Companies can attain competitive advantage when the value chain is heightened by organizing these activities to gain profit greater than the cost of performing the value chain activities.
Primary Activities
Inbound Logistics
This involves Starbucks agents going to coffee farmers with the best coffee beans in the world where they purchase and make contracts with Farmers. Most of these farmers are from Africa, which Starbucks still pays, a reasonable fair price for the beans with also makes them an ethically right company. This is the start of the supply chain management operation.
Operations
Starbucks is currently operating in more than 50 countries worldwide, providing the great Starbucks product and experience to a variety of people. Starbucks recently has opened operations to selling bags of their premade coffee in stores so consumers can have their own Starbucks at home with their own coffee maker. This Activity is a core competence, there aren’t any coffee companies that operations are like Starbucks, they are in a league of their own and that is why they dominate the industry.
Outbound Logistics
Outbound logistics is Starbucks selling their product from their restaurant locations, as stated before outbound logistics as begun in retail supermarkets such as Wal-Mart and Meijer so consumers can make their own Starbucks from home.
Service
Service is a big part of the Starbucks industry; they feel that’s how they separate themselves from places like Bigby is by the customer service. They train their employees to go the extra mile to make sure customer satisfaction is at its highest.
Marketing
When you think about it you don’t see very many Starbucks commercials on TV. That is because they do not invest too much in marketing like companies such as Pepsi and Coca-Cola who invest millions into marketing. Starbucks relies mostly on word of mouth and gaining long term customers from them having a great experience in