Efraim Turban David King Jae Kyu Lee Ting-Peng Liang - Electronic Commerce

Starbucks sells a small number of products online at store.starbucks.com . These offerings include coffee, tea, and Starbucks equipment and merchandise. The store was in operation for years, using typical shopping cart (called My Bag), but the company completely redesigned the webstore to make shopping more convenient and easy (in August 2011). In addition, customers (individual or companies) can schedule deliveries of standard and special items. Customers can order rare and exquisite coffee that is available only in some U.S. stores. Now customers around the U.S. and the world can enjoy it too. Finally, online customers get exclusive promotions.

Customers can buy Starbucks customized gift cards digitally (e.g., a gift card for a friends birthday is auto delivered on the desired date). Payments can be made with a credit card or PayPal. The gift card is sent to the recipient via e-mail or postal mail.

The recipients can print the card and go shopping at a Starbucks physical store, transfer the gift amount to their Starbucks payment card, or to Starbuck Card Mobile.

Like airlines and other vendors, the company offers a Loyalty Program (My Starbucks Rewards). Those who reach the gold level receive extra benefits. The program is managed electronically.

Customers can pay at Starbucks stores with prepaid (stored value) cards, similar to those used in transportation, or conduct smartphone payments.

Mystarbucksidea.com is a platform in which a community of over 300,000 consumers and employees can make improvement suggestions, vote for the suggestions, ask questions, collaborate on projects, and express their complaints and frustrations. The community generated 70,000 ideas in its first year, ranging from thoughts on the companys rewards cards and elimination of paper cups to ways to improve customer service. The site also provides statistics on the ideas generated, by category, as well as their status (under review, reviewed, in the works, and launched). The company may provide incentives for certain generated ideas. For example, in June 2010, Starbucks offered $20,000 for the best idea concerning the reuse of its used coffee cups. This initiative is based on the technology of collective intelligence also known as crowdsourcing (see Chapters ) and it is supported by the following blog.

Fully integrated into Facebook, Starbucks practices several social commerce activities there. The site was built with input from Starbucks customers. The company uploads videos, blog posts, photos, promotions, product highlights, and special deals. The millions of people who like Starbucks on Facebook verify that it is one of the most popular companies on Facebook with about 36 million followers (February 2014), see current statistics at starcount.com/chart/wiki/Starbucks/today and at facebook.com/Starbucks . Starbucks offers one of the best online marketing communication experiences on Facebook to date as well as mobile commerce engagements. Starbucks posts information on its Facebook wall whether it is content, questions, or updates. The company is also advertising on its Facebook homepage. Note that Starbucks is assessing the cost-benefit of such advertising.