Technological Improvement in regard of Starbucks

The exterior environment that Starbucks conducts its business is influenced via the continuous technological improvement fairly contributed by the ongoing innovation in the industry which has expanded the level of competition and influenced patron behavior. The dynamic technological environment has enabled the corporation to undertake the current mobile commercial enterprise and electronic commerce by linking up with Apple to grant discounted coupon to its products consumers in the Apps used in the iPhone. Electronic commerce entails the application of Information Technology to add value in organizational conversation and activities to its stakeholders such as employees, government bodies, suppliers, customers, economic institution etc. Starbucks a premier roaster, marketer and retailer of specialty coffee internationally is an American based company established in the early 1970s in Seattle. The company has opened its 20,800 authorized outlets globally in sixty-three countries (Turban et al., 2011).

1.1 Starbuck Digital and Social Enterprise Change

1.1.1 Digital change

Several Starbuck potential consumers imagine that the largest coffee chain ruins a traditional set-up business where its product end users consume the product with the store, pay the bill physically, through cash or by credit cards. The company since 2007 has embraced the online business following the demand that saw the coffee chain profitability sharply declined by 50%. The rising worldwide market and the countries deregulation measures being loosened that lead to the stiff competition among the company, hence the great threat of demand risk. To counter this problem, the organization strives to be adaptive and resort to electronic commerce which will endlessly improve its demand for their products and services (Watson, 2013). To solve the problem, Starbucks adopted e-commerce projects that include;

Web store

Starbuck sells online some of the products at its website (www.starbucksstore.com) i.e. for coffee, tea, equipment, and merchandise. Starbuck restructured its website in 2011 to allow simple and convenient shopping to customers and also provide them with an opportunity to schedule deliveries of special products which initially was not possible to the previous site. The change on the company’s online site benefited international customers through exclusive promotions when they buy products through the Starbuck web store (Watson, 2013).

Loyalty program

Like most organization in other industries for example Airlines, Starbuck rewards extra benefits electronically to loyal customers who manage to achieve the gold level.

The e-Gift card program

Starbuck introduced customized cards to its products users. Online, the organization offers multiple customized cards that fit customer specification. The e-gift program assists members to reduce long queue and payment done thereafter

Electronic money

Starbuck is one of the businesses that embraces online mobile payments for some of its goods and services. The traditional way of paper- based payment system is unable to corroborate the highly needed security, privacy, and convenient transactions. Starbuck mostly uses the following electronic payments method; square mobile payments, use of Starbuck mobile cards and payments from smart cards.

1.1.2 Social Enterprise Change
Turban et al define social Enterprise as Business transactions that are carried out with the aid of social networks through social software. Turban et al define social media as a user-generated an electronic process that involves text, image, audio and video content that are transmitted via the internet. The current trend of e- commerce application in the today’s business world is the emergence of social enterprise that has created e-commerce and improving revenue, business models. Starbuck Company runs a privately owned social network (My Starbuck Ideas), focusing mostly towards customers. Starbuck organization extensively uses Facebook to source for customer’s feedback and ideas via my Starbuck Idea website (Watson, 2013).

1.2 Starbucks’ E- Commerce Initiatives used to improve brand recognition
Dryer (2008), defined e-commerce initiatives as an organization’s actions to increase its market share online. The most key objective organization strive for is designing a reliable business model. An efficient business model shows the manner in which an organization strives to surpass customer’s needs by delivering values and receiving revenue generated. Starbucks pursue its brand new recognition through the following ways to successfully penetrate the global market; online advertisements
The hyperlink is the most common method and used by Starbuck to advertise its products online enables the reader to skip to another web page by clicking on a link. Starbucks places hyperlink signs or logos at relevant points on the internet to entice the readers and follow the link that contains the company products information (Harnel, 2015)..

Use of social media

With most organizations realizing the benefits of social media, Starbucks extensively invested in this area to reach the widely global distributed potential buyers and other business stakeholders and introducing new features to the existing website to meet the organization’s e- commerce objectives. The company conducts several social- commerce in facebook, LinkedIn Google+, YouTube, and Instagram. It constantly updates the stakeholders on the current news through video uploads, blog posts, company images, company events and products information summaries. The firm’s LinkedIn profile has followers of about 50,000 providing the opportunity to present company business data and also the best site to attract qualified human resource labor force. Its tweeter handle @Starbucks has 2.2 million followers that the company benefits to a conduct company marketing campaign (Harnel, 2015).

1.3 Benefits and drawbacks of e- commerce to Starbucks organization

The primary benefits e-commerce is that Starbucks’ customers have been brought close irrespective of the geographical location. The customers can access the company information through online advertisements and buy the products online. The e-commerce initiative has bridged the gap between the company and its customers when conducting business transactions such as delivering and revenue collection (Watson, 2013).
On the side, an online advertisement arriving along with other e-mail may be perceived by some readers as highly offensive electronic pollution. Organizations need to ensure that their Internet communications are not offensive or time-wasting to visitors. Consequently, firms must monitor such sites and Internet traffic about them to prevent PR disasters (Harnel, 2015).

References

Turban, E., Sharda, R., Delen, D., Aronson, J., Liang, T., & King, D. (2011). Decision support and business intelligence systems (1st ed.). Boston [etc.]: Pearson.
Watson, R. (2013). Electronic commerce (1st ed.). [Place of publication not identified]: [publisher not identified].
Harnel, G. (2015). What is an e- business initiative? Retrieved from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/ebusiness-initiative-32055.html