Business strategy assignment Implementation Plan: Part 3 For the final assignment, you will continue your work with the company you used in Unit IV and Unit VI. For the Unit VIII Project, you will com

Enablers

Challenges

Internal

STRENGTHS:

Starbucks enjoys a strong brand image. Starbucks Corporation has one of the world's strongest and most popular brands. This is a strength that makes the company achieve a competitive advantage over other competitors in the market. The company enjoys the expanding growth of loyal customers.

Starbucks has an extensive global supply chain. The company benefits from the extensive global supply chain to streamline its operations. The company boasts of a global network of suppliers and extensive supply chains considering the quality of operations at Starbucks Corporation.

Subsidiaries help Starbucks attain moderate diversification. The diversification helps Starbucks reduce industry and market risks faced by other companies. This helps the company attain resilience too.

WEAKNESS:

High pricing points are one of the weaknesses faced by Starbucks Corporation. The company has high pricing points for most of its products, which are targeted to achieve higher profit margins. This has ended up making some of its products unaffordable to most of the people with lower disposable income.

Overdependence on coffee beans as the key input. Starbucks suffers from overdependence on coffee beans as the main input, thus pricing depends on the pricing of coffee beans. This poses a risk to the company as the price fluctuates regularly, affecting profitability.

Imitability of products. The company faces a challenge in that even local cafes can produce coffee though not the same as Starbuck's, but almost similar to the coffee produced by Starbuck’s coffee, making the product imitable.

External

OPPORTUNITIES:

Expanding its market. Currently, most of the revenue generated by the company is from the United States. Starbucks has the opportunity to expand its market to target developing markets away from the United States.

Business diversification. Starbucks could also venture into diversifying the business to enable the company to attain long-term stability. Diversification of the business will enable the company to avoid overdependence on the current industries as the only revenue opportunities, creating more opportunities, thus higher revenue and business sustainability.

Alliances or partnerships with other firms. Partnerships formed with other companies could help Starbucks improve their market presence. For example, forming an alliance with other firms will help the company increase its market share and improve its market distribution. The operations of the business will grow and expand beyond the U.S. borders.

THREATS:

The rising price of coffee beans/dairy products. The company faces a challenge from the fluctuating prices of dairy products like cream, and coffee beans, negatively affecting the supply of the company’s products.

Competition. Starbucks has recently been threatened by the competition from low-cost coffee-sellers. Major restaurants in the U.S. also offer low-cost coffee, for example, McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts. This is a threat posed since the products are easily imitable. Other companies can easily copy the look, taste, and feel of the company’s products.

Independent coffeehouse movements. Starbucks faces the challenge of limitations imposed by small coffeehouse movements that limit the operations and expansion of the coffeehouse business to form multinational coffeehouse chains. This threatens the operations and profitability that could be attained from the coffeehouse business.

How the above information will be used:

The information presented from the SWOT analysis will be used for various purposes. For instance, the information regarding the weakness and threats can be merged to form a countermeasure to such weaknesses and threats. For example, the weakness of the imitability of Starbucks’ products and the threat of imitation of the products and subsequent threat of competition can be eliminated when the company analyzes the information and makes an informed judgment. For example, the company could aggressively innovate its products, so that they are impossible to imitate. Patenting and copyrighting could help the company protect itself from legal action and the imitability of its products.

The company could also use the information to identify the challenge of high pricing points and subsequent competition from other industry giants to come up with a solution that will help reduce competition. For example, the company could use better pricing strategies to attract more customers. More customers from all over the country could help the company attract more customers, increasing the sales and revenue from the company. More customers could also help improve the brand image and increase the customer base. Furthermore, using a pricing strategy like bundle selling could help Starbucks eliminate the threats posed by low-cost sellers offering competition. This could greatly benefit the company.

Finally, the information can be used to identify ways through which the company could use creative branding and marketing to build the company’s image as among the top contributors to community development. This way, the company could eradicate the challenges of limitations imposed by the independent coffeehouse movements that restrict the U.S. based coffeehouses from forming multinational chains. The company can use the developed brand image to eradicate the sociocultural opposition that may be imposed against the company.