Research Paper on:
The Future of Starbucks

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
thousand coffee shops in a variety of locations (office buildings, shopping centers, airport terminals, supermarkets) in over twenty countries worldwide. Starbucks sells coffee drinks and beans, pastries, and other food  items and beverages, as well as mugs, coffeemakers, coffee grinders, and storage containers. The company also sells its beans to restaurants, businesses, airlines, and hotels, and it offers mail  order and online catalogs. Starbucks has expanded into coffee ice cream (with Dreyers) and makes Frappuccino, a bottled coffee drink (with PepsiCo) (Hoovers Online 2002). STARBUCKS SWOT ANALYSIS  Strengths: Starbucks does manage to produce the same or better quality; and although it is not always at less cost than anyone else, the price is usually competitive within the  market. Starbucks also enjoys greater profits or in the event of a price war, stays in the market, profitably, with reduced prices. Weaknesses: Starbucks needs to be careful to  not lose sight of strategies B and C because A is chosen. Strategy is not something to look at in isolation. It must satisfy as many aspects of the business  as possible - short and long term. Starbucks must remember to take the business as a whole. This is a widely used tool of competition analysis in business strategy  formulation, and Starbucks success in the UK depends on a sophisticated understanding of the rules of competition. These rules of competition are embedded in five competitive forces, which are,  according to Michael Porter, "entry of new competition, the threat of substitute products, the bargaining power of buyers, the bargaining power of suppliers, and the rivalry among existing competitors" (Porter  1998, PG). The collective strength of these forces determines the ability of firms in an industry to earn, on average, rates of return on investment in excess of the