There’s been a lot written lately about the downfall of Starbucks, the world’s largest coffee retailer. Just a few years ago Starbucks coffee couldn’t do anything wrong but today many think it has grown too fast and gotten too big. Overexpansion, oversaturation, dismembered product extensions have all made for the siren’s fall from grace. Others might argue that the current CEO, Howard Schultz, took his eye off the ball by dabbling in too many extracurricular activities. For one, Mr. Schultz is currently considering suing the group of investors that purchased the Seattle Supersonics from the coffee billionaire and is now threatening to move the team to Oklahoma City.
During the company’s stellar rise, Starbucks has bore the brunt of many jokes, but the company’s ambitious growth model to cover the globe with 40,000 stores seems to be on hold presently as this has lead Starbucks to build stores fairly close to existing locations, prompting one comedian to exclaim “I saw Starbucks building a new store inside of a Starbucks.” The latest controversy is the company’s use of a bare-chested siren as its logo. However, this logo has been in place at the coffee giant’s first location at Pike’s Peak Market in downtown Seattle for almost 40 years. It’s only after Starbucks adopted a “get back to its roots” campaign utilizing the logo has the company received strong opposition from religious groups.
In addition to a sluggish economy brought about by a miserable housing market, a severe credit crunch, and massive job losses Starbucks also finds itself battling it out for customers with an opponent almost 3 times its size in McDonald’s. It was a few years ago when both companies decided to muscle in on each other’s turf, Starbucks getting into the breakfast business, and McDonald’s upgrading its coffee offering to steal consumers away from Starbucks. There doesn’t appear to be a clear-cut winner in a coffee wars, but in less than a year Starbucks has retreated its lofty breakfast ambitions citing a desire to get back to the its roots. One of the things Mr. Schultz pointed out during his return as CEO is the retail locations have lost a bit of their soul and a lot of their smell, and he wants to make sure the company focuses on what he feels they do best, and that’s make coffee.
Starbucks has always been known as a meeting place for business people, students, moms with kids, or just a place to get away at relax for a while. This atmosphere was created intentionally by what Mr. Schultz terms “the third place”, or a place one could go between work and home. Of all the things that Starbucks corporate can focus on at the store level, it’s making the customer feel welcome again.
One of the initiatives Starbucks is undertaking to achieve that goal is the rollout of free Wi-Fi in all of its locations. Starbucks has partnered in the past with T-Mobile but has opted out of that contract and has chosen at&t as its new partner. Starbucks is also scaling back its music offerings by giving up day-to-day control of its music division to another company, all in the hopes of being able to focus on its core business and get back some more of the 44 million people a week that used to pass through its doors. Mr. Schultz recently commented that that this is the worst economic environment the company has ever operated in and that the people who used to splurge on four dollar lattes are seriously feeling the pinch of four dollar a gallon gasoline.
But all is not lost, with over 16,000 stores worldwide Starbucks still commands a presence in any marketplace, and throws off significant cash from its operations. Don’t be surprised if Mr. Schultz keeps one eye open to acquire weaker chains at home and abroad as buying earnings and revenue may be the only way to achieve the numbers Wall Street has come to expect from the company. There is no reason to believe that Starbucks and Mr. Schultz will pull themselves out of the current nosedive to once again reign supreme over the coffee world, one triple pump, non-fat, extra whip, latte at a time.
About the Author:
Eric is the head blogger at
http://thedripp.blogspot.com
and has been a sales and marketing consultant for 20 years. He blogs about
Starbucks
as a way to share ideas and stimulate conversation about the
worlds largest coffee retailer
.
Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Starbucks History Is Worth Repeating
|
|
History Makers: Greatest Hits $8.72 Delirious? The band that has helped redefine the very fabric of modern worship will be making these dates their last. It’s the end of an era. Delirious? crafted for themselves a unique place in so many people’s hearts, so to commemorate this, Delirious? have been busy compiling their Greatest Hits album entitled History Makers: Greatest Hits. This exceptional collection of songs has inspired a gen… |
|
|
History $3.37 … |
|
|
Camille Saint-Saens – Henry VIII / Rouillon, Command, Vignon, Orchestre Lyrique Français, Guingal (Théâtre Impérial de Compiègne, 1991) $16.39 HENRY VIII – DVD Movie… |
|
|
Bernardin [VHS] $9.00 … |
|
|
Shaping Society through Dance: Mestizo Ritual Performance in the Peruvian Andes [VHS] $60.00 During the patron saint fiesta in the Andean town of San Jerónimo, Peru, crowds gather at sunset in the town square, eagerly awaiting the entrance of the colorful dance troupes, or comparsas. With their masks, music, and surprising interpretations of contemporary events, the comparsas of the Cusco region are the focus of this multifaceted work. At the crossroads of folklore and ritual, mass med… |
|
|
Religious Advocacy and American History $25 “Religious Advocacy and American History explores the general question of bias and objectivity in higher learning from the perspective of the role of religious convictions in the study of American history.” |
|
|
The American Religious Experience: A Concise History $76 “The American Religious Experience is an accessible and unique rendition of American religious history. Focusing on Christianity in America, it also integrates the inter-religious, inter-denominational and multi-cultural dimensions of American religious history. The book unfolds consistent tensions between dominant streams of American Christianity and groups relegated to the periphery – groups with roots in visionary traditions, emotionalized religious practice, or ethnic and racial perspectives.” |
|
|
The Religious Experience $127.8 “> Well-known and respected, this comprehensive history of religious experience explores the major world religions within a consistent framework based on the author’s paradigm “six dimensions of religion.” It tells the story without entering unduly into technicalities and focuses on how the major religious traditions relate to human experience. It extends beyond information about the traditions to distill the essential patterns of both feelings and ideas that animate religious practice; contains photographs that evoke the flavor of religious rituals or experiences and maps that orient students to the geographic context of religious traditions.” |
|
|
Christian Faith at the Crossroads: A Map of Modern Religious History $20 “A carefully guided tour of four hundred years of modern religious history. Lloyd Geering has crafted illuminating cameo sketches of the impact of dozens of thinkers and movements on the evolution of the Christian faith following the Renaissance and Reformation.” |
|
|
The Religious Sense $19.95 “If we accept the hypothesis that the mystery entered the realm of human existence and spoke in human terms, the relationship between the individual and God is no longer based on a moral, imaginative, or aesthetic effort but instead on coming upon an event in one’s life. Thus the religious method is overturned by Christ: in Christianity it is no longer the person who seeks to know the mystery but the mystery that makes himself known by entering history.” |
|
|
The Westminster Handbook to Women in American Religious History $29.95 “During the past four decades, large numbers of women have entered ordained leadership positions in American religious bodies, resulting in changes in aspects of church life from liturgy and theology to pastoral leadership. At the same time, an explosion of scholarship about women in American religious history has demonstrated that women have always played important roles in shaping and even leading American religious institutions. This is so despite their lack of access to formal ordination, even though their roles were often undervalued by contemporaries and neglected by historians. The Westminster Handbook to Women in American Religious History provides an affordable and accessible reference to over 750 outstanding individual women and womens organizations in American religious historyfor students, teachers, pastors, and scholars.” |
|
|
Disability Advocacy Among Religious Organizations: A History $100 “”You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Romans 13:9) Through the years, religious organizations have worked to fulfill this biblical mandate. Disability Advocacy Among Religious Organizations: Histories and Reflections chronicles the progress of different ministries’ advocacy for the disabled since 1950 as they worked toward fulfilling this mission. This enlightening history of several religious organizations’ efforts charts the trends in advocacy while offering readers insight into ways to assist people with disabilities both within religious organizations and in society. Issues are explored by drawing upon numerous documents, communications, and in-depth reviews of the advocates’ work.” |
|
|
Religious Studies $30 “Since its inception almost 200 years ago, the study of religion has informed, enlightened, provoked, and challenged our notions of humanity’s deepest beliefs and longings. Now Walter Capps, nationally recognized for the quality and depth of his teaching, has written the first full-scale introduction to the history and methods of religious studies. To assess the many points of view in this mature but diffuse discipline. Capps uses the idea that four basic of fundamental questions and three enduring interests have given formal structure to the study of religion: the essence of religion; the origin of religion, descriptions of religion; the function of religion, the language of religion, comparisons of religion and, the future of religious studies. In this way Capps relates the chief insights and theories of philosophy, anthropology, phenomenology, sociology, and theology of religion, and spotlights theorists from Immanuel Kant to Mircea Eliade. His valuable text unites in a single narrative and conceptual framework the major methodological proposals for the academic study of religion; treats all the major theorists in their respective disciplines, schools of thought, and intellectual movements; treats the whole discipline as a dynamic and evolving tradition. Religious Studies constitutes not only an erudite introduction to the field, exhibiting vast scholarship and careful assessment, but also a bold synthetic proposal for its future.” |
|
|
New Directions in American Religious History $30 “The eighteen essays collected in this book originate from a conference of the same title, held at the Wingspread Conference Center in October of 1993. Leading scholars were invited to reflect on their specialties in American religious history in ways that summarized both where the field is and where it ought to move in the decades to come.> The essays are organized according to four general themes: places and regions, universal themes, transformative events, and marginal groups and ethnocultural “outsiders.” They address a wide range of specific topics including Puritanism, Protestantism and economic behavior, gender and sexuality in American Protestantism, and the twentieth-century de-Christianization of American public culture. Among the contributors are such distinguished scholars as David D. Hall, Donald G. Matthews, Allen C. Guelzo, Gordon S. Wood, Daniel Walker Howe, Robert Wuthnow, Jon Butler, David A. Hollinger, Harry S. Stout, and John Higham.> Taken together, these essays reveal a rapidly expanding field of study that is breaking out of its traditional confines and spilling into all of American history. The book takes the measure of the changes of the last quarter-century and charts numerous challenges to future work.” |
|
|
1950: Crossroads of American Religious Life $29.95 “This book, from one of the acknowledged experts in the field of American religious history, is a cultural time capsule, recovering trends, movements, endings, beginnings, and other developments in American religious life fifty years ago. It highlights the parallels and divergences between religious culture then and now.” |
|
|
Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Interpretation of the Religious History of African Americans $30 “Since its first publication 25 years ago Black Religion and Black Radicalism has established itself as the classic treatment of African American religious history. Wilmore shows to what extent the history of African Americans can be told in terms of religion, and to what extent this religious history has been inseparably bound to the struggle for freedom and justice. From the story of the slave rebellions and emancipation, to the rise of Black nationalism and the freedom struggles of recent times, up through the development of Black, womanist, and Afrocentric theologies, Wilmore offers an essential interpretation of African American religious history.” |
|
|
Canaan Land: A Religious History of African Americans $14.99 “Throughout African-American history, religion has been indelibly intertwined with the fight against intolerance and racial prejudice. Martin Luther King, Jr.-America’s best-known champion of civil liberties-was a Baptist minister. Father Divine, a fiery preacher who established a large following in the 1920s and 1930s, convinced his disciples that he could cure not only disease and infirmity, but also poverty and racism.> An in-depth examination of African-American history and religion, this comprehensive and lively book provides panoramic coverage of the black religious and social experience in America. Renowned historian Albert J. Raboteau traces the subtle blending of African tribal customs with the powerful Christian establishment, the migration to cities, the growth of Islam, and the 200-year fight for freedom and identity which was so often centered around African-American churches. From the African Methodist Episcopal Church to the Nation of Islam and from the first African slaves to Louis Farrakhan, this far-reaching book chronicles the evolution of an important and influential component of our religious and historical heritage. African American Religion combines meticulously researched historical facts with a fast-paced, engaging narrative that will appeal to readers of any age.” |
|
|
The Religious History of America: The Heart of the American Story from Colonial Times to Today $33.95 “>In this landmark work, award-winning Princeton historian Leigh Schmidt teams up with eminent American religious history scholar Edwin Gaustad to produce a fully revised, updated, and expanded version of a modern classic. First published in 1966, “The Religious History of America” made the religious dimensions of our common history readily accessible to a generation of readers. This edition remains true to the literary grace of earlier editions as it expands its scope, increasing the emphasis on pluralism, religious practices, and spiritual seeking, as well as the direct connection of religion to social and political struggle. The authors have updated the structure of the text, replacing the five distinct ages of Gaustad’s previous editions with a more explicit emphasis on specific historical markers, carrying the multifaceted story of religion in the United States into the twenty-first century. >Extensively illustrated, and with a new emphasis on African-American and Native American religious life, Eastern religions, and the recent boom in spirituality, this new edition of “The Religious History of America” is the master telling of the heart and soul of the American story.” |
|
|
The Mishnah Volume Religious Perspectives $75 “Understanding the religious perspectives of the Mishnah starts with asking three questions. First, what is the relationship of the Mishnah to Scripture, or “oral torah” to “written torah,” for understanding the religion of Judaism? Second, what is the relationship between religious ideas and the world in which those ideas emerged? Third, what is the formal religious significance of the language of the Mishnah? These questions are posed with regard to a Judaism that existed from just prior to the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. until around 200 C.E. and assumes as well the groundwork of Neusner’s earlier volume “The Mishnah: Social Perspectives. In the present volume, Neusner condenses years of research on these questions and offers a clear and thorough analysis through a single lens. He looks closely at how the Halakhah of the Mishnah relates to the events prior to the Mishnah’s writing (e.g., the destruction of the Temple, ca. 70 C.E., and the Bar Kokhba War, ca. 135 C.E.), through the reconstruction following Bar Kokhba until the close of the Mishnah (ca. 200 C.E.). Readers also profit from a thorough sociolinguistic explication of the rhetorical forms of the Mishnah in the light of the social context of that time. The religious perspectives of the Mishnah do not simply record the rules and regulations of bygone times; rather, they mirror the way of life and the social and religious history of Judaism. >This publication has also been published in hardback, please click here for details. >” |
|
|
Essays in the History of Religious Thought in the West $35 “no description” |
|
|
Ministry & Meaning: A Religious History of Catholic Health Care in the United States $29.95 “This is the first comprehensive study to explore the religious self-understanding of caregivers, particularly women religious whose ministry was manifested in public and private facilities, in times of epidemics and war, in cities and on the frontier, in railroad and mining-camp hospitals. >With an emphasis upon their contexts Christopher J. Kauffman scrutinizes such historical spheres as the history of medicine, religious pluralism, ethnicity, the Catholic Health Association, and the modernization processes affecting church and health care.>With a sensitivity to the significance of racism, sexism, anti-Catholicism, and nativism, as well as the influence of popular Catholicity, Kauffman locates the meanings of the ministry at the dynamic intersections of religion and culture.” |
|
|
Omnigender: A Trans-Religious Approach $22 “This is a revised and expanded edition of Omnigender. This book bridges traditional religious doctrine and secular postmodern theory related to gender. Through an examination of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures and church history, and the exploration of other religions and cultures, the author honors the experiences of people who do not fit with the traditional binary concept of gender: intersexual, transsexual, or otherwise transgendered individuals. This edition includes a new preface, new section on the sexuality of Jesus, updated factual information, and insights from more than 36 recent sources.” |
|
|
American Evangelicals: A Contemporary History of a Mainstream Religious Movement $37.95 “There may be no group in American society that is more talked about but so little understood as Evangelical Christians. Sometimes dismissed as violent fundamentalists and ignorant flat earthers, few can doubt the political, cultural, and religious significance of the Evangelicals. Barry Hankins puts the Evangelical movement in historical perspective, reaching back to its roots in the Great Awakening of the 18th century and leading up to the formative moments of contemporary conservative Protestantism. Taking on key topics such as the standing of science, the authority of scripture, and gender and racial equality, Hankins analyzes what is most essential for us to understand today about this potent movement.” |
|
|
Collected Works on Religious Liberty, Vol. 1: Overviews and History $35 “The Collected Works on Religious Liberty comprehensively collects the scholarship, advocacy, and explanatory writings of leading scholar and lawyer Douglas Laycock, illuminating every major religious liberty issue from both theoretical and practical perspectives. / This first volume gives the big picture of religious liberty in the United States. It fits a vast range of disparate disputes into a coherent pattern, from public school prayers to private school vouchers to regulation of churches and believers. Laycock clearly and carefully explains what the law is and argues for what the law should be. He also reviews the history of Western religious liberty from the American founding to Protestant-Catholic conflict in the nineteenth century, using this history to cast light on the meaning of our constitutional guarantees. / Collected Works on Religious Liberty is unique in the depth and range of its coverage. Laycock helpfully includes both scholarly articles and key legal documents, and unlike many legal scholars, explains them clearly and succinctly. All the while, he maintains a centrist perspective, presenting all sides believers and nonbelievers alike fairly.” |
