STARBUCKS, CONT'D
In response to my note about the odd absence of Starbucks in Greenville, Aussie-blogger-in-London Michael Jennings writes:
That is quite interesting. I have actually been running a series of posts on my blog on the spread of Starbucks around the world. Starbucks' international strategy involves something called "clusterbombing" (their expression). Essentially, they enter individual cities one at a time, and go from no stores in the city to a substantial number in a very short time. Thus there is really no middle ground. Either you have cities with no Starbucks, or cities with Starbucks seemingly on every street corner, but nothing in between. When I commented on this on my blog, I qualified my discussion by saying that this model might not apply in North America, because I simply didn't know. However, from your comments on Greenville, it looks like it might. (When you say that there are no "free standing" Starbucks, I assume you mean that you found one or more outlets in bookstores or at the airport or something like that). My most recent comment is here.
I think there may be an element of this "all or nothing" aspect in why Starbucks are such a favourite object of hatred for anti-globalisation types. Visit a few of the most commonly visited international cities (Hong Kong, Tokyo, London, Bangkok) and from the evidence of these you will likely think there is a Starbucks on every street corner throughout the world, when in fact they only have outlets in maybe 20 countries, and only in the very biggest cities in most of those. In terms of global penetration, they are nowhere near being in the same ballpark as McDonald's, say.
(Another interesting situation is what may be called "preemptive Starbucks cloning", in which someone else will create a chain of coffee shops that look very like Starbucks in a city or country. The first reason is that there is a market for that kind of coffee shop that Starbucks haven't yet filled. The second is that Starbucks entered the UK market by acquiring such a chain and the people who owned that chain got rich as a consequence. Other people doing the same thing hope to have the same thing happen to them).
To clarify my "free-standing" remark, the Greenville Barnes & Noble store does have the usual Starbucks, and the Bi-Lo supermarkets also have them. But my Greenville relatives definitely feel Starbucks-deprived.