Topic > Analysis of Problems Faced by Starbucks in China and Australia

Nowadays, coffee has become a necessity for most of us. There are new coffee shops opening every day, but there is one that almost everyone has heard of and that is: Starbucks. To date, Starbucks has a net worth of $30 billion and over 24,000 stores in more than 70 countries (Dennison S., 2018; Starbucks Company Profile, 2018). With globalization comes many problems, which Starbucks has not avoided. I chose to talk about Starbucks because, even though it had its fair share of problems going global, it never gave up and always managed to overcome whatever it faced. I will analyze the issues faced in China and Australia using Pankaj Ghemawat's CAGE Framework, which analyzes the cultural, administrative, geographic and economic distance between globalizing organizations and countries. (Pankaj Ghemawat, n.d. )Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Starbucks opened its first store in Seattle, Washington in 1971 (Starbucks Company Timeline, n.d.). It was founded by University of San Francisco students Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, and Gordon Bowker (History of Starbucks, n.d.). It began as a small coffee shop offering freshly roasted coffee, tea, and spices (Starbucks Company Profile., n.d.). In 1981, Howard Schultz joined the Starbucks team as director of retail operations and marketing. After a trip to Italy, he was inspired by the importance of coffee in Italian culture and said: Seeing the sense of community, romance and theater around an espresso... made me realize that Starbucks maybe wasn't in the right place in the world. coffee business. , the real business and opportunity was integrating the drink with creating a destination and sense of community in the store. (B. , 2015) After proposing to create a more community environment, his idea was rejected and Shultz left Starbucks. Years later, in 1987, he ended up buying the company for $3. 8 million dollars (B., 2015). It was then that Starbucks began its turbulent journey towards globalization. Starbucks opened its first store in China in the city of Beijing in 1999. At that time, there was another major Chinese coffee shop called "Shanghai Xingbake Coffee Co." “Xing” is the Mandarin word for “star” and “bake” when pronounced sounds identical to the English word “bucks.” (Davidson, J, 2006) Their logo was very similar to Starbucks' famous green and white circular logo, seen here: Source: Starbucks When Starbucks discovered the famous Chinese coffee, it immediately took them to court for copyright infringement in 2003. Starbucks ended up winning the case in 2005 and Xingbake Coffee Co. had to pay $62,000 in compensation (Davidson, J, 2006; Beijing, DE, 2013). The Chinese administration has always struggled with copyright infringement cases. “The absence of copyright law has made it nearly impossible for U.S. companies to protect proprietary technical information provided through licensing agreements.” (Schloss, PA, 1990) The administrative distance between China and the United States of America is demonstrated here. Starbucks eventually overcame this problem and continued to spread its coffee shops. Today there are over 3,400 stores in more than 140 cities in China. (Starbucks in China, n.d.) However, when expansion into Australia began, it was not so lucky. Seven years after opening its first store in Sydney in 2000, Starbucks generated losses of $105 million, forcing it to close 61 locations in 2008. (Turner, A., 2018) Coffee plays an important role in Australian culture, mainly due to large immigration.