Starbucks Crowd-Sourcing on Social Media - Case Study Example

Name: xxxxxxxxxx Tutor: xxxxxxxxxx Title: Social Media: Starbucks Crowd-Sourcing on Social Media Institution: xxxxxxxxxx Date due: xxxxxxxxxx Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Social Media: Starbucks Crowd-Sourcing on Social Media 3 Introduction 3 The overall impression on mystarbucksidea.com 3 Sincerity of the company in its approach to identifying new products and services 5 Key elements of Starbucks’ crowd-sourcing site 6 How they are more than just an electronic suggestions box 8 Chief concerns voiced by critics of mystarbuckidea.com 9 Validity of the concerns 10 Conclusion 11 Bibliography 12 Social Media: Starbucks Crowd-Sourcing on Social Media Introduction The company mystarbucksidea.com commenced in the year 2008 as a social media site targeting to collect feedback and ideas from its customers. The site provided a forum for sharing: Community members are able to bring up ideas about Starbucks products, community contribution, changes in operations, and services; voting: any person has the ability to create an electronic box, the members are allowed to vote on the ideas; this help the company to prioritize ideas that are most likeable to the various customers. There is also an opportunity for discussion as members comment on the ideas suggested with other members. The partners of the company are allowed to participate in the discussion. The overall impression on mystarbucksidea.com The first impression that one gets from visiting mystarbucks.com is the fact that it a very interactive forum where many ideas are shared from people from all walks of life. It looks like an open forum where every kind of ideas from the public is welcome. An idea concerning new product development and improving the already existing products are posted on the site. According to Starbucks Corporation (2010), customers who are dissatisfied with the services being offered by the company voice their grievances through this site. The ideas are placed into different categories for easy viewing and retrieval. These categories include Product ideas, Experience ideas, Involvement ideas, Question of the Day, and Leader-board. Also shown are the most recent ideas and ideas in action. For instance under the Ordering, Payment & Pickup there is someone suggesting the elimination of ‘treat receipt’ for Gold Card Users and other customers respond to the post. After this post there are many comments given out by different customers or users, and every comment including the initial comment receives a vote from the pool of customers. From this comments Starbucks is able to tell want kind of services that should be improved and which one do not serve the customers well enough to be eliminated. In a competitive world with ever increasing technological development, it is important for any company to stay in touch with the needs and wants of its customers. Anderson (2010) points out that the consumers are the ones that direct the pace at which innovations and new product development are being done in companies. It is very apt for Starbucks to find out if the consumers are satisfied with the kind of services it provides. In one of the post by a customer, he requests the company to cut back on products and not services. Any of the ideas that are generated by the customers are put up for a vote to determine how popular they are. By doing this, it means that the best suited ideas will be picked for evaluation to determine their viability before they are implemented. In other forum it can be seen there are requests by customers to open Starbucks branches in some places. This is a great opportunity for the company to conduct a market research to determine the anticipated market size of a targeted area (Starbucks Corporation, 2010). Sincerity of the company in its approach to identifying new products and services Any company has to do a market research to determine the viability of any ideas generated before the development of new products. One consumer may suggest a certain idea but has to be carefully considered with regard to the prevailing market forces, of demand, supply, competition, technology, government policy and regulation. The company may be sincere in identifying new products and services but again, it has to comply with other external forces such as government policy and regulation. A customer may suggest a certain idea to be considered for implementation, the idea may be good but it is not practical to implement it in the crude form. The company has to go an extra mile and audit the idea and adjust it to a form that can be implemented. The company is sincere in its approach of identifying new products and services but it may not implement exactly the way the consumers want the idea to be due to other modalities that have already been mentioned. Moreover, the company may look at several ideas and merge them in order to come up with one mega ideas that will address a multiple of consumer needs (Ramaswamy & Gouillart, 2010). Consequently, it is possible that an implemented idea may not look exactly as the customer suggested, but some elements in the whole ideas will incorporate a variety of ideas from different customers. We have customers who have moved to new areas where Starbuck is not present or does not offer a certain product or service, such customers will post their request on the site and this will be brought to the attention of the company top management. Starbucks is able to tell the satisfaction that is derived by the customers from the services and products it offers. This is very important point in new product development and improving or extending the life cycle of a product. For example, a customer may request the inclusion of a certain flavor in a particular drink; this will help the production department to think about product differentiation. New products can be invented within the same line or alternatively a totally new product can be implemented in the market after intensive research market. It will be credible for any company to implement the ideas that will work. The company has to conduct time to time market survey to determine the viability of the ideas put forward by the customers and the general public as a whole. Every company grapples to remain ahead as far as changing trends in the market are concerned (Lovett, 2011). Key elements of Starbucks’ crowd-sourcing site Starbucks’ crowd-sourcing site has basic elements that make it to stand out as unique and easily recognizable. MyStarbucksidea.com has categories that include Product ideas, Experience Ideas, Involvement Ideas, Questions, Leader-board, Question of the day, Most recent ideas, Featured Starbucks Idea Partners, and ideas in action. Product ideas are further listed as coffee & Expresso Drinks, Frappuccino Beverages, Merchandise & music, food, Starbucks Card, New Technology and other product ideas. The product ideas are concerned the products offered by the company in the market. Any comment on the product is put out to ascertain how many votes it will receive to determine its credibility or viability. About coffee and Express Drinks there is one customer who says he want the quote of coffee cup to be brought back. His idea received 4,580 votes as at twelve noon, on September 19th, 2011. There are other varieties of ideas concerning drinks which receive votes from other members who have signed in on the site. Experience ideas give a forum of raising contentment or dissatisfaction about any of the products or services offered by Starbucks. Experience ideas are further categorized into atmosphere & location, ordering, payment & pickup, and other experience ideas. The suggestion to eliminate ‘treat receipt’ for Gold Card Users is a form of Experience ideas under the category of Ordering, Payment and Pick-up. Involvement ideas are grouped into: Building community, social responsibility, other involvement ideas, and Outside USA launched (Poynter, 2010). Under involvement, for instance, there is a customer who is suggested for Starbucks to hold ‘sample nights’ for people to be provided with an opportunity to come and try new products and flavors. The idea received 240 points as at noon, 19th of September, 2011. The functions present are: Got an Idea? View Ideas and Ideas in Action. The first function allows one to post any ideas under the various categories that are provided by the company. The View Ideas function gives one an opportunity to see the various ideas that have been shared by different people from a variety of location (Ramaswamy & Gouillart, 2010). Ideas in Action are kind of ideas that have been implemented or are the processes of being implemented. Any user has to sign in first before he or she is allowed to make a comment. Besides there is a link that allows the users to follow the activities on the site on face book and twitter, thus giving someone an opportunity to see the recent updates on the site as far as new product ideas is concerned. When someone clicks on view Ideas, more option that include popular ideas, recent ideas, Top All-Time, and comment pops out for selection, thus will choose what category he is interested in. The comments on each idea put forth gives more insight into the situation while the points show the number of votes a certain idea has received. Most recent ideas show how long ago a certain idea has been posted on the site and it will range from seconds to hours. All the ideas in action it has been stated that they came from consumers. The ideas in action are further groups as under review, reviewed, in the works, or launched (Poynter, 2010). How they are more than just an electronic suggestions box The elements of mystarbuckidea.com are more than just an electronic suggestion box since it allows more other functions to be performed on the site. The discussion forum allows people with different views and ideas to bring them up and post them on the site and await reactions from other members. The site is dedicated to sharing various kind of information and it can include pictures, video or audio just to make the customers to be more informed on the products being offered by the company. The market is made up of human beings as opposed to demographic sectors. Hamilton (2010) states that the conversations that are networked are empowering powerful new kinds of organizations that are social and exchange of knowledge to be prevalent. Electronic suggestions box only provide an opportunity to for the members to vote or give suggestions, in this site there is more interaction between the various members. It shows also the ideas that are being implemented and the ones that are still under review. Consequently there is a bigger glimpse into the affairs of the company and how it is delivering the services to the consumers in the desired ways. Chief concerns voiced by critics of mystarbuckidea.com According to Poynter (2010), there is no idea or any noble course that will be put forward without objection or opposition being subjected to it. Starbucks idea of tapping into customer desires and wants has not made everyone happy. It has been noted that the ideas generated by the community are hardly implemented by the company. It has been argued that the ideas that are implemented by the company were initially under consideration by the company management. The huge concern is apparently the credibility of the idea. The critics are concerned that the ideas that are being imposed to the public are ideally generated by the company. Those people with reservation about the company idea of using social media to generate ideas believe that the ideas are mostly censored to portray a positive image of the company. This is seen as a trick on the part of the company to be viewed as good or excellent ion the public eye. This is as a result of the many positive tone of the postings of messages and the absence of any negativity point out to a considerable censorship. If the postings are being censored then consequently the true picture on the ground is not being depicted in the scenario. This is seen to be running against the cultural norm of social web. To counter this kind of accusation another forum for raising grievances within the same site should be put up to portray the reality on the ground. The society has to get the true picture of what is happening in a particular company (Poynter, 2010). Validity of the concerns Some of these concerns that are raised may be true because the general picture presented on the mystarbuckidea.com is overly positive making unrealistic positive image. In a natural setting where the people are allowed to air out their opinion without censorship or conditioning, it will be expected there will be some feedback from the consumers that is not positive. No company is perfect and therefore Starbucks present a rather unrealistic picture of the situation on the ground. It will not be prudent to rubbish everything that the company has tried to do. The ideas may be coming from the customers but it is the same customers who are supposed to raise concerns about inefficacy of the products presented to them. It will be very unnatural that every customer that logs on to the social site has a positive comment about the company. Presenting everything to be positive may not show the true picture of the company. There should be at least something that shows where the company has failed to meet the customer requirement (Kimmel, 2010). Consideration all things, did Starbucks take right approach to engage its customers Starbucks took the right approach to engage its customers owing to emerging trends in the globalised market trends. Information has become a powerful took that everyone including the company’s customers is craving to have. Owing to this marketing are growing to be smarter, more organized and more informed; participation in a market that is networked is able to change people at a fast pace. People who are in a market that is networked have discovered that they obtain more support and information from each other as opposed from the vendors. The Starbuck move was timely to engage the public and particularly its customers in idea generation and getting feedback concerning products and services from them. Through this site, Starbuck is able to tell how well it is serving its customers and the amount of satisfaction the customers are drawing from the products of the company. It has been noted that corporations due not speak in the same voice when it comes to networked conversation. It is vital for companies to avoid sounding hollow, flat and many times inhuman. For Starbucks to establish a rapport with the community at large, in an effort of targeting its customers, it had to come up with this social media site that will provide an interactive forum for the members and particularly the customers. Regardless if the ideas are implemented or not, the point is that the idea is has caught the attention of the organization (Brennan & Schafer, 2010). Conclusion Networking through social media has been growing at an amazing pace. More and more people trust the information that they get from interactive forums as opposed to the corporations themselves. Some of the picture created by a company is full of public relation gimmick that portray a misleading picture. Mystabuckidea.com is a noble idea that expanded the interactive forum between the company and its customers. This assignment has looked at the features portrayed on the Starbucks social media forum and it has gone ahead to analyze the concerns that have been raised by critics about the site. Bibliography Starbucks Corporation, 2010, My Star Buck Idea. Retrieved September from Brennan, B. & Schafer, L, 2010, Branded: How Retailers Engage Consumers with Social Media and Mobility, John Wiley and Sons, London. Poynter, R., 2010, The Handbook of Online and Social Media Research: Tools and Techniques for Market Researchers, John Wiley and Sons, London. Kimmel, A.J, 2010, Connecting with Consumers: Marketing for New Marketplace Realities, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Ramaswamy, V. & Gouillart, F., 2010, The Power of Co-Creation: Build It with Them to Boost Growth, Productivity, and Profits. Simon and Schuster. Hamilton, C., 2010, Communicating for Results: A Guide for Business and the Professions, Cengage Learning, NY. Anderson, E., 2010, Social Media Marketing: Game Theory and the Emergence of Collaboration, Springer. Lovett, J., 2011, Social Media Metrics Secrets, John Wiley and Sons, NY. Read More