Digital Marketing Strategies of Starbucks in Australia

This article discusses the digital marketing strategies used by Starbucks in Australia, including their mobile app, social media platforms, and digital coupons. It also explores the reasons for their failure in the Australian market and their competitor brand McDonald's.

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Digital Marketing
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Table of Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................2
The Digital Marketing Strategies That Have Been Used By the Brand.......................................................2
Why the brand has been unsuccessful with their digital marketing strategies..............................................3
A Competitor Brand....................................................................................................................................4
References...................................................................................................................................................5

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Introduction
Starbucks is an American coffee company, was founded in 1971 and it is spread across
67 countries, and there were 27,339 stores around every part of the country. Starbucks
introduced its first store in Australia in the year 2000 in Sydney’s CBD, and it has 34 coffee
stores in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, and the Gold Coast. It was owned by Withers Group
chief executive Warren Wilmot of Australia; he aims to make Starbucks the most reliable coffee
chain in Australia. Coffee houses of Starbucks offer more than the excellent coffee across the
world. In Australia, their head branch is located in Mount Waverly, Victoria.
Current offerings
Starbucks serve fresh roasted whole bean coffees, fresh Frappuccino with some delicious
sandwiches, pastries, micro-ground instant coffee (VIA), fresh juices, they are providing voucher
code for December, from these voucher customer will get discounts, free delivery or gifts on
their order (Järvinen and Karjaluoto, 2015). Some offers are seasonal including their Pumpkin
spice latte.
Positioning and Target Audience of the Brand
Starbucks positioning and targeting comprise marketing decisions direct to identify a
group of people among the public as customers in future for business and target through examine
their needs and wants. Starbucks uses positioning are as follows-
 Mono segment positioning
 Adaptive positioning
 Standby positioning
The Digital Marketing Strategies That Have Been Used By the Brand
To increase its digital relationship with the customers, this brand is applying new ideas to
draw the attention of digitally registered customers. Starbucks coffee chain is offering its mobile
order & pay ahead, collect stars and earn rewards, find stores and much more through Starbucks
application to all the customers and providing Wi-Fi at its stores for the public. Also, Starbucks
is recreating its Frappuccino Happy Hour through the digital coupons (Kannan, 2017). For direct
digital relationships, Starbucks updated program will sign customers up and promote different

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types of beverages throughout the year. Starbucks Company is increasing its digital reach further
its loyal rewards member to connect with many customers of non-rewards as possible. This
brand app provides information about all Australian closest stores, its directions, and timing
about the latest products — some of the method used by Starbucks to increase and maintained
their market position, including buying competitors' leases, operating a loss intentionally.
Current website of Starbucks- www.starbucks.in
Social media platforms used by the brand are Instagram with 3.5k followers in Australia
and 17.2 million worldwide, Facebook has 33 million fans, Twitter has 3.5 million followers,
Pinterest attracted 76,000 followers, and Google+ has more than a million followers (Karjaluoto,
Mustonen and Ulkuniemi, 2015).
Why the brand has been unsuccessful with their digital marketing strategies
When Starbucks introduced in Australia, it had a massive competition with other cafes
that supply a similar product of equal and better quality. Starbucks failure’s reason in Australia
are as follows:-
 Advanced Coffee culture- Starbucks had failed to understand Australian's
advanced coffee culture and consumption.
 Aggressive Growth strategy- Starbucks doesn’t express its original
business model across the market.
 Staff differences- The ability of the Starbucks employees often compared
to the staff of the small brand and coffee shop and the public feel that workers were not
knowledgeable about the things they are selling.
 Understanding the market- Australians, after giving Starbucks a try failed
to realize that why Starbucks charged more for its coffee.
 Product taste and price- In every business two things are significant-
Product and price. Starbucks failed to make their product market suitable and keep the
price reasonable.
 Advertisement-Starbucks failed to communicate its brand as they did not
advertise in the mass media. Advertising should be done for the promotion of the brand
and introduce the actual product to the customers.

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A Competitor Brand
McDonald's is one of the top competitors of Starbucks throughout the Australian market
segments. It specializes in coffee as well as in food and other beverages too. Currently, it is one
of the leading fast food restaurant chains. To promote the app on websites, McDonald's bought
mobile banner ads for the customers. Its application was downloaded over 45000 times while its
PR campaign received 600 million worldwide and this is considered as one of the successful
digital strategies (Stephen, 2016).
McDonald's attract customer through its unique coffee beverages while Starbucks is
trying to pull market share from the small premium roasters. Where Starbucks charged high
prices, McDonald's offers various options on coffees and drinks (Taiminen and Karjaluoto,
2015). They both are competing with each other because they both are selling the same products
and famous for its coffee. McDonald app allows the customer to make changes that can't always
manage while ordering in the store. Customers can choose to pick up their foods from a store
which they ordered through mobile order. McDonald does not promise customers anything about
an enjoyable experience, etc. that Starbucks does (Tiago and Veríssimo, 2014). McDonald's app
is perfect for the customers as its speed of delivering services is very fast.

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References
Järvinen, J. and Karjaluoto, H., 2015. The use of Web analytics for digital marketing
performance measurement. Industrial Marketing Management, 50, pp.117-127.
Kannan, P.K., 2017. Digital marketing: A framework, review and research agenda. International
Journal of Research in Marketing, 34(1), pp.22-45.
Karjaluoto, H., Mustonen, N. and Ulkuniemi, P., 2015. The role of digital channels in industrial
marketing communications. Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, 30(6), pp.703-710.
Stephen, A.T., 2016. The role of digital and social media marketing in consumer
behavior. Current Opinion in Psychology, 10, pp.17-21.
Taiminen, H.M. and Karjaluoto, H., 2015. The usage of digital marketing channels in
SMEs. Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, 22(4), pp.633-651.
Tiago, M.T.P.M.B. and Veríssimo, J.M.C., 2014. Digital marketing and social media: Why
bother? Business Horizons, 57(6), pp.703-708.