As an agency that works for Starbucks company, we were working on creating a Starbucks thermos cup, named “Multi-Seasonal Cup” that can keep a perfect drink temperature for a long period of time by heating it up, ones it gets colder that is needed. We used such a technology as vacuum insulation, spill free cover and heating system, that allows to heat up a drink inside of the cup, plus we used stirring technology, because it is useful and “ Self Stirring Mug” is very popular cup, so it is also a great marketing decision. Also we implemented small temperature screen that shows temperature inside of the thermos and on/off buttons, so ones the temperature is lower than is need, you can turn on the heat.
We were focused on finding reasons of why consumers have to buy our thermos. We decided to have free personalization on a cup, while purchasing through online store, for people who like to be different or as a gift option. Also our cup is removable, so we focused on “Take and Go” concept. In order to do that we decided to implement a battery on the bottom of the cup which will be fully isolated and protected from heat as well as water proof, so our customers do not have to worry about the safety of our product. Cup will go with charger cable, which will be with USB port, so cup can be charged from computer, power bank, socket or by using solar batteries. Also we implemented mixer-stirring function as well, because we are going to target students and people who like outdoor activities, so it is going to be a great choice for such a state as Colorado, because there are mountain which allow people to go hiking and climbing and we understand that ones you go hiking with a backpack filled with different stuff, you don’t want to bring a spoon or something like that with you, so this is very useful tool as well. Also we want to reduce the waste of paper cups and in this way help the environment by bring more attention to this problem and help organizations who support the waste of paper and plastic by investing money from MSC sales. We do it, because according to BBC, more than 99.77 percent of cups don't get recycled.” (BBC News, 2018)In order to find out our target customers we were using Market Segmentation, which is the process of dividing markets or people with similar characteristics into the groups. (Pride, Ferrell, Lukas, Schembri, Niininen and Cassidy, 2018)
By using this method we divided our customers based on geographical, demographics, psychographics and behavioral aspects. Geographical is focused on specific regions or climate conditions, such as country, state, city and climate zone. (Wedel and Kamakura, 2010) We decided to cover the USA and english speaking people, because the number of Starbucks stores in the USA is the biggest in the world, about 14 thousand, as we found out during secondary research using Starbucks website information. (starbucks.com, no data)By picking state we focused on ones with colder climate, so we picked Colorado state with 5.6 millions of people as our target ones, because there are many students and up to 322 Starbucks stores according to Starbucks as showed on the graph( starbucks.com, no data), which make Colorado one of top 10 states with the highest stores number, based on this we can make a connection that Starbucks brand is well recognized in there. According to Muhammad Rizwan, “ The brand name of Starbucks has the power of influence to other people. The reasons are like these. The coffee is a daily habit for many people and many people are affected by Starbucks’s logo. It is possible to get more customers by using the brand name of Starbucks.”(Muhammad Rizwan, 2008, p.4) Also we want to promote our thermos for people who like to do outdoor activities, so this is another reason of why we choose Colorado, there are mountains, so there are many people who are going to Colorado for skiing, climbing, hiking and many other outdoor activities. Also Colorado climate have 6 months cool weather conditions, so people in this regions tend to drink more hot drinks such as coffee or tea in order to worm themselves up. Demographic is based on people dividing by the age, gender, occupation and income characteristics. (Reid and David, 2009) We decided to take people at the age 19-29 males and females as target customers, based on secondary research in Colorado state live 600000 people with this age range. We decided to focus on people in this age, because they are students that graduating from high school, university students and people who recently graduated from university and looking for a job, so all of them are always in a movement. Many students and recent graduates are working on part-time jobs to make some money while studying, a lot of them work outside for example they spread leaflets, so our cup will help to keep them with warm drinks in a cold period of the year. We are making our cup affordable, because we know that students do not have a lot of money, so our cup worth 25 dollars, plus we are going to give an extra discount 10 percent for students and 5 percent for every drink bought and filled in our cup, so people who are really loyal Starbucks customers can even safe money by using MSC. Psychographic is based on the lifestyle of people, there interests, hobbies and possible relationships to product, aimed for better understanding of customers. (Wedel and Kamakura, 2010) Our targets based on people with active lifestyle and outdoor activities interests. We focus on students and young people who value climbing, hiking and active sports, because our cup is a great tool for them, so they can keep warm drinks for few days, while camping