More coffee marketing babble...

I find the challenge facing Starbucks to be fascinating. Declining sales, slowing growth of stores, and slumping stock prices.

Starbucks has approached these challenges with basically an eye towards marketing:
1) New products - a new line of espresso and single cup machines are on the way; a new energy drink is on the way; new health drinks are being tested; a new coffee blend that will be standard in all stores
2) Customer experience - retraining of their baristas; grinding beans in the store so stores smell like coffee; reducing store introductions to avoid being "McDonalds" of the coffee world (too late)
3) Rebuild customer loyalty - a new frequent user card is being introduced

Essentially, Starbucks is fighting to again become the "local" coffee shop. The real interesting thing is that they have a huge leg up on the competition with built in loyal following that I firmly believe Starbucks could only turn off by hitting them with sticks as they enter... maybe not even then. Of course the local coffee shop has huge advantages as well: they are underdog (never under estimate the power of being the underdog, just ask John McCain), they are often higher quality, and they are usually run by friendly, nice, folks who are engaged in the community. They may not be able to compete with Starbucks on marketing power, but they sure as hell can compete on the customer experience.