Thursday, March 19, 2009

MyStarbucksIdea.Com

Does MyStarbucksIdea.Com actually make Starbucks a more valuable company or materially improve the value of the company's stock? Or is this just another self-pat on the back by those who email us singing the site's praises. It says it's been a year and 70,000 ideas later. But other than oatmeal for breakfast we have seen little. The company value/stock meter has not moved anywhere near the $22 lows it would hover before rebounding to thye $40s during the company's rapid growth phase. So who's still working on the real problem Starbuck's needs to address? "What do you do when the strategy that at one time made you all powerful has now rendered you a commodity? Obviously the solution will not be found by incumbent straight forward linear thinking problem solvers. As always in these situations the answer will be found in the realm of Perceptual Innovation that once again changes consumer habits and practices. A new product won't fix this. It's a consumer perception/positioning issue where the best answers are always abstract and so obvious they're just not obvious.
Posted by H. Martin Calle at 11:26 AM
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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm also skeptical about this type of initiatives.

When brands open an idea portal like this, they
1- introduce a biais and you listen to the people that want to talk and these might not be your customers nor your target customers
2- you open the door to online "lobbies"

I've written a short post on that looking at Dell and Obama: http://blog.ecairn.com/2009/01/22/dell-ideastorm-and-obama/

I think Starbuck should be better off listening to their target customers where they hang out and CREATE insights from what it discover.

Thanks

11:09 AM

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