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Back in previous coffee review about Australia coffee culture, this time we try to find more useful reason about failed of Starbucks operation in Australia.

Said that Starbucks succeed in US because Starbucks is selling the coffee culture and not the coffee itself. But Australia already have their own coffee culture when Starbucks came in Australia. That`s why recently there are huge amount of Starbucks coffee chain beeing closed and failed in Australia.

Here`s another perspective to tell us about fail of starbucks to break Australia coffee market. Maurizio Corda said that Australia has got a sophisticated coffee culture, a simple thing that people at Starbucks did not fully understand.

“I never really felt the need to go to a Starbucks shop,” says Elise from Sydney. The coffee lover never really felt Starbucks had more to offer or more reasonable prices than its competitors.

“I have always felt like we had been invaded by Starbucks. The proliferation of the shops has been fast and intrusive in my opinion.”

Since the opening of the first shops back in 2000, Starbucks has never really breached the difficult Australian market. The general feeling is that they tried to sell a coffee culture which already existed.

Unlike the US where Starbucks is considered a ‘must’, and is far ahead of its competitors in terms of sales, Australia has always seen it as one of many, just one more competitor.

With a supposed expansion of the European market by the end of 2008, let’s hope Starbucks executives learned from the Australian mistake. Being a household name and having the resources to open multiple selling points is not enough, if there is no effort in understanding each country’s tastes and needs.

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