STARBUCKS CORPORATION

Starbucks Corporation

Starbucks Corporation

Starbucks Corporation

Starbucks Corporation (Starbucks or the company) specializes in coffee, and other related beverages, it is a public company and a listed company. The company sells coffee, Italian-style espresso beverages, cold blended beverages and complementary food items, a selection of premium teas, and coffee-related accessories and equipment. Some of the key brands under which the company offers its products include Starbucks, Tazo Tea, Seattle's Best Coffee and Starbucks VIA Ready Brew. At the end of FY2010, Starbucks had 8,833 company-operated stores and 8,025 licensed retail stores worldwide. The company has operations in more than 50 countries. Through a global chain of approximately 17,000 company-owned and licensed stores, Starbucks sells coffee, espresso, teas, cold blended beverages, complementary food items, and other accessories. In addition to its retail operations, the firm distributes packaged coffee, VIA single-serve packets, K-Cups, and tea through grocery stores and warehouse clubs under the Starbucks, Tazo, Seattle's Best Coffee, and Torrefazione Italia brands. Starbucks also markets bottled beverages, ice creams, and liqueurs through various partnerships

As we all know that Coffee has responded to the needs and desires of such a segmented, mobile, and ephemeral market in different ways. Furthermore, knowledge about different blends from different parts of the world bestows important cultural capital on the coffee connoisseur. Furthermore, the distinct global politics of coffee allows concerned consumers to support the sustainability and fairness of the food system. Coffee is the core commodity in fair trade networks. However, the movement that seeks to establish more egalitarian patterns of commerce by linking marginalized producers in the world's South with consumers in the affluent North. By accepting to pay a higher price for their coffee, consumers challenge the value-for-money logic, bring in the equation the public good, and express a moral and political evaluation of the exchange. They effectively “defetishize” the commodity by trying to reestablish a direct relationship with the good exchanged. In 2008, global sales of fair trade coffee amounted to more than four billion dollars, with more than 100 percent growth in the United States and Canada between 2004 and 2007. An important retailer of fair trade coffee is Starbucks. It is the Seattle-based coffee shop chain that in 2010 boasts over 17,000 stores in 50 countries and has capitalized on the interest in specialty coffees to define a new consuming urban lifestyle at the turn of the twenty-first century.

Starbucks sells a variety of coffees with multiple options in size, preparation (iced, espresso, macchiato, decaf, etc.), and accompaniment of pastries and sandwiches, at a decent price/value. The lounge setting, sometimes featuring couches and sofas, designs Starbucks coffee shops into mass-produced replicas of the eighteenth-century European coffeehouses and their relaxed atmosphere for conversation and reading (Miller, 1994). At the same time, the importation of Italian coffee culture, the freedom for customers to hang out in the premises for as long as they want, and even the very ubiquity of Starbucks makes it a close response to the idealized notion of an Italian bar, the community ...