I totally agree Nan Chen’s idea in her blog “ladychacha’s Blog”. As we all know, Asians are used to drink tea everyday and Western people have been considering coffee as their part of life for a long time. However, with the rapid growth of economy in China and other Asian countries, Starbucks has become a favorite affordable luxury lifestyle brand from Chinese perspectives. In fact, the actual price of Starbucks in China is pretty much the same to the price in North America. The reason why people call it “luxury” is the price of Starbucks coffee is comparably high with the Chinese people’s average daily consumption, which basically means a cup of Starbucks coffee equals a fairly good meal (or at least at fast food chains) for a middle-class Chinese on average. You would not be surprised if you know that a bottle of water is 2 yuan in China, which is almost 6 times less than that in Canada.

Source from Google

According to the journal, Starbucks China utilizes good sources, including Weibo, Wechat and Renren (Chinese Twitter and Facebook) to help promote their products. In North America, similarly, the brand posts their advertisements on the public media, give away free trial with coupon provided and send away paper ads to attract customers to go in their store to appreciate their “masterpiece” (according to the ads I got today). In addition, it is a great idea to do co-branding with Duetto to make a special credit card so that people can get more points on that card when using it. That would create a large amount of loyal customers as well.