Starbucks Misses… But Still Has Diehard Loyalists
By now most everyone has heard about Starbucks’ withdrawal of its free iced coffee offer. Competitor Caribou Coffee jumped at the opportunity to turn Starbucks decision to its own gain, offering to accept the e-mail coupon on September 8th in exchange for a free medium Cold Press iced coffee, iced Americano or iced tea.
Legally, Starbucks’ withdrawal is probably on solid footing. For example, Jan Margosian, spokeswoman for Oregon’s Department of Justice consumer protection unit, stated that "there’s not a statute that covers a mistake… The fact that they tried to honor it [the coupon] and it was too much isn’t a violation of consumer-protection laws."
Still, Starbucks may have caused a raised eyebrow or two, at a minimum regarding the question of why an internationally successful and marketing-savvy company didn’t anticipate that the e-mail, even with instructions regarding to whom it could be forwarded, wouldn’t immediately take on a viral life of its own and be shared beyond the originally intended sphere of distribution.
And, as do many large companies, Starbucks has its share of critics (represented in part by the oh-so-subtle I Hate Starbucks blog) and its labor issues (see the IWW Starbucks Workers Union).
Nevertheless, diehard loyalists won’t let the coupon snafu prevent them from flocking to Starbucks to get their fix.
With the company’s new Coffee Conversations podcast debuting today, blogs such as Jim Romenesko’s Starbucks Gossip and Starbucks Everywhere (chronicling Winter’s — yep, that’s his real name — attempt to visit every licensed Starbucks in the world) going strong, and new entries such as the unique Sketchnap (created by a "caffeine-fueled Starbucks’ doodler committed to coffee, napkins and sketching" — check out the pictures, doodles and other stuff) joining in, there’s no reason to believe that the Starbucks brand will take a serious hit.
I can’t believe that a company as large as Starbucks didn’t anticipate an e-mail coupon becoming a viral nightmare over the Internet. Good for Caribou for deciding to accept this coupon, I hope that this helps them in the long run. It is just so hard for me to fathom that someone in the Starbucks Corporation didn’t see this coming. Don’t they have people who are in charge of thinking this sort of thing through? I wonder if they had done anything similar to this before and gotten a different reaction? It almost makes me laugh a little bit to think about the reaction when they first figured out what was happening.
Honestly I think their PR department deserves to be credited considering I hadn’t heard anything about it until reading this blog and the link in it. Although I have to admit I am a busy college student who doesn’t always catch the news, but I think I definitely would have heard about this one. Anyways I don’t think Starbucks is going to lose anything because of all this and maybe Caribou can gain a little something- that would be nice for everyone.
A bit of a strange story indeed. But I tend to agree, Andrea: I don’t expect Starbucks will suffer too much from ths incident. Now the only thing they have to do in order to convince me, is serve real coffee…
It’ll also be interesting to see how many people actually go to Caribou on Friday, and whether they become regular customers afterwards. I’ve bought at both places, basically depending on which one was most convenient at the time.
This is the first time I have read or heard about Starbuck’s offering a a coupon for a free Starbuck’s iced coffee. I am shocked they would send out the coupon over an e-mail and not expect it to become a viral nightmare. I would expect that with such a large marketing department, they would have seen this coming. I think Caribou was smart to take up the coupon offer though. It seems it would only help their business. It will be interesting to see if people become regular customers at Caribou after this incident, but something tells me people will continue to go to Starbuck’s. I don’t think this coupon incident will hurt Starbuck’s. People want their coffee in the morning, and people will always associate good coffee with Starbuck’s.
Starbucks certainly did not do their research on this one. It’s hard to believe that the coffee giant didn’t think of this. I know people who will cut out coupons from magazines and scan them to make copies for their friends. I can’t imagine how easy it was to forward this coupon email to everyone on your buddy list, whether they were supposed to get the coupon or not. Caribou coffee sure did think fast on responding to the matter. They got great media and word of mouth exposure. Taking Starbucks coupons was a good way to get Starbuck’s customers to try their product, which is very similiar. Unfortunately, I think you are right, Starbuck’s won’t take a financial hit from this. They have so many loyal customers looking to get their caffeine fix from a $7.00 cup of coffee that there is no way they would leave Starbuck’s for refusing a coupon.