Starbucks’ Pricing Strategy In China And Benefit Analysis

With the rapid development of China’s economy,people’s living standard continues to improve.At the same time,the consumption level has gradually upgraded.Besides the satisfaction of the basic material needs,people also put forward to the higher requests for the spiritual needs.As coffee is regarded as one of the world’s three largest drinks,it bears naturally the great expectations.Against such a backdrop,the research of coffee has been rising slowly.After the agricultural era,industrial era,and today’s information age,the coffee industry has developed from supplying coffee beans and coffee drinks to provide the coffee service.The best coffee service enterprise-Starbucks has attracted the attention of academics.In 1971,Starbucks was only a small shop operating coffee beans in Seattle of the United States,but it has already owned more than 20000 stores at the present,its value exceeding $70 billion,which is called the miracle of the coffee industry.Having settled in China,the good momentum of Starbucks has been still continuing.The number of stores has risen more than 2000 from the first one in 1999,outperforming most competitors.This article makes a comprehensive analysis on Starbucks’ pricing strategy and the income analysis in Chinese market,hoping that it will offer reference for China’s catering enterprises.What’s more,it’s relatively significant for promoting the internationalization process of Chinese catering enterprises.This paper adapts to some theories and refers to relevant data.In the earlier stage,it carries on the related introduction of Starbucks,and then describes the general pricing strategies of Starbucks in China and analyzes the price differences between the domestic market and foreign market,highlighting distinguished features of Chinese market’s pricing strategy.The research of the middle stage is focused on the specific and detailed analysis of Starbucks’ s pricing strategy,consisting of three sections.The first is to analyze the influencing factors,being divided into brand positioning,relevant cost,consumption demand,and competitor’s prices.Then it is to express the most commonly-used six pricing steps.Finally,the specific pricing strategies conclude four aspects,which are cognitive value pricing,product line pricing,reverse complementary pricing and targeted promotion pricing,respectively.In the late stage,based on the explosions of revenue,cost,profits,this paper further proves the rationality of Starbucks’ pricing strategy in the Chinese market.At the end,this article explores the advantage of Starbucks’ pricing strategy;meanwhile,it also put forward the possible problems in the current or future cases,such as the rigid pricing system,the weakened brand characteristic,the dilute coffee experience and so on.In addition,it also gives targeted solutions.Through deepening the thinking of Starbucks’ pricing strategy,the paper summarizes some enlightenment for the Chinese catering chain enterprises.Enterprises will insist on building their own brand image,realize the huge commercial value behind the brand,and make it develop fully.It is established on the constant product innovation,as the product is the root of the enterprise management,which is an eternal truth.In addition,the current consumption market takes customers as center,so enterprises can’t ignore the customer demands;after all,consumers are their archetypal parents.As we all know,service plays an important role in the catering industry.In modern times,people’s consumer psychology has been gradually mature,they no longer put attention to single merchants,being eager to the added value of products-service,and thus it’s extremely essential for catering enterprises to pursuit staff’s service characteristics.