While Listverse claimed they have the ‘”ultimate top 10 lists”, I found it as “the ultimate time consumption.” LOL.

This site could fall into ‘Super Awesome Nifty Website’ or ‘I Should’ve Finished My Task 10 Hours Ago.’

Not all articles/lists in this website giving me all favors tho. Of course there are some lists that I prefer to skip but hey, it’s all going back to the preferences and what I don’t give much attention might be going as interesting information for others.

The owner of this website, JFrater, also build another website (which for me is no less interesting than Listverse ) – Cogitz.

While Listverse is heavily talking in term of lists, Cogitz goes to articles/specific topic. I hope Cogitz could be Listverse’s sidekick for explaining interesting stuffs within the list

Links:

http://www.listverse.com

http://www.cogitz.com

However, first off, I’m back. Yay?

So yeah, after months in catatonic phase finally I entered this dusty lair once again and found that I was such an awesome kid back then. Then I decided to revive this blog again although it won’t involve Igor, electricity and cables. But yes, I couldn’t hold the urge to yell “IT’S ALIIIIVEEEE!”

Oh well. It’s aliiiiive.

So, back to the main topic. I know that it’s in slim chance of me to review case studies (altho we could keep the hope up tho) but then I’ll review some books that I’ve read. In that way, I won’t be a lazy bum as I used to be and finish the damn books already.

So today’s book is ‘Babad Tanah Jawi‘. The book got this introduction “… Since Adam’s era” and I simply went bananas. But yeah, there IS Adam inside the first chapter of the book. Seems like all of us want to have the piece of the First Man eh? Whatever.

This book is quite fascinating, really. Many events being told here that I wish will be re-told in classrooms. Oh woe is the day when students have false understandings and accusations of the history. I mean, look, this is an example. Indonesia was colonized by the Dutch for friggin’ 350 years. Three and a half centuries. And how come such a country being colonized in such a long time? History books stated it as devide et impera. Divide to conquer. Just that. Period. Zip. No continuation afterwards. And here we are, the younger generations wondering what went wrong in our ancestors’ mind so they would fall into those bules trap.

Well, this book explains that. Apparently even the great kings in the past got this hobby of quarreling with each other. Friends become foe, sons become murderers, father becomes the masterminds, teachers become the rebels. And everything went into mafia world while everybody said “I’ll give you an offer you cannot refuse.”

And these big guys saw the troops from far faraway land as potential allies so you could imagine what happened next. “Fetch those bules here and make them bow to me and help me. And if they help me, I will give him a piece of a land here.” And if you’re an Indonesian, you gotta see the names of the Dutch people that given by the Javanese people in the past. Awesomely hilarious. With all that brouhahas, no wonder the Dutch people could reside calmly and enjoying all the royal facilities.

Anyway, despite all the good stories that one could munch, I’m a little bit disappointed since this book didn’t talk much about the tragic love story between Hayam Wuruk and (allegedly) Dyah Pitaloka Citraresmi, a princess from Sunda kingdom. Thanks to Gajah Mada’s arrogance, the (was) good intention of marrying a beautiful princess ended up as disaster. And the princess dead. No, the king lived. But yeah, it said the king dead because of heartbroken. AND GAJAH MADA WAS SAID AS VANISHING INTO THIN AIR.

Somehow I hope Gajah Mada is rolling on his grave and sulking, “me and my big mouth.”

Reading this book is like reading History books combined into fairy tales. Interesting stuffs here and there and somehow I hope one would be crazy enough to make this whole book into a movie or series of movie Harry Potter would run away in shame. Heh.

The case is taken from Al Gini Business Ethics book and so I leave you with the Power Point Any questions, shout it out at commenting system *lazy bastard*

Okay, apparently I’m in my mood of writing rite now. Won’t let it wasted then.

This case study is from personal collections. Business Ethics class, to be exact. Last week my class had this case study and my group had to analyze and present this case in front of others. The case is taken from Al Gini book.

First off, what is whistleblowing?

If you think that the term of ‘whistleblowing’ is originated from a referee who whistling during foul at the game, you’re right. In business context, whistleblowing is an employee, former employee, or member of an organization, especially a business or government agency, who reports misconduct to people or entities that have the power and presumed willingness to take corrective action.

However in this case is explained the ‘ethics’ of whistleblowing and how it connected to employee loyalty toward the company. The issue here is that how an action of whistleblowing could messing up the whole team. It’s like you’re kicking one of your teammates out of the team.

But then, I like this part, in this case is being explained that team inside a company is totally different with teamsport. If you get lost in sport, sure there are some things that should be sacrificed, but then it wouldn’t be as much as loss in business. That’s why, the bad apples should be thrown right away before it contaminates others.

Therefore in this case is being explained the meaning of ‘loyalty’ and how ‘loyalty’ means that you’re being loyal with the people inside the company, not the company as a whole. Why? Because a company is just an abstract form. And the only thing that hold people together inside a company is money.

In this case being mentioned also the objectives of a company. Those are making goods/services and/or making profits. If there is a guy who couldn’t contribute whatsoever to those objectives (or even worse) this guy should be kicked out. Period.

Thus in this case – also as the closing – it’s being mentioned that the real issue in whistleblowing is if the whistleblower got retaliation. Kinda reminds me of Alexander Litvinenko

Anyone familiar with ‘The Dip’ by Seth Godin?

‘The Dip’ is a point where you know that you couldn’t go much further than that and in many ways, you realized that all you have to do is let it all go. You know that it’s useless for you to fight for it. You know that you will be no better in any ways and you should let go all your efforts.

Maybe I’m in The Dip rite now.

Well, I have this case study project. I should say that this project is such a long forgotten one. The case writer alone even already abandoned this case study and completely forgot about it.

Wow-ze.

And now my supervisor asked me to finish it. He told me that the case is going to be his case. And me.

Well, not me as being regarded as case writer/researcher/whatever it is, but then yeah, I’m still the Research Assistant (RA) for this case study.

And you know what? It sucks. Big time.

This case is such a long-lost-forgotten case! And the issue with long-lost-forgotten case is that it just… Sucks. Really. You already too tired to do the research again and trying to cope your mind with the outline while you got something else more important to do than that case that supposedly should be put in a safe and got buried.

So yeah, I think this is my dip already And I really have to put my ass together to finish this. Well, best of luck *sighs*

In 205 (my office) we always write down the announcement of upcoming book/case study review. The latest one on the whiteboard is my book review (Net, Blogs and Rock ‘n’ Roll) and yes, that was March.

After that we don’t have any reviews. The workload and the stress at 205 are getting harder and harder.

So sorry, I try to read more new cases and put it here. Thanks

It’s kinda unusual for me to put entry here after I put another yesterday due to my laziness But I told myself that I should maintain my blogs. If I didn’t want to maintain my blogs then, it would be better that I delete it instantly.

And I didn’t want to delete this blog.

So here we go, case study reading. Actually this case is one of other case studies in my Brand Management Class. My group was the first one to present (last Tuesday) and we presented this case study. So onward we go to the analysis

History and Background

In every case study, it’s always important for us to understand the history and background of the company itself because many things that happened in the future based mainly on the company’s background and past history. Things that become the fundamentals of the company usually affecting many many aspects of the activities within.

1969 – The beginning of Samsung Electronics Company (SCE.) The company itself was the low-cost manufacturer of black and white televisions.

1970 – This, I could say, would be the turnaround phase of SCE. The primary milestone which decided the next future of SCE. During this year, Samsung acquired semiconductor business.

1980 – SCE showed off their fangs. During this year, SCE was the supplier of commodity products (televisions, microwave ovens and VCRs) in massive quantities to global market. This explains a lot why Samsung is playing in electronic home appliances products.

The company also was an OEM company where they made brand-less products and sold it to other companies which re-sell it again with that company’s brand name in higher price.

Since SEC’s background was mainly in manufacturing, it’s not a surprise for the executives themselves to focus heavily on their manufacturing plants. Profits that SEC received were reinvested in R&D and manufacturing and supply chain activities.

1997 – The big crisis that hit Asia. SEC’s sales were $16 billion but with negative net profit. During this time, the executives conducted major restructuring efforts. SEC dismissed 29,000 workers and sold off $2 billion worth of corporate asset.

However, SEC survived. The company’s debt of $15 billion in ‘97 has been reduced to $4.6 billion by 2002 and the net margins rose from -3% to 13%.

2002 – In this year, the company recorded net profits of $5.9 billion on sales of $44.6 billion.

2003 – SEC was the most widely held stock among all emerging market companies.

Vertical Integration

If we get out of manufacturing, we will lose. Everyone can get the same technology now. But that doesn’t mean they can make an advanced product.

- Jun Yong Jong (1997 Vice Chairman)

Unlike other companies who choose to outsource their manufacturing process, SEC remains committed to its core competence: Manufacturing.

During 1998-2003, SEC invested $19 billion in new chip factories and $17 billion in June 2003 for manufacturing facilities for TFT-LCDs over the next 10 years.

SEC’s policy to its sub-manufacturing group is that they should remain competitive by forcing those groups to compete with outside companies for internal business just like happened with one of internal manufacturing groups that should compete with Sumitomo Chemical Company of Japan to supply the company with its color filters.

However, being focused into manufacturing process didn’t make SEC as a rigid company. To cope with supply-chain demands, the company remains flexible by building 12 manufacturing plants in China during 2003 and setting up R&D facilities in India.

Avoiding Commoditization Trap

There’s nothing more horrendous for a company other than being ‘commoditized.’ That is, where your product is ‘just the same with many millions and trillions products out there.’ For me, a ‘meh’ product.

And electronic gadget products are sooo easy to become a commodity. In Indonesia here, Nokia is the biggest player. They are the market leader in term of market share. Seemed that everybody got same hand phone everywhere.

In order to avoid that, SEC customized as much as production as possible – which makes me wonder… More customization means MORE COSTS!!! YIKES!!! How these guys do that??!

However, as a result of customization and reliable, timely supply of chips, SEC’s average prices were 17% above industry levels.

Going Basic

In hand phone market, Samsung decided not to develop proprietary software and content (music, movies and video games) unlike its rival: Apple, Sony, etc. SEC tend to focus on hardware and devices to collaborate with content providers when appropriate. This kind of approach is recognized by SEC’s executives as ‘Open Architecture’ where customers are able to access more software through its devices than its competitors’ products.

Another reason why SEC is focusing on hardware only (and I believe that this would be the most reasonable reason) is that they want to protecting proprietary content from piracy. You see, once they develop a software, it could be pirated instantly and the legal cost would be such an amount. To save money, SEC choose not to walk the plank.

To Innovate

With 17,000 scientists, engineers and designer, I don’t think that SEC got problems with innovation. Thanks to its fast decision-making process with flatter hierarchy, the product development phase from the drawing board to its commercialization phase needs only five months

In this innovation phase, there is this thing called ‘pillar products’ that is, 4 or 5 products that would be the ‘main’ products that will be sold on that particular year/season. Pillar product is the Holy Grail for everybody inside R&D division because once their prototype made it to ‘Pillar Product’, every efforts will be poured down over to support that product in the market.

Sashimi Theory

This theory, unsurprisingly, is the foundation of electronics and gadgets market all over the world. Being implemented heavily by Nokia, ‘Sashimi Theory’ is taken based from fish market. Fish sells at high price  on the first day when they are fresh, but prices decline dramatically thereafter. Ring a bell? Yes, that over-priced Nokia suddenly decreased in price after 3 months or so.

Realizing the the market is tighter day after day, Samsung’s marketing team is proposing three ‘requirements’ that every product should have: ‘Wow’, ‘Simple’ and ‘Inclusive’.

The product should be ‘Wow’ enough which means that it has groundbreaking innovations that intrigued consumers and the product should be ‘Simple’ and ‘Inclusive’ in term of ease of use and accessibility along with ubiquity, availability and affordability of Samsung’s products to the consumer.

The Marketing Team

Samsung has its marketing team which named Global Marketing Team. The team alone is breaking down into three layers: Marketing Strategy team, Regional Strategy team and Product Strategy team.

Marketing Strategy team’s main task is to develop global marketing strategy; that is, to develop marketing strategy in international-wide. The core message that the company wanted to convey should be shown inside every promotional activities international-wise.

Regional Strategy team’s job is to continuing the task from Marketing Strategy team and breaking it down into regional level. One effort that applicable in United States doesn’t mean that it will reap the same success when being implemented in Japan. It would be Regional Strategy team’s task to develop strategy in term of regional demographics.

Product Strategy team is the frontline of the whole team. Conducting market research, gathering the information and analyzing information about competitors are their daily task. The Market Intelligence. How cool is that?

Market Driven Change

In the past, Samsung’s effort was promoting by its own way which resulted in cluttered information, unclear company and brand image and confused consumers.

Several years after that, came along a blockbuster movie called ‘The Matrix’ and Samsung thought that it was the perfect time for them to get off the dust from their shoulder and going hip. Having the slogan ‘DigitAll – Everyone’s Invited’, Samsung focused more on customer’s insights into new-product development process and cooperated with Warner Bros. for product replacement at ‘The Matrix’.

I know it was a huge success because once Neo said on the phone “I’m in” I got that urge of I-havta-hav-dat-phone.

What’s Next?

The usual question at every case study. What’s next?

Samsung has going through a long way and they realize that they need to develop more within this tight competition. Their closest competitor, LG, is doing it the rough way. Come on, that cooperation with Prada didn’t mean anything to you? You must be crazy.

In this much more demanding market, Samsung should be able to be strong and understand the market more.

Actually it was last month – March 2008 – when I got my turn for book review. Personal note here, I didn’t got any opportunity to do ANY case reviews! Goddangit. There was some fiasco in term of scheduling so I got TWO book reviews in row! Boy, am I tired or what?

Anyway, I took this book. Yep, Net, Blogs and Rock ‘n’ Roll by David Jennings. I found this book at Kinokuniya Plaza Senayan with a price freakingly 300,000 IDR (US$ 30 or so.) The main reason I bought this book is because my thesis for my Master degree is about New Media (Web 2.0) and this book covers nearly 80% of my thesis topic. Damnit, with a price of a reference book like that, I HAVE TO GRADUATE THIS YEAR.

Okay, where were we? Oh yeah, the book review. Lets go through this book one by one, shall we?

Jakob Nielsen on Internet User Experience

Our usability guru, Jakob Nielsen, mentioned two things which I found it quite important regarding user experience.

1. Design sites and services that support the activity as effectively as possible.
   I believe that many IT and web designers/programmers/experts understand this rule of thumb. Maximum ‘clicks’ that needed inside a website is three clicks. More than that will be considered as a hassle. Take a look at Seth Godin’s experience here (The World’s Worst Toaster.)
2. Remember that users spend most of their time on other sites than your own.
   There are two possibilities why this kind of thing happened: 1.) Other websites are more interesting, 2.) Your website is fuckingly boring, dumb, got-too-many-clicks and idiotic. I prone to #2, thanks.

Producer AND Consumer (Procon)

In our conventional world, there are two types of people (when we are talking about trading, business and companies): Producer and Consumer.

In many cases, it always goes one-way. The producers are making the products and giving it to the consumers. Sure enough that the consumers could give some feedbacks but then it couldn’t be done simultaneously.

And that’s where this Web 2.0 plays a major role. Thanks to Web 2.0, now Internet is more to user-generated content. People could be anything there, be it them as producers or consumers. Or both.

Take Youtube for example. Lets just say that I want to download Sherlock Holmes Granada TV Series from Youtube; in that case, I act as consumer because basically I took stuffs from Youtube. But then in the same time, I also upload a video about recent campus’ event in Youtube so I could show it to my friends online. In that case, I act as producer because I’m giving the video.

So I’m no longer a producer or consumer. I am both. Procon. Producer and Consumer. Everybody could be anybody and they could go back-and-forth whether they want to download or upload.

Trying Out, Links and Community (TLC)

In this Information era, it’s pretty hard for us, marketers to do the promotion in ol’ skool ways. Consumers becoming smarter and they even block some information that they see as unnecessary.

This where I would point a thing called ‘Information filtering’. There already too much information around us, too many advertisements, promotions and news which could confuse us and subconsciously our mind formed an ‘information filter’ where we could filter out the information and take the thing that interest us only or necessary for us. Let the others went to junk.

This thing is a challenge for every marketer in the world. During 1950s, it would be goddamn easy for a company to promote because everybody’s eyes were glued to the television. They watch TV with high enthusiasm and they even waited for TV commercials. In short, the market during the old days was easy to be steered.

Now? We have hundreds of TV channels, newspapers, magazines, interactive advertisements… The Internet. The information piling up, cluttered everywhere. One should filter it for himself/herself or he/she will get overwhelmed.

Interesting enough, this kind of ‘filtering information’ has been mentioned by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle during 1870s.

I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that
he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.

Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order.

It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.

- Sherlock Holmes (A Study in Scarlet)

Biologically we already got our ‘filter’ inside our brain. Some people would say it as ‘forgetful’ but then it proves that we tend to shun away some unnecessary information. A husband that works from dawn till dusk at the office might forget his wedding anniversary because he thinks that it would be his second priority compared to, lets just say, the upcoming big project at his office.

So how we could lure the consumers in this vast development of Internet? Let them lure themselves then.

Everybody always have their own ‘primitive’ side. The curiosity, the demand of knowing more, learning more, reading more… And that’s what we should use to lure them. Let them curious then they will follow the path.

First off, Trying Out.

I couldn’t say alot about this one, but this is a good example: Amazon.

When you buy a book at Amazon, high probability they will give you this message: “Customers who bought books by writer A also bought book by these writers…”

Amazon didn’t ‘force’ the consumers to see and buy more books per se, but then at least that would trigger even the tiniest brain-cell when they say that “some other people like you are buying other books so maybe you would like to take a look, just in case it interests you.”

Second, Links.

O the big world of Internet! Everybody is linking everybody right now. You clicked a link at PopURLs then you will be send straight to Digg, Del.icio.us, Slashdot, Yahoo! and many more!

Nuff said.

Third, Community.

The most powerful force within the Internet. People.

When two or more people gather together with same interest and they could bring out a helluva idea from it, then you could start a regime then, and the border-less Internet helps to increase the traffic.

For example, you want to listen to the latest song and in the same time you want to have some friends. Where you could go? Maybe you could go to Last.fm.

Then you want to meet old friends, hookup with your online buddies, becoming trolls, lurkers, perverts and many freakos, you could go to Friendster.

This type of community is growing and they becoming stronger. How to tap into this thing? Buzz words and viral marketing

Actually there are lots of thing that being covered inside this book, but I’m too lazy to type it down here and that would make YOU lazy to read so nyah, buy the book and read the book

As usual, my apologies for not updating quite, um, often. It seems that a post for a month eh?

Anyway, for January’s case review, it was one of my colleagues that got the honor to present a case study about Google Inc.

Google Inc.

We all know that Google is one of the most respected and, also to mention, beloved brands in the world. Started by the duo Page and Brin, Google expanded rapidly as the pioneer in search engine industry in the Internet. During that time (1995-1996, methink) the Internet wasn’t as sophisticated as now (well, d’uh) and during 2000 alone, there was ‘dot-com bubble’ where many web-based companies went bankruptcy or filed liquidation.

Somehow we wondered, what caused the ‘dot-com bubble’? The Internet was on its frenzy when many people gained access to the web and many people also believed that the Internet is the next ‘it’ thing. Sure that the Internet is the next ‘it’ thing and many people still see the Internet as a gateway to golden opportunities nowadays. However, a thing that most common people forgot is whether they have the capabilities to, at least, survive in the midst of hullaballo over the Net.

We could find practically EVERYTHING over the Net. Everything is available over the Net and the next thing every businesspeople know, the market is getting overflowed of information. In short, we have what called as ‘information flood.’ Information flood is not a good thing. It’s true that information is a precious asset and many people are aspiring information; but then when one got too much information, subconsciously he will build his barricade in order to filter the information. Which information that he allowed to be received and which information isn’t allowed. In other words, we are having our own firewall system.

In short, that’s one thing that many people didn’t aware of. The products/services that they offered over the Net isn’t valuable/precious/different enough to stand out on the market and compete with many other rivals. If the competition mapping in reality world is already big enough, Internet is giving bigger war field without no ends. That is why many companies nowadays who realized that they don’t have enough capabilities to survive solely on the Net is using the Internet as a medium to share information. Not more. Once upon a time we have brick-and-mortar and purely-web-based market, now we have hybrid market where a company is combining both its traditional efforts and web efforts.

Google Inc. on the other hand is having expertise over the Net. Both of Google founders are PhDs and they realized one crucial thing about the dire need of the user.

What User Really Wanted

Remember when I mentioned above that we have this information flood? Good. So, what will we do when we want to filter the information? We are looking for relevancy, that is, by using our limited or little amount of our knowledge about something that we want to look for, we search for it over the Net. We called that ‘limited/little amount of knowledge’ as keywords. You don’t have to know and memorize the whole book in order to know what the book is all about. All you have to do is memorizing several important and interesting words and lines that you recognized and the next thing you know, you know the content of the book. In short, you are having the keywords (or keylines, whatever) of the book.

Google understands this perfectly. Instead of bombarding the users with vast information which will cause more chaos (and high possibility of useless information), Google is delivering a service of giving information about what user really want from the first place.

Ooh, I want to know everything about Sherlock Holmes! Quick, here’s a Google. What should I do? Well, I type ‘detective, Sherlock Holmes’, click the ‘Search’ button and voila! The results are in.

Nothing is more satisfying rather than getting what we really wanted.

Google Prevails

Google is loved. I myself gone hysterical when I saw my colleague wore Google T-shirt that he got from Google CodeJam competition in India which had words ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ at the back of the T-shirt and Seth Godin said that when he walked in a market at Thailand, a guy suddenly came up to him and said, “Thank God for Google!”

A good brand is a loved brand. Practically many people recognized it and even people are using the name of the brand for a verb in daily conversation.

“Hey, I have tried to find any information about this particular subject about DNA analysis but I got nada. Any suggestions?”

“Have you Google-d it?”

Another big brand whom aspiring to be in that kind of position is Xerox. An executive at Xerox once said that in a very near future, nobody will say “please copy this” but they will say “please Xerox it.”

(Many) Products of Google

It is Google’s strength as having customer’s Top-Of-Mind in term of search engine but many common people (i.e. people who rarely used Internet. They tend to use Internet in a very small basis) didn’t know that Google also has Blogger, Picasa, Orkut, Google Reader, Google Scholar, Google Image Search, iGoogle, Google Calendar, Google Earth… Shall I continue more?

One breakthrough attempt that Google has done successfully is implementing an early Identity 2.0 theory. Identity 2.0 is a concept that one day we as user didn’t have to have different usernames and/or different passwords for each different websites/web accounts that we all have. When was the last time that you have to struggle to create an unique username and think about a password? I did that just last month when I should make a new password for my del.icio.us account which was not a very pleasant experience, mind you. An example of Identity 2.0 implementation; say, for example, you have an account at Facebook. Once you logged in into your Facebook account, automatically you logged in also at your Flickr account, WordPress account, del.icio.us account and many more. It’s very convenient for us as user and saves our time.

Google has this early adoption of Identity 2.0. Once we logged to our iGoogle account, automatically we are logged in our GTalk, GMail, Blogger, Orkut, Picasa and many Google products. It’s very convenient. Yahoo! has this kind of system also.

Google’s Next Steps?

Google has a very solid team. They are creative and bright people. Google office also being conditioned as ‘campus environment’ since the Board of Directors believes that campus environment is the most creative environment so the people at Google could deliver their most creative and supportive ideas. It’s even rumored that Google has the best cafeteria at the office.

So the question is, what’s next? Google has reached its pinnacle and proved its success stories. Somebody gotta go forward if they didn’t want to get stuck. So what Google could do next? That is the question of this case study.

I slightly remembered during April Mop 2004, Google joked at its website that Google has finished its Lunar Center at Moon and having its ‘Lunar Headquarter’ while we all know, it was a joke.

The funny thing is, somehow deep inside here I believe that one day Google will really build its Lunar Center. Letsee then

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I mentioned at my previous entry about a book called ‘The Starbucks Experience’ by Joseph Michelli. Well, I should say that I like that book very much that I used it for my book review at the last 14 December 2007. However, after I done my book review, my supervisor asked me whether I would be interested or not in helping him to write a case about Starbucks. Specifically, Starbucks in Indonesia.

I agreed at that time and I should say that it was the fastest case that I ever wrote. It took me around 5 consecutive days to search the data and information available and sum it all up into a full case study. Fortunately my supervisor was glad with the case and even though he said that the case might need more additional information, it was ready to be used inside classrooms.

So, anyway, I would like to tell about this case. As you can see, the title is about Starbucks Indonesia. The reasons why we took Starbucks Indonesia are first of all, we already fed up with case studies about Starbucks. Yea yea we all know it was a guy named Howard Schultz who went to Italy during his business trip and inspired with the ambience in Milan’s coffee shops he came back to Seattle and made his first coffee store. At first it was named Il Giornale.

Wait, you asked, I thought the name is already Starbucks…

Yes, I should explain you this just in case if you didn’t know. Starbucks originally was a company specifically in coffee roasting and trading. And yes, Mr. Schultz once worked there. When he came back from Italy, he presented his idea in front of Starbucks Board of Director about the possibility of opening a coffee store. However the directors rejected the idea and told Mr. Schultz that coffee store-idea is not into Starbucks’ plan. With that Mr. Schultz resigned himself, collected quite amount of money and looked for investors and then he made Il Giornale.

Il Giornale had good growth in two years and even Mr. Schultz could collected some money and eventually he bought Starbucks, even to the logo. So started from that time, Il Giornale changed its name into Starbucks.

From the book itself (The Starbucks Experience) we all know about the ‘experience’ that we got when we visit one of Starbucks coffee stores. You might want to read the book if you are curious, and frankly speaking, I myself didn’t want to type that long about Starbucks’ success stories. It’s way too much.

So, anyway, we know exactly about the experience that we all have at Starbucks coffee stores. Not only on its ambience but also Starbucks’ highly trained baristas that are glad to share their knowledge about coffee to the consumers. Ask any barista about any coffee, and the barista will answer it right away. Hey, even the higher-positioned barista (called ‘Coffee Master’) is able to differ and point out the type of the coffee just by sniffing the coffee beans with his eyes covered tightly.

So, the questions that arise from all the words from the book is that: Is it really the ‘experience’ we are talking about here in Starbucks Indonesia?

I should say that for long Indonesians are consumptive creatures. It looks like we couldn’t live without brands. People are flocking in Burger King, Krispy Kreme and Starbucks just to be seen by other people and get that envious look from other people. They are bragging about their visits to Starbucks only to show off to other people that ‘I-am-cool-because-I-could-buy-a-US$3-cup-of-coffee’ while we all know that Starbucks isn’t only a mere US$3 cup of coffee. So another question, doesn’t it seem that Starbucks is ‘wasting’ their money to put the high-quality coffee beans and espressos while their customers at Indonesia are basically know NOTHING about it? It’s just like you are giving a diamond to a monkey. The monkey didn’t know the difference between a mere rock with a diamond. The monkey never appreciates it.

And surprise surprise, based from a recent interview with an ex-barista at one of the cafes at Jakarta, I found out that my assumptions were confirmed. The Indonesia customers mainly are nosey, proud-but-know-nothing and very brand-minded. I should say that NOT all of Indonesia customers were like that. It’s just like, well, majority of them were like that. Compared with expatriates, people from foreign countries were more able to appreciate the baristas, understand and knowledgeable more about coffee (so they know exactly about the coffee that Starbucks is serving to them) and they clearly know more he value of quality. For them, visiting a Starbucks coffee store in Indonesia is because “Starbucks here is serving the same exact coffee with Starbucks in my country. So it feels like I could feel that I am at home whenever I am.”

The problem of Starbucks Indonesia is not only about their customers (the customers is looking their brand in a total different way. If Starbucks is striving for quality, the customers are seeing nothing in quality. What matter to them is only about the brand. Talk about being invaded by foreign countries again…) but also in term of management for the management issues are being held by Starbucks’ local partner in whom they see Starbucks as a cash-cow in order to support other companies. So basically majority of Starbucks’ profit is being ’shared’ to other franchises such as Burger King. Ouch.

So the issue is about things that Starbucks is facing now. Yea they might could sleep well these days because they still hold the number one in coffee store business (Starbucks is not considering other companies as their competitors. Heck, they are putting their own coffee stores as their competitors. This is an issue of “cannibalization.”) but then it could be held in a longer period for business always developing and expanding.

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