Page 151 - The Starbucks Experience

PRINCIPLE 4

bard, president of Starbucks Entertainment, comments,
“Music turned out to be a pretty natural fit. It’s been part of
the Starbucks environment and culture from the very begin-
ning. From the early days, we were among the first retailers
to use music to set the mood in our stores.”
Rather than simply accepting doomsday prognostications,
Ken looked to Starbucks customers to determine the wisdom
of venturing into the music industry and music sales. “This
is something our customers gave us permission to go beyond.
Thousands of times we’d have customers coming in, hearing
something playing overhead, and asking the barista, ‘What’s
the name of that song? Where can I get it?’ So there was a
connectivity that was really more us offering our customers
what they were asking for than trying to put something in the
store that they felt we were trying to sell to them. Combine
136 that with how often our customers are in our stores. What
we’re trying to do is provide them with quality music options,
give them a special opportunity to discover music beyond lim-
ited formats, and do all that as part of their daily routine.”
Starbucks management honors only one limit when it
comes to selling music: the sale can’t interfere with the cus-
tomer’s in-store experience. Everything else can be worked
through. As Ken notes, “That’s what Starbucks has been
about from the beginning. It’s being innovative, it’s being
entrepreneurial, being positioned to take advantage of oppor-
tunities that we feel first and foremost add value to the Star-
bucks Experience.
“We would never come in and abuse what we’re doing in
the existing stores, or compromise the integrity of the coffee
experience. That is sacred to us—it will always be sacred to
us. But music gives Starbucks an opportunity to add value
and enhance the customer’s experience instead of taking away