l Surprisingly, there are near 29% of participants don’t drink coffee at all. Fortunately, Starbucks does offer tea and other drinks, not mentioning the cozy atmosphere. No worries, Starbucks fans. Around 72% of participants do have demand of drinking coffee, where around 57% drink 1 or 2 cups per day and 15%% drink more than 3 cups per day. Hence, the market demand is solid.
2. Where do you usually drink your coffee?
l Close to half of survey participants drink coffee at school or workplace, as they tempt to spend more time at these locations. About 24% only drink coffee at home. Only close to 15% are frequent café visitors or like to buy takeaway coffee. However, if Starbucks opens store in the centre, it will attract students to study and do group work there and people who work might want to leave office and work remotely at Starbucks with Wi-Fi connection and more relaxing atmosphere.
3. Have you experienced Starbucks before?
l More than 88% of survey participants have visited Starbucks café at various places before. About 12% have bought Starbucks coffee drinks from grocery store, among them, 10% have also visited the café. Less than 10% have neither visited Starbucks café nor bought any Starbucks coffee drinks from anywhere, however, they do wish to experience Starbucks and its drinks in the future.
4. What comes into your mind when you think about Starbucks?
l The most of the answers are quite positive. People think the Starbucks coffee is high quality, good taste, and innovative in terms various selections of specialty coffee like Frappuchino and Chai Latte. Customized cups with customers’ names on, comfortable and joyful environment to relax and hangout with friends also generate lots of positive remarks. In addition, snacks & pastry, and free Wi-Fi are mentioned quite a few times. Our survey participants believe that Starbucks is trendy and international, mostly in a positive way. However, there are a few comments saying that Starbucks is perhaps too international so that they would actually choose to drink coffee at local café which are more linked with local life style or simply just not so identical everywhere. Among the few slightly negative comments we receive, the focus seems to be on the Price being relatively more expensive.
5. If you could describe Starbucks with 3 adjectives, what would they be?
l The most visible words were picked up are Trendy & International, Well-know brand, Cozy & relaxing & Homy, American Style, Friendly & Professional. There are also a few words were visible representing slightly negative attitude towards Starbucks, such as Similar everywhere, like fast-food, not-individual.
6. Where do you usually go if..?
l You are having some extra time and you want to treat yourself somehow after a workday? More than half of the participants selected bars and cafés. Most visible café are Robert’s coffee and Fazer café, The Wayne’s coffee and Johto Cafe receive one mention each as well. In addition, Ice cream shop and restaurants are also selected as good place to treat themselves. Grocery Store received quite a few mentions, which I assume that is most probably because of the low budget of students.
l You are planning to spend the afternoon by doing a school/work assignment or having a group. Most of the people select School, school cafeteria and library as locations they prefer to do their assignment or group work. This is more practical and cost-efficient. Among the cafés picked up, Johto Café at Kamppi shopping mall was the most visible one, because of discount to KY students, spacious & cozy place, and good location in the centre. If Starbucks comes to the center of Helsinki (especially the ones not located close to business area), it would be great if it could also negotiate certain discount rates with various student unions to attract the young people.
l You want to have some breakfast or a snack? Picnic was the mostly selected breakfast place, the takeaway baguette and pastry seemed to be popular. Other café such as Wayne’s coffee and Robert’s coffee also receive a few mentions. Worthy to notice that, Ekberg, the traditional café in Helsinki, also received two mentions. School cafeteria and Grocery Stores are the other two mostly mentioned alternatives for breakfast and snack.
l You want to have something sweet and delicious? Various cafés stand out from the answers in this section. Among the answers, Fazer Café & Bakery is the most visible one with its well-known chocolates and cakes.
l You’re meeting an old friend of yours and you want to catch up? Cafés were the mostly selected choice to meet a friend, bars and restaurant follow in order. This shows that to meet friend for catching up, Café is no-doubt the primary choice or the first place people think of.
7. Do you think Starbucks is different from other café brands, such as Robert’s Coffee or Wayne’s Coffee?
l Yes. Why? 69% of the survey participants believe that there are clear differences between Starbucks and other café brands like Robert’s Coffee and Wayne’s Coffee. Most of them think Starbucks is a global brand with positive image perhaps more fancy; Starbucks offers much more variety of products with good taste and better quality; Starbucks strives to personalize your experience with its products, services and atmosphere, after all it is not
just coffee like Starbucks proudly put it; Differentiation and listening to what the customer wants really makes Starbucks stand out from the other competitors.
l No. Why? About 31% of the survey participants think that there is no clear difference between Starbucks and other café brand. From their answers, we could see that most of them either don’t drink coffee often or don’t appreciate any value-added services except the coffee to wake them up. There are also comments like “offering isn’t that much difference, however the brand image of Starbucks really powers up and make the offer somehow more intriguing.” Hence I believe the brand and reputation really makes a difference, despite these slightly “negative” which I actually think more neutral responses.
8. When would you prefer Starbucks over other places (e.g. cafés, fast food chains, bars)?
l The most visible answers focus on certain areas: 1. People prefer Starbucks when they want to do something or think alone, or simply spend a long afternoon wondering; 2. A great place to hangout with friends for a real good chat; 3. Longing for a great specialty gourmet coffee that not available anywhere else. It is just great, isn’t it? What people want are exactly core values of Starbucks.
9. How much will the following factors influence your decision when you’re planning to go to a Café?
l Price Level – Over 74% of the survey participants believe that price is an important factor when choosing a café to go. Starbucks might be slightly expensive in a general way, however, for the specialty gourmet coffee, the price difference between Starbucks and local brands is not that obvious. Not mentioning some of the specialty gourmet coffees are just not available in those local brands, that really gives Starbucks the edge.
l Flavour of Coffee / Tea – Over 80% of people believe it is very important. Of course!
l Other products than coffee (pastry, salad) – Over 65% of people think it is quite important. Starbucks does have wide variety of other products to offer.
l Service – More than 81% of people believe this is very important. Starbucks is well known for their professional and efficient services.
l Atmosphere of the café – More than 95% of people believe atmosphere is a must for a café. Starbucks offer the most relaxing and cozy atmosphere which makes people want to hangout for long time.
l Location of the café – Over 95% of people believe location is extremely important. Most of the people choose easily reachable and local “hotspot” to meet friends and hangout. Therefore it is extremely important for Starbucks to locate its store in the very center of Helsinki, and make it well-known or even a meeting place by default.
l Specialties in the selection – More than half of the participants think it is important for a café to have something special to offer. However, there are still 33% of people think it is not important at all. Starbucks could just fulfill all their needs, no matter they want either specialty or simply a cup of Americano.
l Wi-Fi Connection – About 60% of people think this is important. However, nowadays, Wi-Fi connection seems to a must to offer in most of the popular cafés in Helsinki. Starbucks as one of the first in the world to have Wi-Fi connection in store will certainly have fast and stable connection ready for its customers.
The survey is a great idea! In fact, our team has done one as well :) A little more information of how you conducted the survey would have been important to have here. Online I presume? Who were the respondents (were they all Finnish), how did you select them? How many responses did you get?
VastaaPoistaFurthermore, in this post as well, some formatting issues with fonts etc could be checked as well to make it more convenient for the reader to keep up :)
Really nice that you did a survey! :)
VastaaPoistaAs Isa mentioned, it would be good if you had given more information about the survey: where it was done, how many answered, demographics etc. These are essential factors to mention whenever posting results of a survey. Also, the pictures are pretty small and blurry so I couldn't see the results that well (or maybe there is a problem with my computer?). Otherwise the survey was structured well.
I really like that you had more specific questions, such as the one about the factors influencing the decision of choosing a café. Maybe you could have summed up the results somehow? E.g. what you can derive from this survey overall, in what way the results supports Starbucks's entry to Finland and so on..
Thanks. We did the survey online via Surveymonkey.com. All the group members just sent the survey link to all of our friends. I think we managed to send out to around 80 people, and got 42 responses. Not too bad. They are Finnish and foreigners, student and normal working people, age range is from 20 to 35.
VastaaPoistaSorry for the blurry pictures. Since we have to pay to get good pictures exported from Surveymonkey, so I just took screenshots, so that explains a bit...
I think in general, as analyzed in the survey report, most of factors and responses showed somewhat positive towards Starbucks's entry to Finland. For instance, around 88% of survey participants have been to Starbucks before and liked it, the other 12% showed their interest to visit at least once. I think it is good sign.