听力文稿 ( Transcript )
We were invited to open up a store there and we did very well. And all of a sudden, it was reported by a local blower that perhaps we were being disrespectful for the history and culture of china. And I think for us, as soon as it occurred we take a step back instead and said we don’t want to do anything that diluted the integrity of the heritage and cultures of Chinese people. If they want us to leave, we will leave. And I think we did that very respectfully and walked away. I think many other companies probably fought it, but we didn’t. And there are a lot of opportunities for us; we don’t want to do anything that would be inconsistent with how people would view an outsider.
I’d like to open the up to our audience here. The Chanere International Business School and our first question today comes from Robert Zhang.
Ok, thank you, I am Robert, CEIBS, MBA student. I want to ask you a question about the price. Price? Yeah. Starbucks products are expensive, but it also means the fashionable experience, so, can you tell me the reason, can you tell me why people want to keep, want to get premium.
Ah, I wouldn’t say Starbucks products are expensive. I would say it is a premium product and premium price based on what we deliver to the consumer. And the price of the coffee we buy is significantly higher in price than most people did in the coffee business. Then, in terms of what did we do in delivering experience; people really do feel there is good value for the experience and what happens in the Starbucks Store.
Hi, I am Sandi Greens CEIBS exchange student, I am from Germany. We know that China is a nation of tea drinkers, how do you make it a nation of coffee drinkers? And have you ever thought of adding a tea change in your business, in Starbucks team?
That’s a good question. They know where i came from.
I think it’s, I was talking we were coming to china and being respectful for the heritage there. Starbucks is not coming to China to displace the love people have for tea, we were coming to China to create a complementary devirage in experience. So we have been in a tea business for over 30 years but it still less than 1 percent of our sales. I don’t think there is an economic model that I can see from traditional tea store in our future.
Let’s go to Sherley now. Sherley?
My question is we heard about Cappukino and other products that you have introduced. I was wondering what products have not needed or any ideas that did not work?
Well, I will give you one idea that was a big failure. And it was my personal idea. A few years back, I had a brilliant idea that we should publish our magazine and, you know, paper look like a great opportunity for people come into our store. You will see they are reading. We sell lots of great newspapers in our stores, why don’t we just we create magazine? You know there is hundreds of or thousands of magazines outside there that are fantastic, not good enough for us. We will do our own. And we got great partner and it was timing. We invested millions of dollars, fantastic looking magazine, great editors and no one bought it.
We lost our share and I have a rack of those magazines sitting permanently in my own office to try to remind myself and others a very important, I think, business lesson. And that is, it’s one thing to learn from your mistakes, but sometime you have to celebrate them. And one thing I do not want to do in Starbucks is have the kind of failure where we started discouraging creativity and entrepreneurship. I am very fond of encouraging our people to recognize that our success is not entitlement. It has to be earned and we have no right to enduring success until we continue to be relevant and close to the consumer. But there is a real balance here: the world is changing so quickly and the consumer has so many choices. The important thing is not only staying relevant. But the important thing is preserving and enhancing your core business. So, that is not deluded by other things you do and this is an art not a science.