As you saw in the video, Starbucks has partnered with Yahoo to bring you the newest digital revelation that truly involves you in the Starbucks environment and experience. SDN is simply a personalized Starbucks home screen that not only provides news and updates around the world, but also in your neighborhood. The SDN essentially replaces your community bulletin board or newsletter by providing you all of the information in a faster and more convenient way. The SDN offers a variety of information from the following six categories: News, Entertainment, Welness, Business and Careers, My Neighborhood and the customer-personalized Starbucks channel. Starbucks has partnered with big businesses in each category ranging from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal to music and apps from Apple iTunes, exclusive 30-day free trial of the LinkedIn premium account and local reviews from Zagat.
According to Starbucks Vice President of Digital Venue's, “Tens of millions of customers are coming in to our stores and logging in to our Wi-Fi on a monthly basis anyways. They’re coming in because we provide this great experience — good music overhead, quality food and coffee and the opportunity to connect with your friends or the baristas … What we hope is that this is a nice complement to that experience.”
Below is an example of what the home screen would look like:
Also, Starbucks recognizes the high use of internet on mobile phones and has made the SDN capable for phone users. And the best part is the SDN is absolutely 100% free. The only catch is you have to be at a Starbucks location to access the SDN. Yes there are 30-day trials for some of the businesses, but this is a very smart marketing tool on their end. I believe companies like LinkedIn will see an increase in their "premium account" users due to the free trial on the SDN. Plus, since Starbucks is putting their first priority on the localization of everyone's SDN, this will increase the users of Foursquare and other check-in applications.
Personally, I am very excited for my next study session at Starbucks because of this new application. Not only is Starbucks on the cutting edge of the digital world, but they are greatly enhancing their customers relationship with their brand. Introducing the SDN at this time and being the first company to create a new level of personal connection to the brand, is definitely in the right direction for what the future of our digital world holds.
It's funny that you did your blog over Starbucks. I had to do a report for one of my classes over Starbucks and came across so many interesting news stories concerning them.
ReplyDeleteYou're right. It definitely is a smart move on their part. They are always coming up with new ways to stay ahead of their competitors. This is just one more way for them to do so.
Marketing is supposed to be centered around CRM and Starbucks is doing a great job by creating that personal connection with their customers.