Business Opportunities Weblog

August 19, 2008 by Rich Whittle | 2 Comments

Canwest News Service:

Last spring, in a new spin on the office suggestion box, Starbucks launched the Web site mystarbucksidea.com, an interactive user forum for discussion about the chain’s goods and services, including a prompt for ideas and feedback from its customers.

Mystarbucksidea.com, one of a new generation of so-called social media sites employed by market-hungry firms, represents outsourcing at its cheekiest, a voluntary repository of brainstorming that cleverly cuts out the middle man and fosters the feel-good theory that the customer knows best, and thus is happy to suggest product improvement and innovation, free for the asking.

Suggestions have included coffee ice cubes, flavoured foam, a punch card system, dark chocolate mocha, complimentary Wi-Fi, birthday brew (a free drink on your birthday), condiment centres, automated ordering and coffee education classes.

And the Splash Stick.

This little gadget, an idea posted on the Web site and introduced to outlets last May, is a green plastic reusable stir stick, with a little stopper on top (detailed with the chain’s mermaid logo) that perfectly fits the sip hole in coffee cup lids, thereby eliminating splashes of cream, foam and related coffee crud that stains your clothes, slops on your feet and builds up on your car’s console.

So, who’s the wise guy, or gal, who came up with the Splash Stick? Love to tell you that, but Starbucks isn’t talking.

Turns out, according to the rules and regulations on the site, the company has no obligation to provide monetary compensation for customer ideas it implements.

Photo by Mystarbucksidea.

In Competition, Customers, Ideas | 2 Comments