If you haven’t yet heard about the Starbucks Challenge, take a moment and visit the original post to get a bit of background. Here’s a snippet if you are short on time:

“According to its own policy (PDF), Starbucks will make fair trade coffee for you, any day of the week, in the 23 countries it is licensed to including: Australia, Austria, Canada, China, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, the U.K. and the U.S. But just how easy is it to get a fair trade coffee in a Starbucks in one of those countries?…

1) Simply visit your local Starbucks and ask: ‘Could I get a cup of fair trade coffee?’

2) Tell us what happened next. Was it hard or easy to get a cup? You can see our first posts here.”

I’m always on the lookout for marketing vs. reality discrepancies, and it appears that Starbucks fair trade schpiel is turning out to be a bit of hot air. Take the challenge in your area (where isn’t Starbucks?) and see if there’s a bit of buzzword-exploitation going on. Be sure to check out the experiences (successes and failures) other people are having.

TAGS: Starbucks | Fair Trade | Coffee | Starbucks Challenge | Ethics | Marketing

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 10th, 2005 at 8:57 am and is filed under Business Ethics, Business Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.