A news article on Wall Street Journal says that Starbucks is planning to triple its store count in China and meanwhile it is also going to sale more products in supermarkets. We can see that financial crisis has given a big impact to this company. It is trying new strategies to increasing its profit.
Actually, I once wondered why there isn’t many Starbucks in China. It frustrated me that there isn’t even one Starbucks store in my hometown which is a provincial capital city. I guess it is because that the consumption level of Chinese people when Starbucks came into Chinese market was much lower than it is now. However, statistics suggest that, the total volume of retail sales had reached 16000 billion dollars, which is over 15 times of the one in the 1990s. The consumption level of China has been growing by a huge amount. It’s fair enough for Starbucks to extend the market in China.
In the meantime, for a company, it’s a lot of hard work to build a brand, to build trust and to create new behavior. Although Starbucks has been doing well in these aspects, there might still be risk to rush in China so fast.
Anyway, good luck, Starbucks. China is waiting.