Starbucks on the world stage:

Evidence of cultural sensitivity?

Abstract

Some would argue that Starbuckss entry onto the international coffee scene created the
impression of corporate colonialism that imposed a uniform coffee culture with cookie-cutter
customs that paid no regard to local traditions. We argue that Starbucks at least intends to be
perceived as culturally aware in how it portrays itself in its mission statements, which in small
but significant ways vary in semantic value from country to country and from language to
language. In some countries and languages, Starbuckss mission statements stress retail, while in
others they stress hospitality. We identify key lexical items in these mission statements and
compare them to other actors in commerce. The intertextual referents suggest a conscious choice
on the part of Starbucks to be perceived as interacting with host communities in a way that
demonstrates cultural sensitivityor at the very least, an appreciation for cultural differentiation.

Keywords: international business, cross-cultural communication

A critical issue for dominant national brands when entering international markets is how
to remain true to original business principles and maximize tried and tested marketing strategies
while also engaging in business and implementing brand strategies that are culturally sensitive to
new environments and host-country consumers. Large companies seeking to expand their
presence by going international open themselves to criticism that they lack understanding of
local values and practices or worse that they actively undermine them. When the large company
originates from a country already criticized for attempts at overextended cultural influence, that
company can be regarded as a corporate arm of a now broader from of imperialism.
Starbucks Corporation is a case in point of such criticisms. From opening its first US
store in 1971, Starbucks has grown to over 23,000 stores in the US and beyond. Initially entering
the international market in 1987 with a store in Canada, Starbucks now has locations in over 70
countries and is recognized as a global brand (Starbucks, 2016). In its 2015 global brand
rankings, Interbrand (2016) rated Starbucks as the 67th best brand overall and 2nd in the
Restaurants category (between McDonalds and KFC). Nearly 30 years after opening its first
store abroad, Starbucks announced plans to take coffee home by opening stores in Italy and
invested in an Italian bakery, Princi. And the press notes how wary Italians were: Wired (2016)
reported how Italians compared the arrival of Starbucks to the apocalypse. The BBC (2016)
questioned whether Starbucks could succeed in Italy, given perceived standards of quality. The
New York Times (2016) focused on Starbuckss (need for) humility in entering the Italian market.
Such criticism and calls for caution are unsurprising from a rhetorical standpoint as they have
accompanied Starbuckss global growth. Starbucks has had and continues to have many critics in
Asia, Europe, and Latin America, and, the perceived poor quality of the coffee notwithstanding,
these critics decry Starbuckss entry into established local coffee scenes as a form of corporate

imperialism that imposes a uniform coffee culture at the expense of local traditions. At times and
in places, criticism was so great as to be seen to affect businesstake the closure of some 75
percent of Starbuckss stores in Australia as a case in point.
With common criticisms of Starbucks very much in mind, the present study is interested
in whether Starbucks is indifferent to the criticism or makes identifiable efforts to mitigate it. The
authors sole question is whether there is textual evidence of sufficient standing to indicate that
Starbucks at least desires to be perceived as culturally sensitive. Given that much of the
Starbucks brand is similar, from items on the menu and elements of employee dress to the much
of the store atmosphere, we seek to identify a difference from one country and language to the
next that aims to signal an appreciation of local custom.
As a textual evidence base, we chose Starbuckss mission statements published in various
languages in select countries. Mission statements have been recognized as the carriers of
ideologies and institutional cultures (Swales and Rogers, 1995: 225). A mission statement
defines what the organization is todayits purpose or reason for existence (Kopaneva and
Sias, 2015: 2). Darbi (2012) finds them to be one of the highest ranked management tools.
Particularly relevant to the study, Klemm (1991) argues that they serve as a crucial tool in
impression management, both internally (for example, with employees) and externally (for
example, with customers or even competitors). As such, mission statements are signals by
companies to communicate with their stakeholders (C.K., 2001).
Starbuckss mission statements vary from country to country and from language to
language. True, they have a commonality of length, content, and organization. They even have a
remarkable similarity in word choices (in translation). This makes them very uniform, and for
this reason they serve as a useful form of evidence when seeking cues related to cultural

sensitivity. Given the extent of the similarities, minor changes (measured quantitatively) that are
nevertheless major changes (measured qualitatively) can point to a high degree of intentionality
on the part of statement authors to send differentiated signals to host-country stakeholders.

Method

We collected seven readily available mission statements from different countries and in
different languages. For ease of access, we examined the Starbucks mission statement published
for the United States (English) as the home country (with presumably the original mission
statement) as well as those published for markets in Canada (English and French), France
(French), Germany (German), the Netherlands (Dutch), and Spain (Spanish). To provide a
uniform snapshot in time for host country and source language, all mission statements were in
effect in 2011 and published online by Starbucks as the linked mission statements in the About
Us section.
Using a variation of grounded theory, we examined the mission statements for subtle
differences in the semantic value of lexical items in open coding and using standard bilingual
dictionaries. Where multiple translations of words and phrases were possible, we followed a
bilingual dictionarys usage notes for the word or phrase in question. While the texts were
unremarkably similar in many respects, we nevertheless identified subtle but important
differences in the choice of key monikers used to describe the purchaser and the businesss
commercial premises. In closed coding, we isolated these terms across the mission statements.
Admittedly, respective monikers were synonyms, but we suspected usage variance was
connected to nuanced differences in semantic value that were intended to have meaning to

audiences. To test these suspected differences, we compared the use of these two monikers in the
mission statements of similar and different types of business.

Findings

Table 1 shows our closed-coding findings for the Starbucks mission statements across
host countries and languages. Here we see different words in source languages to denote the
purchaser and the premises. As Starbucks was founded in and is headquartered in the United
States, we identify as our semantic baseline the words used in the mission statement published in
the United States. The American mission statement refers to the purchaser as a customer and the
premises as a store. We consulted a standard dictionary of American English (Webster, 2007) for
definitions: A customer is one that purchases a commodity or a service, and a store is a
business establishment where [] diversified goods are kept for retail sale [for example, a]
grocery store.

Table 1: Monikers in different mission statements and languages

United States (EN)
Canada (EN)
Canada (FR)
France (FR)
Spain (ES)
Germany (DE)
Netherlands (NL)

Purchaser
customer
customer
client
client
cliente
Gast
gast

Premises
store
store
magasin
salon de caf
tienda
Coffee House
vestiging

Starbuckss mission statement published in English-speaking Canada uses the same

monikers (customer and store), and the mission statement published in French-speaking Canada
uses monikers with similar semantic value (client and magasin). The Collins-Robert French
Dictionary (1998) translates customer in the commercial sense as client. In cross-checking the
translations by going the other way, we find that client can be translated in a number of ways, as
customer, guest, patron, and patient. The same dictionary translates store (in the sense of a
shop) as a magasin or a commerce. In cross-checking, we find that magasin is translated as shop,
store, warehouse, and department store, with usage examples for grocery stores, sporting goods
stores, clothing stores, supermarkets, and chain stores; and commerce is translated as business or
trade, with a usage example of the grocery business (Collins-Robert French, 1998).
While Starbuckss mission statement for France uses the same moniker for the purchaser,
it uses an altogether different one for the premises. Salon de caf sticks out as an intentional
difference in the mission statement published for France, since its not a ready translation of
store. In fact, salon de caf is not even in the dictionary. Salon is in the dictionary, translated in
the general sense as a sitting room or lounge and in the sense of a hotel space for clients or for
conference as a lounge or a function room. The closest relation to salon de caf is provided under
salon in the compound uses, where we find a usage note in salon de th (tearoom) (CollinsRobert French, 1998).
Starbuckss mission statement for Germany uses words of very different semantic value.
Collins German Dictionary (2004) provides only one translation of customer, and this is Kunde.
Cross-checking confirms the singular relationship, with Kunde translated into English solely as
customer. A Gast, in a general sense, is a guest, and it can be a customer in a restaurant or a pub.
The same dictionary translates store as a Geschft (in the sense of a large shop), as a Kaufhaus or

Warenhaus (in the sense of a department store), or as a Laden (in the sense of a shop). Coffee
House is not one of the translations provided, nor is it one of the entries on the German side of
the dictionary. Indeed, it appears to have been poached as a term for a particular kind of caf in
the United Kingdom.
The mission statement for the Netherlands uses the terms gast and vestiging. A gast is a
guest or visitor, and a vestiging is an establishment or settlement, but in a business context it
means company. Dutch has words for customer and store. The sole entry for customer in
Cassells English-Dutch Dictionary (1978) in klant. Cross-checking klant reveals two general
translations to English, customer and client, and the expression vaste klant, which means regular
customer. A store (in the sense of a shop) is a winkel.
The mission statement for Spain uses words similar in semantic value to the French
Canadian. The Collins Spanish Dictionary (2006) provides only one entry for customer, cliente,
which is the word used in the mission statement. Cross-checking cliente provides multiple entries
in English: It could be a customer (in a shop [tienda], a bar, a restaurant, or a bank), a client (at a
company or attorneys office or an accountant firm), and a guest (at a hotel). Cross-checking
guest gives us invitado (at a home) and husped (at a hotel). The same dictionary translates store
as tienda (in the sense of a shop) or grandes almacenes (in a general sense), with the expression
tienda de abarrotes, tienda de comestibles, and tienda de ultramarionos as a grocery store,
tienda de departmentos as a department store, and tienda de regalos as a gift shop.

Discussion

To explore our findings further, we plotted them on two continua, one for purchaser and
one for premises. For the purchaser continuum, we have customer or client (one who receives a
retail good or service) at one end and guest (one to whom hospitality is extended to build a
relationship) at the other. For the premises continuum, we have store (and other words related to
premises emphasizing transaction) at one end and Coffee House (and other words related to
premises stressing hospitality and relationship) at the other (see Figure 1 and Figure 2).

Table 2: Monikers for purchaser

United States (EN)
Canada (EN)
Canada (FR)
France (FR)
Spain (ES)
Germany (DE)
Netherlands (NL)

Retail
customer
customer

Hospitality
client
client
cliente
Gast
gast

Table 3: Monikers for premises

United States (EN)
Canada (EN)
Canada (FR)
France (FR)
Spain (ES)
Germany (DE)
Netherlands (NL)

Retail
store
store
magasin

Hospitality

salon de caf
tienda
Coffee House
vestiging

For our continua, we defined the terms retail and hospitality in the context of relationship
marketing. Retail is defined by The Principles of Marketing as a business whose sale comes
primarily from retailing (Kotler and Armstrong, 2006). Retailing is further defined as activities
involved in selling goods or services. This contrasts with the definition of hospitality, which is
the entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers and relates to the business of housing or
entertaining visitors [New Oxford American Dictionary, 2005].
After defining the labels, we established intertextual relationships to add contextual value
to the continua. To find the industries used for this, we searched customer-facing data in all of
the countries and looked for trends. Using the variety of terms for purchasers and premises
mentioned above, we narrowed in on the stark differences in two industries: the hotel and retail
industries. These industries add the necessary lexical weight since the retail side is intended to
focus on the actual transactional interactions and the retail industry is transaction-orientated.
Sector analysts often use turnover rate, a financial ratio, to define the lists of leading retailers. On
the other end, the hotel industry revolves around the purchasers experiences and relationship
with the hotel and places itself in the middle of the hospitality industry, which adds lexical value
to the hospitality side of the continuum.
Monikers were collected from the top ten retailers and hotels in each host country.
Terminology for the retail industry in France and Spain all used client or cliente, respectively,
when referring to the purchaser, while using magasin and tienda, respectively, for the premises.
Half of the Spanish hotels used huespedes, leaving the term cliente and huespedes containing
similar lexical values that differentiate based on their context. The French hotels also used client,
which translates the same as the Spanish term mentioned above. The premises of the hotels in
each country used htel and hotel, both translating similarly to hotel.

Germany and the Netherlands used terms translating to customer, Kunde and klant,
respectively, in the retail industry. Yet they both used Gast/gast in the hotel industry, which is a
term that translates to guest. The premises for retailers in Germany was industry-specific, Markt,
which translates to market. The term in the Netherlands was winkle, which translates to shop or
store.
In both English- and French-speaking Canada, terms for guest (client) and hotel (htel)
were used in the top hotels whereas customers (client) and stores (magasin) were used in
retailers. The same is true with the leading hotels and retailers in the United States.
Using industry-specific terms for the premises can be seen as building that unique
relationship mentioned in the definition above. The definition of relationships in the context of
marketing emphasizes the uniqueness of each relationship and not using a standard model.
Hoteliers are a good example of this of this as they all use an industry-specific term, while only
some retailers chose to do.
The purchaser moniker contains a much starker difference between guest and customer.
The guest side of the spectrum is solely reserved for the hotel industry in some countries. This
adds lexical value to the term guest that implies hospitality and relationship building.
After strengthening the continua with intertextual relationships, it becomes clear is that
Starbuckss mission statements emphasize different types of relationships or experiences,
depending on the source country, and they do so to varying degrees. The relationship suggested
by the mission statements published in the United States and in English-speaking Canada are
unambiguously retail. The monikers used for both the purchaser and the premises relate retail
(customer and store). At the other end, the mission statement published in Germany uses
monikers for both the purchaser and the premises that relate to hospitality (Gast). Falling in

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between the two extremes are the mission statements for France, the Netherlands, and Spain. The
mission statement for Spain is arguably closer to retail orientation, given that its moniker for the
purchaser (cliente) is ambiguous and its moniker for premises (tienda) is solidly retail-oriented.
The mission statement for the Netherlands also has a clearly hospitality-oriented moniker for the
customer (gast) yet an ambiguous moniker for the premises (vestiging).

Further Research

Starbucks showed intentionality in choosing monikers for the purchaser and the premises
of their international locations which leaves the question of effectiveness. Unexplored here is
whether customers are aware of and appreciate this intentionality. We have identified what the
authors say, but not what the audience hears. An interesting next step would be to test whether
customers respond differently to the monikersand whether they react in a culturally consistent
way to monikers emphasizing a retail experience or a hospitality experience.

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