Starbucks: Global Coffee Segmentation

From humble beginnings as a solitary coffee haven in Seattle, Starbucks has evolved into a global coffee phenomenon, boasting over 32,000 establishments across 80 countries.

Starbucks serves over a million drinks a day, but who are those drinkers? And who are the ones that are going elsewhere? To maintain and grow its market leading, culturally significant, innovative position Starbucks needs to know its customers - everywhere.

The Nursery was commissioned to explore behaviour and attitudes across 18 markets in Europe, Middle East, Asia and Africa. We created a robust segmentation of coffee drinkers based on a combination of mood, mindset, occasion and behaviour to provide a platform for marketing understanding, communications development and feeding the NPD pipeline.

Research was bought to life with co-discovery sessions, pen-portraits and film of the audiences. Presentations were made at the Global, Regional and Country level.

Work with Starbucks also covers development of their loyalty scheme and tracking their brand and corporate image.

Starbucks sets the trend in the coffee and hot drinks market and we are immensely proud of how our research has helped.