article states, Starbucks’ specific purpose was not only for operational advantage, but to also promote one of the company’s value proposition- provide a friendly service. Starbucks’ strategy focuses on creating customer loyalty by valuing their customers and giving them a sense of importance.

Yet, customers complaint highlights customer names being wrongly written. While this can be seen as bad publicity, “there is no such thing as bad publicity”. For customers, especially teenagers nowadays, the media became a way to express their feelings. Thus, customers show their discontentment by sharing to the virtual world how badly or funnily Starbucks has written their name. I even know someone who changes his name to “Bob”, to avoid that Starbucks misspells his name, and posted a photo to show his amusement. By doing so, he is also increasing Starbuck’s brand awareness, which acts as a sort of advertisement.

A customer expressing her discontentment through social media by taking a picture of herself with a Starbucks drink, where we can read her name as “Jew” instead of “Jude”

Another issue with the personalized cups can be that some customers are reticent to be called by their names. Businessmen, for example, may want to keep their superiority and be called “Sir” instead. This barrier shows that Starbucks’ aim to create familiarity is not effective on every customer.

Either way, the personalized cups give to the customers a memorable experience of their visit, and as we say, “any publicity is good publicity”.

Image source: http://www.reshareworthy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/218.jpg