Starbucks' Cultural Penetration in China

Do you drink coffee? If you do, then you will probably be glad to hear your champion Starbucks' expansion to China. It's a special case for Starbucks to expand its market to China for at least two reasons. The first one is the fact that Chinese are typically not coffee drinkers, they drink tea. And secondly, it's the belief that China will become Starbucks' major market right after the United States. Business is business, something of a profitable growth for shareholders. And what Starbucks sees is a potential that is being implemented and should deliver quite a decent return for the investment committed.

Cultural Penetration
It is interesting to understand how Starbucks grab the pressure to penetrate Chinese market due to its cultural preference of drinking tea rather than coffee. More over, the overall 306 stores/coffee places in China gives profit contribution twice as big as that of 2008. There's something of a miracle here, as bringing generations worth of culture to shift is like moving a mountain. The very crucial aspect of this high profile is in fact the youth, Chinese youth. They are the ones that bring all the sales possible through the cultural shift of drinking, from tea to coffee. It is believed that coffee represents change, the change of a lifestyle. And lifestyle promotion is a powerful marketing tool as it uphold some certain image as well as prestige. Just like in fashion industry, no matter how unusual it is, designers' work always get to the top of people's mind.

Lifestyle promotion usually works extremely well with youngsters. This is due to several reasons. One, youngsters are people who are seeking their identity and thus preserve the quality of high determined curiosity that brings them to experimenting new alternatives and ways different to what has believed and practiced by their predecessors. They are the most likely group who will always become the trendsetter for their new ideas influenced by their own environment. This is where the lifestyle commercial promotion kicks in. Product endorsers only need to provide sufficient influence to the expanding minds of youngsters, make it interesting enough to grab the attention of youngsters and they will take the influence into account. It is even more powerful if the influential ideas or ways are attached with certain image, like macho image for Oakley sunglasses perhaps.

Two, youngsters are raw potentials that can literally make change. The late Indonesian president, Soekarno, once said that a hundred youngsters can make him move mountains. Youngsters are filled with passion, something of a fuel to our activities. When passion meets and greets inspiration, the result is a masterpiece. All those influences made by product endorsers are met with the youngsters' passion, no wonder the effect is astounding: changing the culture of a nation, penetrating to its very core. Now China has become a country of coffee drinkers. This may be the beginning of a new leading market for Starbucks, where thousands of stores and coffee places operate within a new-born legacy: cofee enjoyment.

So, cofee everyone?