Seattle’s Seafaring Siren: A Cultural Approach to the Branding of Starbucks

Many corporate brands tend to be built on a strong foundation of culture, but very minimal research seems to indicate a thorough analysis of the role of an organizational’s culture in its entirety pertaining to large corporations. This study analyzed various facets of Starbucks Coffee Company through use of the cultural approach to organizations theory in order to determine if the founding principles of Starbucks are evident in their organizational culture. Howard Schultz ’ book “Onward ” was analyzed and documented as the key textual artifact in which these principles originated. Along with these principles, Starbucks ’ Website, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube page were analyzed to determine how Starbucks ’ culture was portrayed on these sites. The rhetorical analysis of Schultz ’ book “Onward ” conveyed that Starbucks ’ culture is broken up into a professional portion and a personal portion, each overlapping one another in its principles. After sifting through various tweets, posts and videos, this study found that Starbucks has created a perfect balance of culture, which is fundamentally driven by their values and initiatives in coffee, ethics, relationships and storytelling