Starbucks

Introduction
Companies today face a great deal of pressure from factors beyond their influence, and thus always strive to find new ways of coping with internal and external factors in order to stay ahead of the game.   Starbucks is a very good example of a company that uses many factors to stay on top of the market, and illustrates how a company can stay at the forefront in its prolonged effort to be a leader in the coffee business. Starbucks was founded in 1971, and in 1987 had 17 stores, but by the end of 2006, Starbucks had12, 440 stores world-wide. Their total net revenue for 2006 was $7.8 billion (starbucks.com/about us, 2008). By examining Starbucks’ rate of progress, one can see they must be doing something right.   Innovation, diversity and ethics are three main factors that Starbucks Corporation uses to excel in the market, be it national or global. By examining how Starbucks uses these factors in their management, it becomes clear how they have achieved such lasting success.
Planning
Planning is the first step a company takes towards achieving set goals. During the planning process, internal and external factors are considered in order to accomplish the company’s goals. The impact of innovation during the planning process would be shown by making sure to always have new ideas, which puts the company ahead of the competition and makes useful changes beneficial to customers, employees and stakeholders. Starbucks found during their pursuit for making affordable healthcare available for employees, they need to be among other things, more innovative.
According to Starbucks’ official website, diversity is their core value, which means that in the planning stage it was a leading factor for the way business should be done. Diversity in a company can occur in their human resources and products. When making diversity part of a company’s core values as Starbucks did, whatever is included in the planning process must include diversity. In their “Corporate Social...