Marketing Strategy

Student’s Name

Institutional Affiliation

Course Tittle

Professor’s Name

Bate

Starbucks Crowdsourcing Site

Introduction

When well defined, it signifies the collection of opinions, information, or work from a group of individuals, generally obtained from the internet. Crowdsourcing work allows organizations to save money and time while tapping into individuals with diverse thoughts and skills from all over the universe. For several years now, a great number of different websites have emerged that provide crowdsourcing services. They aim to utilize or take advantage of the massive number of anonymous personnel worldwide available to finish tasks. Crowdsourcing usually impacts marketing strategy by outsourcing idea generation to customers (Acar, 2018). Using Crowdsourcing by organizations for their marketing communication message offers insight into the minds of the consumers. It facilitates marketing the products or services for maximum impact in the market. Consumers can provide, check, and talk over submitted thoughts together with workers from several working departments (Hsiang & Rayz, 2020). Once a site is a crowdsourcing implement, it becomes a marketing research approach that brings clients’ primacies to light, social media users, and an operational internet promotion tool. By turning a large group of individuals for ideas and solutions, Crowdsourcing can give a lot of advantages over internal processes (Cui et al., 2020). Businesses can get access to great views, in addition, to engage the clients and drive marketing buzz. This paper evaluates the Starbucks website because it provides crowdsourcing services.

Ways by Which Starbucks utilized consumers in terms of Crowdsourcing

In March 2008, an American coffee company and chain known as Starbucks Corporation (Starbucks), found in Seattle, Washington, launched its crowdsourcing medium known as My Starbucks Idea. At that time, it was viewed as something of a novelty. In Starbucks site, Crowdsourcing entails obtaining the needed services, ideas, or content by asking contributions from an enormous group of individuals, and particularly from the online community, which is what they set out to perform. The company has launched some of the most successful products from the ideas through the ‘My Starbucks Idea’ initiative. Starbucks has used Crowdsourcing to experience skinny beverages, cake pop treats, and best splash sticks that prevent the hot drinks from pouring out during transport. The corporation tries to imitate the coffee shop barista experience virtual by building relationships and engaging with consumers. The firm offers their clients understanding into what they are doing and makes them feel like insiders through their ‘My Starbucks Idea.’  

The site is transparent and straightforward. Once an individual enters the website, it provides several options to pick. A person can submit a new concept through the website. One can also view ideas provided by other individuals. Customers can also check perceptions in action and those that have been proposed to strategic decision-makers. The corporation has a group of idea partners who read all the concepts after customers submit them. They then collect the most standard, innovative ideas and then give them to strategic decision-makers to decide how to put the ideas into operation (Cui et al., 2020). ‘My Starbucks Idea’ has had outstanding achievements. It has also been the source of ideas for cakes such as Hazelnut Macchiato, Cake Pops, free Wi-Fi, and many others. By the year 2013, when they celebrated the fifth anniversary of the site launch, the site has generated not less than 150,000 ideas and implemented 277 of those ideas.

Crowdsourcing’s Influence on Starbucks’ Marketing Strategy

Starbucks is now considered a pioneer in the online crowdsourcing space and a perfect example to follow. My Starbucks Idea generated an online community for this firm that is identical to great coffee and its deeply rooted culture with style. By understanding what their clients want and building upon social, they later removed their page from Shazam’s book to let their loyal consumers realize the skillful sounds they enjoy while supping the Venti Macchiato through the Starbucks smartphone app. Starbucks’ site where they do their business crowdsourcing has been actively engaging consumers for more than three years. It allows clients to submit their thoughts for better products, bettering the customer’s experience, and defining new community participation, in addition to other categories. The corporation frequently polls its clients for their preferred products and has a leaderboard to check which consumers are very active in poll participation, comments, and ideas.

Impact of Mobile and Social Media Campaigns on Marketing Strategy

Social media and mobile campaigns have an important influence on Starbucks’ marketing strategy. The firm likes to take risks with their social media promotions but attempts to put the letdowns lesser. They use social media, such as Twitter, Facebook, My Starbucks Idea, and YouTube, to interact with its consumers and further than that. Mobile and social media campaigns’ objective is to brainstorm how to develop ideas that can quicker and better commercialize their products (Acar, 2018). Social media is a powerful marketing tool because of the high brand exposure and the great return of investment. It has the biggest advantages: it enables Starbucks to reach its targeted audience, respond to their questions, and stay engaged. The mobile and social media strategies ensure that the marketing strategies are more fruitful and functioning towards business objectives.     

Conclusion

The benefits of Crowdsourcing to Starbucks include speed, cost-saving, and the capability to work with individuals who have knowledge that the internal group might not have. Suppose it takes an employee the whole week to complete a task. In that case, the corporation can reduce that duration to a matter of hours by dividing the job into several smaller segments and giving those parts to a group of workers.

Reference

Acar, O. A. (2018). Harnessing the creative potential of consumers: money, participation, and creativity in idea crowdsourcing. Marketing Letters, 29(2), 177-188.

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11002-018-9454-9

Cui, L., Liang, Y., & Li, Y. (2020). The study of customer involved service innovation under the crowdsourcing: A case study of MyStarbucksIdea. com. Journal of Industry-University Collaboration.

https://doi.org/10.1108/JIUC-12-2019-0018

Hsiang, C. Y., & Rayz, J. T. (2020). Predicting popular contributors in innovation crowds: the case of My Starbucks Ideas. Information Technology & People.

https://doi.org/10.1108/ITP-04-2019-0171