Starbucks Giving in China: Philanthropy or Business Play?
From CSRwire:
“As part of its long-term commitment to support improved educational opportunities in China, Starbucks Coffee Company (Nasdaq:SBUX) today entered into an agreement with the China Soong Ching Ling Foundation to provide 12 million RMB ($1.5 million USD) to support a program aimed at helping students in need — and their teachers — in rural China.” (view full press release)
How do you get a monolithic and largely untapped rural population that primarily drinks tea to start ordering venti lattes? Donating a bunch of money to students and teachers in those rural areas sounds like a pretty good idea…
If you have been following the “China opportunity” press, you’ve undoubtedly heard companies blabbering on about capturing “1% of the 1.3 billion Chinese population” (and thus becoming billionaires, or something of the sort). I’ve seen very few companies with seemingly intelligent plans to actually reach the bulk of those 1.3 billion people, yet this move by Starbucks may do just the trick. It feels very tobacco industry-esque (circa 1950-1970 or so) yet very difficult to criticize. Who is going to fault Starbucks for helping advance education around the world. Certainly not SBUX shareholders.
TAGS: This entry was posted on Monday, February 20th, 2006 at 4:19 pm and is filed under Business Strategy, CalPoly MBA, China, Interesting News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.