Starbucks: Mobile Order & Pay ------Social Media Brand Monitoring 2

I wrote my first post about the social media analysis of Starbucks two weeks ago. In this second post, I will focus on one campaign- Mobile Order & Pay, which Starbucks started two weeks ago. I will share my new findings and analysis with you to see how Starbucks implement their marketing strategies on social media.

Starbucks Mobile Order & Pay

Starbucks Web site landing page on Oct. 13: Mobile Order & Pay

This is the landing page on Starbucks web site on October 13. As I mentioned in my first post, Starbucks usually changes its landing page to coincide with a current promotion that they might be offering. The new landing page is about Mobile Order & Pay, a new way to order your coffee. From the web site, I know that the Mobile Order & Pay is a new feature on the Starbucks mobile app, which allows customers to place an order remotely and then pick it up at their chosen Starbucks location.

Actually, this is not the first time to introduce this feature for Starbucks. When I searched on Google, I found this mobile ordering app was tested for the first time in Portland, Oregon, last December, and expanded across the Pacific Northwest in March and then reached about 4,000 stores in June of this year. On September 22, Starbucks rolled out the ordering app in more than 7,400 company-owned stores across the nation.

Social media overview

Let’s overview social media platforms in recent 30 days and see how Starbucks let groundswell accept and use this new app feature.

Facebook

Starbucks Facebook feeds on Oct. 13 and Sep. 22

Starbucks Facebook posted two feeds about Mobile Order & Pay on September 22 and October 13, the same time when the company web site launched the same news on landing page. These two feeds received about 20k likes and 2k shares.

I went through part of the comments, and found that most comments were positive, and some were neutral, just giving improving suggestions.

Of course not all comments are good news. A few of them were negative, such as complaining bad experience of using the new app. Starbucks replied every comment as they did before. Different from replying positive comments, Starbucks replied negative comments very carefully, and even gave the replier’s name and other contact information. This was really considerate and let the complainer feel more comfortable.

Twitter

Starbucks Twitter feeds on Oct. 13 and Sep. 22

Starbucks Twitterposted the same message on the days, September 22 and October 13, and received more than one thousand likes and hundreds of Retweets. The response of followers was kind of the same as Facebook. Most of the comments were positive. 
From the response on Twitter and Facebook, I can see that the new Mobile Order & Pay is accepted by majority of Starbucks target customers. And lots of customers are happy to share their experience on social media, and even give good suggestions to help Starbucks improve the app and service.

Instagram & Pinterest

Starbucks Instagram account did not post pictures about Mobile Order & Pay. However, when I searched #mobileorderandpay, I found 649 posts, which came from consumers or employees. The same thing happened on Pinterest.

In addition to these social media platforms on above, Starbucks also released the relative news on Google plus, You Tube and Linkedin.

This is the video on You Tube showing you how to place an order and pay ahead on the Starbucks® app for iPhone® or Android™.

Target Customers Analysis

Who use this Mobile Order & Pay? Yong people, such as the person who likes use smart phone app, or who is keen to try new things; Busy people, for example, busy, harried parents of young children can get in and out of the store more easily. Impatient person, who hates long waiting line; Or even speech and hearing-impaired customers, just clicking on the screen without any communication with others.  

Current Metrics Analysis

From the Google Trends in the past 12 months, we can see the interest in Starbucks Mobile Order in U.S. increased slowly in March, and the curve became sharp after September. I think this is because Starbucks rolled out the app nationwide in September and more and more people are talking about it.

Judging from the data on the Social Mention above, we can see that the strength increased week after week, and the reach range became bigger from 40% to 49% in two weeks, and the time avg. per mention became shorter. This proves that more and more people are talking about Mobile Order & Pay on social media.

In addition, I used Ice Rocket to analyze their blog citations. Just like the graph showed above, I notice that the highest peak of public interest is on September 22. On that day Starbucks rolled out Mobile Order & Pay nationwide, and a lot of news web sites reported this.

In a word, the campaign of Mobile Order & Pay goes well so far. However, Starbucks is not the only coffee shop in the world, especially in new England district in U.S., another popular coffee shop-Dunkin’ Donuts is on the way.

Competitors

When Dunkin’ Donuts began selling lattés and other premium coffee drinks around a decade ago, it was viewed as a direct attack on Starbucks. Now Dunkin’ Donuts has 10,000 stores in 32 countries and sales of nearly $9 billion. Starbucks is even bigger —has $13 billion in sales and more than 20,000 stores on six continents. Both are global brands, but the US is still their stronghold. Let’s look at the map below.

Starbucks has 11,100 stores in the U.S. and Dunkin’ has 7,200 U.S. locations. From the map, we can see Starbucks has more stores than Dunkin’. We can also see that each company dominates the region where it was founded -- Starbucks on the West Coast and Dunkin’ in the Northeast. And both are expanding across the country, from opposite directions.

 From the Google trends, we can see people have more interest on Starbucks than Dunkin’. And from the IceRocket, Starbucks also has more blogs citation than Dunkin’.

Based on the current situation, it seems like Starbucks has more advantages than Dunkin’. However, the competition is not end. Dunkin’ plans to double their stores to 15,000 within the next few years. And more, Dunkin’ Donuts plans to debut mobile ordering technology in the next year. The war between the two coffee giants is just beginning, and would be intense in the next few years.

Conclusion

Starbucks represents a brand that has fully embraced social media. We can find many details that how they achieve the five objectives to engage in the groundswell: listening, talking, energizing, supporting and embracing.

Starbucks has built a huge social platform to listen and talk to their consumers, including company web site, and 6 additional social platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Inatagram, Pinterest, G+, Youtube). They also built an online community My Starbucks Ideas, where customers can submit ideas for better products, improving the customer experience, and defining new community involvement. Many innovative ideas of Starbucks come from here. For example, the idea of Mobile Order & Pay is from the online community as early as three years ago.

Starbucks encourages customer engagement and conversation occurs as naturally as possible. Even though they’re a huge company, they still spend enough time to reply comments considerately and give customers individual attention, not just like a robust. This energizes customers and improves customers’ interaction. Then what the company should do is listening carefully, observing, supporting and embracing new ideas from what they learn. I think this is why Starbucks could continue to focus on growth and innovation. Anyway, whether you’re a fan of the Starbucks product line or not, their social media success is undeniable.