Month: October 2012

Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks , announced that China will soon become its largest market outside the United States.

I was interested in this announcement of Starbucks.How can they get success in china? However,they do succeed in Chinese market. 

There are two main difficulties in spreading a coffee brand in China.Firstly,Chinese people have the tea-drinking culture and secondly,the selling price is not general acceptable. However,there are also some advantages in China.Compared to some european countries, although their people have the tradition to drink coffee, the large amount of competitors also make Starbucks to survive because Starbucks isn’t a price-competitive brand. After doing some research,i found that they did some change on their products when they started in China . Starbucks developed flavors, such as green tea-flavored coffee drinks, that appeal to local tastes. Meanwhile, instead of reducing the price, they sell the coffee far more expensive in China than in US, this is called high-pricing strategy. They use the high price to stimulate the up-and -coming middle class purchasing as a luxury ,a symbol of status.This strategy works pretty well in China.

This case indicates that consumer behavior is directed towards to the positioning of a company.

In class 5 we talked about positioning of brand and perceptual map.I made a perceptual map about women cosmetics.

On my perceptual mapping , the two criteria i give are price and the chemical composition involved in the cosmetics,which I considered as the important factors when buying cosmetics personally. Consequently ,i divided those brand into four different categories.Sometime i feel difficult to juge the brand accurately in the level of price.However, the map still gives a clearly guide of making decision.

When I was doing the map,I realized that during the process ,the consumer already know the information of these brand.what they are doing is to make a list of these brands in their subjective order.That indicated that the positioning of a brand is very important.To think as a consumer, and how to let your brand on top of that ‘list’ when they making a decision.