© 2022 Page 1 School of Economics, Finance and Business Strategic Marketing Management 2008/2009 MA Programmes SUMMATIVE ASSIGNMENT Starbu cks Adapted with permission of Pearson Prentice-Hall, 2008 ‘Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll is all my body needs,’ sang Ian Dury and the Blockheads, but the real roots of rock’n’roll were in the 1950’s coffee bars. It was in a coffee bar next to the diminutive Sun Studios in Memphis, Tennessee, that Sam Philips negotiated the deals with Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Howlin’ Wolf that gave African-American music to the world. It was also in the 2 I’s coffee bar in Soho, London, that white Europeans, including Cliff Richard, Hank Marvin, Tommy Steele and Mickey Most, aped white Americans’ aping of the music of America’s Deep South. Time moved on and the coffee bar culture declined- except in Italy, where it began. After the excitement of the British invasion, started in Liverpool, and punk with its roots in New York, rock music was in need of one of its periodic revolutions. This time Seattle would raise the torch. In Seattle and elsewhere, the alienated teenagers of Generation X did not relate to the studio-enhanced, beautifully preened purveyors of corporate rock that dominated the airwaves. The fast food joints where they could eat or the downtown bars were not for them. In mid-1980s Seattle, something was brewing. While travelling in Italy, the popularity of Milan’s espresso coffee bars impressed Howard Schultz. At the time, he was director of retail operations and marketing of Starbucks, then a provider of coffee to fine restaurants. He concluded that Generation X needed the coffee bar culture – slow down, ‘smell the coffee...
