A giant coffee seller such as Starbucks will close 600 stores and cuts 12,000 full and part-time position. Starbucks said this due to teh economic downturn and increasing competition. The coffee seller, bracing for its first full-year profit decline since 2000, has been grappling with the slowing U.S. economy and consumer spending at the same time that major competitors like McDonald's Corp have begun attacking its core business.
Those critics complained that the company had overbuilt in the United States particularly in major urban areas like Manhattan, where it is not unusual to see several Starbucks in a single city block.
The Seattle-based company was also an aggressive builder in California and Florida. Those states experienced red-hot growth during the housing boom and have been hardest hit by the U.S. housing downturn.
Oppenheimer & Co analyst Matt DiFrisco said he was "very encouraged" by the company's announcement.
"It helps remove some of the cannibalization that the company brought on itself," said DiFrisco, who also has an "outperform" rating on Starbucks shares. The number of unemployed in us today will increase, and the stock price of Starbucks increased but analytics say that this action will further worsen the U.S. economy and steep increases in gas and food prices would put additional pressure on the company known for its premium-priced coffee drinks, such as $3 to $4 lattes.
Can you briefly explain the concept of Blue Ocean Strategy?
In order to share a useful information, I decided to post this article taken from 1blueoceanstrategy.blogspot.com.
We use the terms red and blue oceans to denote the market universe. Red oceans are all the industries in existence today – the known market space. In the red oceans, industry boundaries are defined and accepted, and the competitive rules of the game are known. Here companies try to outperform their rivals to grab a greater share of existing demand. As the market space gets crowded, prospects for profits and growth are reduced. Products become commodities, and cutthroat competition turns the red ocean bloody. Hence, the term “red” oceans.
Blue oceans, in contrast, denote all the industries not in existence today -- the unknown market space, untainted by competition. In blue oceans, demand is created rather than fought over. There is ample opportunity for growth that is both profitable and rapid. In blue oceans, competition is irrelevant because the rules of the game are waiting to be set. Blue ocean is an analogy to describe the wider, deeper potential of market space that is not yet explored. Like the “blue” ocean, it is untouched, vast and deep in terms of profitable growth.
Blue ocean strategy provides a systematic approach to break out of the red ocean of bloody competition and make the competition irrelevant by reconstructing market boundaries to create a leap in value for both the company and its buyers. Instead of competing in existing industries, blue ocean strategy equips companies with frameworks and analytic tools to create their own blue ocean of uncontested market space. The book, however, tackles not only the challenge of how to create blue oceans, but also the equally important challenge of how to execute these ideas in action in any organization.
Normally these things are not known to common people, only high ranking officials of companies are involve here. Products like Apple's Ipod, LG's chocolate bar phones, Level-up-games.com's Ragnarok, Nintendo DS & Wii, Sony Playstation, and many more are being offered to the public have gone through the evaluation of the companies if the Blue Ocean Strategy approach were successfully achieved.
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Lately someone asked me how to make people subscribe to his posts. In answer to that, I will give these tips on "How to increase your RSS feed".
Educate your Readers:
Making your readers know that subscribing to your feeds will keep them updated to your posts. And tell them that it will be convinient for them.
Make your posts interesting:
Readers are bored if the 2 sentences of your posts are not interesting, and in effect of that no one will ever read the rest of your post. And no one will subscribe to your feeds because they will not be wanting to read any of your posts anymore.
Make your Feed chicklet visible:
Placing your feed chicklet on the "welcome Page" is very enticing and attractive. It is also the same principle as to billboard ads. Making it visible to readers "want to" click it.
Comment Trick:
In posting comment to other blogs, instead of placing your blog's URL place your feed's URL. It will surely increase your feed count in just a month.
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A marketing plan is not a marketing plan unless it has any basis of proof through researching. It has a big chance for failure if your plan is based on guesswork. This is why some Marketing Practitioners and even Marketing Managers get fired by their bosses. They cannot afford to fail because it will cost them the money of the company and even their jobs too, and yet they assumed that the target market is like this and like that, the market is favorable for them, etc. It is not just a necessity but a crucial thing for your marketing plan to take effect.
An exmple of a successful marketing plan is the "1st Day High" of Unilevel Philippines. Before the Marketing Campaign was lauched, they had undergone a series of marketing research. And the research says that the most critical time for a student is 1st day of school. Because it is the time for a student where you will meet new friends. But waht if your underarm is wet, it will be a big turn-off. Remember "firs impressions last". And by the time the campaign shoot off, many caught its attention and made it very successful. And for my last words, removing guesswork in your marketing plan does not necessarily mean that it is a 100% success, it only reduces your chance of failing.
In marketing, there is a term as diversification. Diversification is adding a new product in your product line that will result in an addition of your target market. In blogging, as others use the word niche, target market is the same as your niche. If you diversify your niche, you will also increase your number of readers. This kind of marketing strategy is effective, but don’t let your posts be way off your original niche. As I’m doing now, I have posts about Filipino Traits and culture and at the same time I’m doing posts about the relationship of marketing to blogging.
You might ask, is there a relation between the two. Yes, because the first one shows the right Filipino individual to blog.