New York – Starbucks Corp’s vow to hire thousands of refugees after President Donald Trump’s first executive order that temporarily banned travel from seven mostly-Muslim nations appears to be hurting customer sentiment of the coffee chain.
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Trump supporters have used Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites to call for a boycott since Jan. 29, when Starbucks Chief Executive Howard Schultz vowed to hire 10,000 refugees over five years in the countries where it does business.
Schultz in a letter to employees said the promise of the American Dream was “being called into question” and that “the civility and human rights we have all taken for granted for so long are under attack.”
YouGov BrandIndex, which tracks consumers’ sentiment toward companies and their willingness to purchase from those brands, noted that the data around this boycott is different because both measures are declining.
Starbucks’ consumer perception levels took an immediate hit as measured by YouGov BrandIndex’s Buzz score, falling by two-thirds between Jan. 29 and Feb. 13, and have not recovered.
Starbucks Buzz score fell to 4 from 12 during that time. Such scores can range from 100 to -100 and are compiled by subtracting negative feedback from positive. A zero score means equal positive and negative feedback.
Prior to Schultz’s refugee comments, 30 percent of consumers said they would consider buying from Starbucks the next time they made a coffee purchase, that fell to a low of 24 percent and now stands at 26 percent, according to a YouGov spokesman.
“Consumer perception dropped almost immediately,” said YouGov BrandIndex CEO Ted Marzilli, who added that the statistically significant drop in purchase consideration data showed that consumers became less keen to buy from Starbucks.
“That would indicate the announcement has had a negative impact on Starbucks, and might indicate a negative impact on sales in the near term,” he said.
Marzilli noted that the Starbucks holiday “red cup” controversy from November 2015 corresponded with an even larger drop in perception, but no real impact on purchase consideration scores.
Among other things, boycott supporters are urging like-minded friends to support Starbucks rival Dunkin’ Donuts
The consumer sentiment data comes at a sensitive time for Starbucks, which reported an accelerated decline in traffic to established U.S. restaurants during the latest quarter.
Starbucks executives pinned much of the blame for its traffic setback on a pileup of mobile orders, which caused bottlenecks at drink pickup stations that thwarted walk-in customers.
Article claims that Starbucks’ “Buzz” fell by 2/3 (67%) when it fell from 12 to 4.
Seems straight forward, right?
Wrong.
Since the scale is from 100 down to -100, there are 200 numbers on the scale. So it actually fell from the 112th position to the 104th position, a drop of less than 8%.
Still a drop and a bad decision by this “YouGo(OOF)” nut, wait till something happens in one of his store and then see how fast he gets fired. Everybody wants to be nice and a hero, until something CV happens and then they run and hide, this time it failed for this Goofoff…
Even I will admit this was a smart move by Scultz. Starbucks clientele is the young millennial liberal hipsters. Those guys ain’t exactly hard core Trump voters. I don’t see much in these polls.
they have overpriced bitter coffee.