Leadership

The Corporate Starbucks team includes 3 CEOs, 2 Group Presidents, 4 Chief Operating Officers, 11 Executive Vice Presidents, 30 Senior Vice Presidents, 1 President, and 1 Chairman Emeritus. Kevin Johnson is the CEO with specialization in the United States branches, Takafumi Minaguchi specializes in the Japan branches, and Belinda Wong specializes in the China branches. These 3 CEOs work together to better the entire company, but they each know the best ways to run stores in their respective countries. The Group Presidents include Cliff Burrows and John Culver with Martin Brok serving as the company President and Howard Schultz as the Chairman Emeritus. Along with the rest of the team these people all work together to keep the company running smoothly and in a way that benefits the consumers.

Some challenges of the company could be the increase in competitors and the lack of new customers. In the past few years Starbucks has suffered from the inability to bring in new customers. They do not have much trouble encouraging customers to return in the future, but the rising amount of competitors has made the search for new customers difficult. This could be due to the lower prices of the competition. Lowering prices is difficult for the Starbucks stores due to the providers of their coffee. Ethically sourced coffee is expensive to companies due to the amount of coffee that is available to be bought by companies. Buying ethically sourced coffee can come as an advantage, however. In recent years consumers have more aware of where their products come from and how they were obtained. This gives companies the chance to change the way that they produce products and how they are seen by their customers.

In recent years Starbucks has been looking to diversify their staff and customer base. This has led to recruitment of those who can sign to deaf or mute customers and more employees that could possibly be turned down in other work environments due to prejudices. Starbucks is generally more private about their recruitment and will not put out specific ads stating that they are hiring. Instead they will have signs inside of their buildings or ads on their website. Their job applications can be found on most job boards, but they are less likely to spend money on special recruitment ads. On occasion they will make a recruitment video, but these are often not very public or easily seen. Once employees are found there are sometimes issues with keeping the employees happy and motivated. Due to the recent layoff of 15% of their employees there will most likely be less people searching for jobs at their stores. This can be combated with management continuing to show appreciation for their current employees and encouraging those employees to do more within their company.